A week or so ago Ting Lin, whom I wrote about in A Taiwanese Christian Lesbian Everyone Should Know, sat down to write a letter to her father. When finished she wasn’t sure what to do with the letter. Rather than mail it to her father she decided to publish it on her blog, which she knows her father reads.
Ting Lin lives with both of her parents, staunchly conservative Christian leaders who do not accept her homosexuality. She deeply loves her parents, and they her. Her blog is one of the main ways in which Ting Lin endeavors to communicate to her mother and father (as well as to her readers throughout Taiwan and into China) the truth that gay people are just people.
Ting Lin sent me the final paragraphs of her letter to her father. Below are those paragraphs translated into English. Thanks to Ting Lin for allowing me to share them with you.
When you stand with other Christians, Father, and with them use the timeworn quiltwork of reasons to oppose gay people, please look at me. Look into your daughter’s eyes, and accuse me of being a pervert.
Accuse me of incest, polygamy, pedophilia.
Accuse me of bestiality.
When you stand with those churches that preach loving the sinner but hating the sin and accuse gay people of sinfulness, please look at me. Look into your daughter’s eyes, and tell me how many such “sinners” you personally have known and loved. Tell me how many of those gay people beloved by you ever managed to successfully separate themselves from the core of that within them which you and the church call sinful. Tell me, please, how many, ceaselessly striving to remove from themselves the essence of their own identity, collapsed from that terrible effort. Tell me how many died because of the continuing hatred and denial of something natural to them that was impossible for them to change.
When you stand with those who call themselves the “Holy Church” denying acceptance of those “unholy homosexuals,” please look at me. Look into your daughter’s eyes, and tell me that I am not holy. Tell me that the Holy Spirit is not present within the group worships that I lead. Tell me that my ministry reveals to you no sign of the Holy Spirit’s work. Tell me, Father, that in my life does not appear heavenly blessings. Tell me that I do not know God at all.
When you are sure that gay people simply do not understand their sexual orientation, when you are filled with the conviction that “being gay” is only an excuse to abandon oneself to shamefulness and despair, open your eyes, please. Look at me.
Look behind us. See the blood in the footprints of our long walk together.
That blood was caused by thorns planted by you.
You deny us.
You refuse us.
You do not see us.
Every day, Dad, there must be gay people around you. But the church does not accept them. And you don’t even see them.
Please, Father, behold us.
Behold me.
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