Dallas Morning News one-sided reporting on Indian anti-LGBT Christianity. A fuller story in the Dallas Gay Liberation newsletter.
This report is to provide some background about anti-LGBT Indian Christianity for future stories about Dallas Morning News stories that white wash Indian homophobia.
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Introduction
As always, a fuller context is needed to deal with the reporting of the Dallas Morning News (DMN).
Various religious groups support the criminalization of homosexuals here and there around the world, and wage anti-Gay campaigns against the LGBT, but when they get on the losing side of discrimination they suddenly discover human rights as an issue and try to exploit the United States to protect them.
They get into quarrels in foreign nations or they have very problematic histories and when it doesn’t go well they want to suddenly use the United States power to bail them out.
Basically these anti-Gay Christians are complaining that the wrong persons are being persecuted, namely themselves, and they should be deciding who should be persecuted.
The hypocrisy of wanting to destroy the human rights of the LGBT while expecting your own human rights to be protect needs to be called out.
Also, it needs to be asked if the United States comes to the aid of these Indian Christians will it just release these anti-LGBT Christians to go persecute LGBT. Will we end up replacing one human rights issue with another. With the recent passage of murderous legislation in Uganda this is a question that needs to be asked.
In no way are any violent actions against Christian endorsed in these essays, except in self-defense if they are violenting attacking LGBT. Nor is the lawless actions of any anti-Christian group endorsed. We are just pointing out the hypocrisy and self-interest of the human rights claims.
The following is a letter regarding an Indian American group complaining about persecution in India sent to U.S. Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. They are duplicate letters. These letters basically, in detail, point out the problems with how a certain Indian Christian group is trying to frame the question and provide the background information to see the issues in India more clearly.
The letter reviews the issues in India raising this issue that many of the churches expecting protection are churches which campaign against Gays. Most notably the Roman Catholic Church in India being against the decriminalization of homosexuality there. A link is provided.
Letter to U.S. Senator John Cornyn
This letter was sent with copies of all the articles mentioned.
April 3, 2023
Edward H. Sebesta
Dallas, Texas
Hon. John Cornyn
United States Senator
517 Hart Senate Office
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Hon. Cornyn:
No doubt you have heard claims of religious conflict in India, such as reported in this Dallas Morning News (DMN) article, “Groups speak out about what they see as Hindu ‘extremist group’ operating in Frisco,” Dec. 10, 2022, online at the following link.
In this following article it is said that a letter had been sent to you and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz concerning this matter in this article.
https://www2.cbn.com/news/cwn/hindu-charity-texas-reportedly-raising-cash-demolish-churches-india
The claim that they are being persecuted in India may well be true. Different groups are malicious or obnoxious towards each other all over the globe. I don’t claim to know the history of these many conflicts. The claims of the Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations in North America (FIACONA) may well be true.
The history of the United States of America is a history of a nation which has progressively advanced in the preservation of the human rights of its citizens regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, and other protected classes of individuals. Americans hope that in other nations the human rights of their citizens would be respected and protected.
However, I think it is important for the United States not to be drawn into religious quarrels as a partisan of one religious movement or another in religious conflicts all over the world. Sometimes the history of these conflicts has a long, tangled history. I don’t think the United States to be in a position where groups can kick the dog and then complain about being bitten and then it be our problem.
In the specific case of India, it is an important to have it as a friend of the United States, in this era of growing geopolitical conflict.
The FIACONA in their “FIACONA Annual Report 2022” on page 5 talks about Christianity being introduced by Apostle Thomas in 52 AD, and that the great majority of Indian Christians are ethnically Indians. Both statements are true, but it belies the history of Christianity in India. I think it is doubtful that the Indian Christians of today are members of churches which have as their origins of the 1st and 2nd century churches of what often are called the Nestorian Christians. More likely their origin is later when European gun boats arrived in support of imperial conquest.
On page 19 in the report FIACONA also pushes this same historical narrative. Even if the Christians arrived after the year 2000 it doesn’t justify them getting attacked. However, these parts of their report show that claims by FIACONA need to be critically reviewed. It behooves the United States before getting involved with any of these conflicts to make sure they have accurate information.
On page 19 you can see how FIACONA sanitizes history. They state:
However, Hindu nationalists argue that the Christian faith in India was introduced by European Missionaries after 1600 AD; hence, they try to brand it as a form of modern religious colonialism.
The Christians came with the gun boats. It wasn’t like they just happened to be in the neighborhood and it was a big coincidence. Pentecostals, Evangelicals, and Protestants aren’t Nestorian Christians.
The French are still angry over the 4 years of Nazi occupation, imagine how some Indians feel about centuries of occupation.
There are probably two sides to this story. The United States should be wary of being used and dragged into a conflict that has roots going back into past centuries.
https://fiacona.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/FIACONA_2022_Report_Updated_202207.pdf
We certainly don’t want to import these religious conflicts into the United States as has been reported occurring in Leicester in the United Kingdom.
