“Jesus must be SO EMBARRASSED!” is the headline to Reverend Gene Robinson’s Huffington Post blog post about why he thinks Jesus Christ would be ashamed of his followers who oppose the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). The retired IX Bishop of New Hampshire gives his fellow Catholics a much-needed refresher course on WWJD 101:
“The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is vigorously opposing ENDA, asserting that their right to discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity is essential to Catholics’ religious liberty,” Robinson writes. “Now stop, and just take that in for a moment. A Church, dedicated to following the man known for his outreach and compassion for the marginalized, petitioning the government to be exempted from the fair treatment of marginalized and vulnerable LGBT people. It takes my breath away.
“Can you imagine what Jesus might have said to St Peter if the disciple had requested an exemption from Jesus’ command to ‘love your enemies?!’ What if disciples James and John had argued with Jesus about whether or not ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ actually should apply to them in all cases? What would Jesus have said to the good, religious people of his time when they asked for an exemption to Jesus’ command to ‘love one another as I have loved you,’ based of course upon their deeply-held, religious beliefs?
“I don’t know what he would have said. But the shortest verse in all of scripture probably describes what he would have done upon hearing their request: ‘Jesus wept.’”
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