Boycotting Chewing the Fat

A Christmas Message via email:

I've been very angry since reading your post about your Christmas tree. I read Chewihg the Fat because it is a disability blog and I hope to learn more about disability and the experience of disability. I overlook the fact that you are homosexual which is fairly easy because you don't shove it in our faces at every opportuntity. But I thought that blog about the tree and your relationship with Joe was close to obscene and it angered me.

You need to put some kind of faggot warning on content that is high in sin and depravity. You have a lot of readers who come from faith backgrounds and we read you because we believe that God wants us to be loving towards the person who is homosexual even though we hate their sin. In those kind of posts it's clear that the appropriate response is to hate both sinner and sin.

I have a several other friends who read your blog and we have decided that if you don't apologize for your faggy posts and promise to limit your blog to blogs about disability, we are going to begin a Christian boycott of Chewing the Fat. I've seen you stand up against things which offend you, well, we will do the same.

If you choose, you may print my email for all to read. Please keep my name off the email however. I don't want hate mail from the homo lovers on your blog.

Will you promise to focus on disability and leave out any blogs that talk about your sick and dependant relationship on another man? You say you are Christian, will you repent and ask Jesus back into your life?

***

What a thing to get Christmas day. It came in around 5 and I've kept it from Joe and our friends - they didn't need this kind of thing on Christmas day. I kept trying to picture someone sitting down and writing this on Christmas day. Who had time on Christmas day to send out threatening emails? Doesn't she have family obligations? Frinds to entertain? Hate to grow in pots?

I was going to just ignore this email and then I wondered how widespread was this discomforture about posts that include loving reference to Joe. I fear no boycott, this isn't a blog that makes money, nor is it a blog that concerns itself with cultivating a huge following. I just wanted a blog to share the experience of disability within my life, and in this case that would be a gay life.

I don't actually see this blog as a gay blog. I don't focus on those issues. I don't dwell on politics from the gay community. In the disputes between the gay community and the disability community - I have uniformly been on the disabiltiy side of the equation. But even though it's not a gay blog, it's written about gay life so it will have gay content.

A friend of mine has a Christian blog, she writes about faith but also occasionally writes about her husband and family. I don't shake my head and say, 'I wish she would stay way from the heterosexual aspects of her life and stick with faith and prayer.' Faith and prayer are about family. So, too, is disability.

We are what we are in relationship to others. It's in our relationship to others that we discover what our faith means. It's in relationship to others we see how our disability is interpreted. One cannot write about faith, about disability, without talking about one's private life in some way. Heck, you can't even write a cooking blog without mention of the people who eat your food.

It goes without saying, I will not apologize. I am who God made me, a powerful statement from a man in a wheelchair. I am who God made me, a controversial statement made by a gay man.

I am who God made me - take it up with him if you dare.

If you are going to join this boycott please have the courage to leave your names in the comment section so I know how many readers are going. If you don't wish to leave your name, just sign in under anonymous and leave a message.

Farewell those who leave.

Thankyou those who stay.