O Come, O Come Emmanuel: Making Hope Alive for Gay Youth

If Advent hope means anything at all, anything real, and not simply a wish for visions of sugarplums, we have to do something about this.  About our young people.  About their futures.  We have to do something to make hope real for young people like Jonah.

Because they're crying out for very specifically for hope.  For hope that means something real in the world.  For a meaningful and safe place in the world.

For justice to drop down from heaven.

For a redeemer to come.

And if we don't listen to these pleas, which will become all the more common as our young people increasingly use technology to make their voices heard and their faces seen to all the world (and to us), then we are implicated in their suffering and hopelessness.  And we will have revealed that the "hope" on which we set our eyes during Advent isn't really hope at all.  It's no more substantial than visions of dancing sugarplums.

John Shore asks all the right questions of "Christians" who refuse to recognize any connection between their hateful words and deeds and the suffering of gay and gender-questioning young people like Jonah.  As Shore is, I'm sick to death of hearing anti-gay "Christians" proclaim their disingenuous "love" for me and other gay human beings, as they actively work to keep hate-filled discrimination alive in laws and attitudes.

We need to do better by and for the next generation.  Before it's too late.