Chris Kelly

lindsaykatai:

“I’m fairly convinced that the Kingdom of God is for the broken hearted.”

- Fred McFeely Rogers

I love Fred Rogers deeply and have for as long as I can remember. I think he’s the reason that as a child, I would donate birthday money to PBS pledge drives. I think he’s the reason I dressed up as Martin Luther King, Jr. for an elementary school biography project (of which there is supposedly video evidence). I think he’s the reason I wrote research papers on civil rights in the fifth grade. I think he’s the reason I was a peer counselor in junior high. I think he’s the reason that I joined my high school’s Gay-Straight Alliance club as soon as I understood what being “gay” means. I think he’s the reason it was never within me to discriminate.

So even though none of my rights were voted down yesterday as though I weren’t a full member of the society to which I was born, I was comforted today when the following book arrived from Amazon.com - I’m Proud of You: Life Lessons From My Friend Fred Rogers by Tim Madigan. Because Mister Rogers taught me that acceptance of differences is a part of being a good and worthy human being. Because he taught me that everyone is deserving of love. Because he helped shape me into the kind of person that believes we’re all in this stupid world together. I predict I won’t be able to get through a single chapter without getting choked up about what a singular man Fred Rogers was and what a heartening example he is of genuine Christian compassion. At his funeral, an anti-gay group lead a protest because of what they perceived to be his “failure to condemn homosexuality.” I don’t think the word “condemn” was even in his vocabulary.

There are a lot of people today who are upset about yet another state’s failure to support equal rights. I am one of them. A class of people who refer to themselves as Christians used fear and children as a weapon. Mister Rogers was someone who devoted his entire life to empowering children to overcome fear. I’m turning to him today to remind me what a real Christian sounds like. Fred Rogers believed the Kingdom of God was for the broken hearted. I know a lot of people that Kingdom would be welcoming in today.

This will be my last gay marriage post, I promise. For awhile.