I wasn’t going to say anything else about the World Vision thing. I don’t have any more energy. I’m tired of feeling. I’m tired of the hurt, the anger, I’m tired of caring.
There’s one more thing I have to say.
I’m troubled with how some of the people who are critical of World Vision’s reversal are dehumanizing the poor. Well, dehumanizing the poor and dehumanizing gay people, to be precise.
It’s as if the poor should be content with second best. They’re starving after all, why not send some gay people to help them? The religious right is being terrible because they won’t even let the homos help people who are starving.
It’s the human equivalent of sending the poor your raggedy t-shirts that you would have cut into rags to wash your car. Not even sending them the nice new t-shirts from the losing Super Bowl team, sending them your worst and expecting them to be content with rags, because after all, they’re poor, they should be happy with any scrap they get.
The poor shouldn’t have to be content with second best.
Gay people aren’t second best.
People who are poor deserve to have the people with the best skills and talents working with them in their communities to help empower them. To give them the tools they need to empower themselves to make change. Not some scraps because if they’re starving they should be happy with anything.
Some of those people who have the skills and talents to empower people to escape poverty are gay. They aren’t the second best scraps to send to people who should be content with whatever we give them. They’re the ones who are best equipped with the tools to help people overcome the structural barriers that are holding them back.
We should be outraged about the World Vision fiasco not because gay people aren’t even good enough to help the poor. We should be outraged because bigotry and hatred are keeping the best people from working with those who deserve the best.