A Christian community is one of equal treatment regardless of orientation

I can honestly say from my background that I don't know discrimination. Coming from an upper middle class family in a suburban city will do that to you.

But time and time again I am shocked and depressed by some of the actions of our fellow classmates who I know know better. Nothing epitomizes that more for me than the treatment of the LGBT community.

There has been a continuous battle between one segment of the GU population against our fellow classmates. What annoys me the most is the denigration, the title of "subhuman" we will often place at the feet of our classmates. 

I was involved in putting on a debate about Referendun 71, which was about squashing the expanded rights of gay couples. Larry Stickney and his cohort talked about homosexuality as a fetish, as a slippery slope to allowing other behaviors like pedophilia.

The levels of homophobia that were raised in Wolff Auditorium that day should make us sick. It is completely antithetical again to our ethos and, if I were so bold to say, against the teachings of Christianity that we act this way.

How can we respect each other fully when we treat a section of our community as beneath us? How can we respect each other fully if we considering one another subhuman? I am not going to suggest for a second that the majority of Gonzaga feels this way; I will make the claim that we enable a strong vocal minority to strangle our moral sensibilities.

A vocal minority that is always fearful. I remember studying the New Testament as a freshman and coming across what Christ says about the fulfillment of the law. He speaks about love. I bring this up again because of Larry Stickney, and his cohort. They spoke about the most basic law being the 10 Commandments.

The argument was made that the 10 Commandments were the moral guidelines of our society and we must follow them and they outlaw homosexuality. Yet we come across passages like this in Romans 13:10 "Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the love."

I feel, as a Catholic, that must move us to change. If God is forgiving, like we proclaim every Ash Wednesday, then why do we harden our hearts? If God loves us all and LOVE is the fulfillment of his law, then how does homosexuality, the love for each other, threaten it?
How do we, as a Christian community, stand to gain by declaring our brethren nothing more than dogs? Homosexuality, science tells us, is common among many animals and species, so then why do we declare it unnatural?

If God really hated the gays, then why does he keep making them? My point in all of this is to say that in reality hostility towards any community, especially within the GU community, it's completely against what we are suppose to stand for.

If we are suppose to be a Christian community, as many of the people I talked to on the other side claim, they why don't; we act like one? Why is it easier to condemn than it is to relate?

We all live, we all laugh, we love, we all cry. We all feel pain, we all feel happiness, and we all want to be with someone that means something to us. We are a community and a loving community and we should not condemn anyone in our community; we must love them. I end this all once more with the words from the Bible:

"Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoings, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends."
First Corinthians 13:4-8

Drew Pollom is a junior at Gonzaga.