God Help Us (Revisited)

As I began to do research for the first time into the facts surrounding drug and alcohol abuse in the LGBTQ community one thing becomes quickly apparent to me. The stigma that surrounds this group of people alone, simply how they are looked at and labeled by society for their sexual orientation is enormous. Quite possibly a stigma several times the size that those of us face in the heterosexual world as it pertains to those addicted to drugs.

Now mind you I am only referring to the stigma that society has placed on these individuals for their sexual orientation. I have yet to even open the can of worms that surrounds the oh so very present stigma added to that and placed upon those in that community who have a substance abuse disorder as well. Fifteen minutes into my research and this alarming fact resignates very deep within my soul. My only thought

Where the hell is the love

In a Williams Institute review based on a June–September 2012 Gallup poll, approximately 3.4 percent of American adults identify themselves as being LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender). In September 2012 when that study was conducted there were approximately 318 million people living in the United States at the time. According to a www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/robert-schlesinger.
If one does the simple math involved here that gives us a population of 10,804,552 U.S. citizens that identify themselves as members of this community. That is not a few people. That number represents more people than all who resided in the state of Georgia in the year 2010, according to the numbers reported in the 2010 U.S census poll.
How can we as the great country of the United States of America Ostracise an entire states size worth of people just because we disagree with their sexual preference? How in Gods name can we sit at home with the American flag flying in the front yard, and an apple pie in the oven and say that we are proud to be Americans knowing this is happening!
What happened to “do unto others as you would do unto yourself” and if you dare to come at me with your holier than thou bible reciting versus trying to tell me that homosexuality and the likes thereof is a sin. I am going to quickly show how much I learned to study the bible as an associate pastor some years back. And remind you that the greatest of all the heavenly attributes is love.

“And now these three remain faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1st Corinthians 13:13. If you care to that will be the topic of my next article, but let’s just say we have more pressing issues at hand than feeding our ego’s with who’s right or wrong here.
We have almost 11 million United States Citizens who are having trouble getting the help they need from public and government agency’s on a daily basis simply because of how they choose to orientate themselves sexually. This disgusts me America and it should make you all feel the same way. People are dying out there because of this and this simply should not be so.
We as a society need to do some soul searching America and find out exactly what it was that caused us to become so ignorant that we fooled ourselves into believing that only our way was the right way and felt justified in turning our backs on 11 million people saying they don’t deserve our help!

God help us to see the ignorance of our ways before our lack of love for each other destroys us all!

Be blessed, my friends!