Teach your children well

When they learn to hate gays, the consequences can be deadly, as a recent Baltimore County case shows

Many of the "teachers" who pass along contempt of gays use the Bible as a study guide. They ignore any Levitical rules on diet or animal sacrifice they consider irrelevant today - and brush right past the instruction to execute anyone who curses his or her parents - but they never tire of quoting the condemnation of man lying with mankind. Of course, they avoid any discussion of the love between David and Jonathan ("passing the love of women"). They eagerly mention Sodom but don't notice how that city's destruction is subsequently referred to, even by Jesus, as a moral about inhospitality to strangers. And though they're quick to quote Paul, few have studied the original Greek text to consider textual nuances. What fundamentally drives anti-gay attitudes is the conviction that gay people choose to be gay. I've yet to meet a heterosexual person who can tell me the moment when he or she chose to be heterosexual; they just knew they were attracted to the opposite sex. Why is it so difficult to accept that gays go through exactly the same process?

Refusing to recognize that process leads to a hatred I can't fathom, any more than I could if right-handed thugs were targeting left-handed people who refused to change.

The killing of Steven Parrish offers a chilling reminder of how much we need new generations "to be carefully taught" that human sexuality is a complex thing, full of variables. And that no set of beliefs - whether based on religion or nothing more than peer pressure - should be able to turn sexual inclination into grounds for demonization, cruelty and even, in a wooded spot near a Baltimore cemetery, the crushing out of a young life.

Tim Smith is The Baltimore Sun's classical music critic. His e-mail is [e-mail].