It would be bad policy if in aiding one group in some nation, the result would be to release this same group to go after another class of individuals whose rights we hope to protect also. It would be abhorrent if the United States policy of aiding a group was to knowingly enable them to target another group.
The involvement of the United States should be on a human rights basis with groups that believe in human rights. It shouldn’t be supporting groups whose real complaint is that the wrong groups are being persecuted, namely themselves, and have an agenda of wanting to go after different groups.
FIOCONA though it says on its webpage (https://fiacona.org/about/ ) the following:
FIACONA is a Washington DC based a voluntary, charitable organization advocating on behalf of 1 million strong Indian American Christians from all 50 states and Canada, It is a coalition of Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical, Pentecostal and independent church and civic organizations primarily of Indian Americans. FIACONA is a bridge builder for ecumenical advocacy focused on finding ways to reduce violence against Christians in India. Our focus is to preserve the socio-political space of the Christian church from encroachment by nationalist radical groups in the name of Hinduism or their representatives in the Indian government.
However, what specific religious groups make up the FIOCONA coalition isn’t listed on their webpage. This is something that we need to know. In enabling these churches will we unleash persecution on Lesbians, Gays and bisexuals and others in India?
The Roman Catholic church was very unhappy when the Indian Supreme Court struck down the colonial laws which had made homosexuality illegal. This is an article from the Union of Catholic Asian News.
https://www.ucanews.com/news/india-church-unhappy-with-legalization-of-homosexuality/83280
Though there has been some reporting on recent statements by Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic church about eliminating anti-homosexual laws, it is unclear whether this is his personal opinion and is part of any Roman Catholic policy or binding on the behavior of any of the Catholic groups around the world. Will this mean the attacks on LGBT in Poland by the Roman Catholic Church stop? Will the Archbishop of Krakow stop yapping about a “neo-Marxist rainbow plague.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-54191344
In Tbilisi, Georgi the Georgian Orthodox Church violently attacked the Pride Parade there. FIACONA mentions Orthodox churches as part of their group.
In this case, a person is “happy to be alive” after an attack on the offices of an LGBTQ group.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/05/europe/lgbt-pride-march-attacked-georgia-intl/index.html
This isn’t just one-time occurrence. In this article, an Orthodox priest in Bulgaria is calling for people to throw stones at people in a Pride Parade.
https://religiondispatches.org/orthodox-priest-encourages-violence-against-pride-marchers/
Are the Orthodox Churches in the FIACONA alliance once freed from repression likely to do the same in India? We should make inquiries.
Pride in Korea have been subject to violent attacks by Christians and large deployments of police have been needed to prevent more violent attacks after the notorious attack on the Incheon Pride event in 2015. In the future will we have news of some violent Christian attack on a Pride parade in India?
There is the following is a result of the actions of Christians in Uganda who were behind this murderous effort.
Are any of the Protestant, Evangelical, and Pentecostal members of FIACONA the same denominations behind the murderous effort in Uganda?
Of course, Christianity has varied over history and has varied geographically, the United States should however, do due diligence regarding the churches which compose FIACONA to see if they have the inane “Love the sinner, hate the sin,” approach or are ones which are more in alignment with a different historical current in Christianity which burned homosexuals thus giving us the slang term, “faggot.”
The beliefs and bad behavior of some Christian groups doesn’t excuse the violence directed against them nor makes them deserving of such violence.
However, we should make very sure that our effort is actually in support of human rights and also doesn’t result in a new human rights problem. We should make sure we aren’t don’t become replacements for the colonial gunboats of the past and not auxiliaries in some foreign religious conflict.
We might encourage Christian groups, and any group that asks for the support of the United States, not to be the opponents of the human rights of others.
How many of the Christian groups complaining about their human rights being violated in some foreign nation, demanding action by the U.S. State Department, are those pushing for a law to prevent under some pretext a Pride flag from being flown at an American embassy and the U.S. Government from supporting the human rights of the LGBT.
For those churches which are both wanting U.S. government involvement in foreign nations for their advantage or defense and wanting the U.S. government not to defend LGBT rights, their agenda isn’t human rights, it is just religious warfare employing the power of the United States on their behalf.
It is a form of religious warfare which would hobble the United States in meeting the newly arisen geopolitical dangers it is facing. Which members of FIACONA are sympathetic to the Russian idea that the war on the Ukraine is also a war against the LGBT.
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/putins-anti-gay-war-on-ukraine/
I ask you to support human rights, but not allow the United States to get pulled into some entangled religious quarrel in a foreign nation, and not enable those whose agenda involves attacking the human rights of other groups.
Some of these churches complaint is really that they are being treated as they would treat Gays.
Sincerely Yours,
Edward H. Sebesta
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