I’d like to address to everyone my hearty greeting of Christmas and to share with you all our joy of the Nativity.
Jesus has shown us the example to follow in His absolute fidelity to God’s will. And we know the supreme commandment of our Lord : “As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (Jn 13,34). So tells us Saint Paul also : “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Rm 13,8), and “love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rm 13,10).
This love with which and in which Jesus loves us excludes no one. He discriminates no one. For His love is all-inclusive, as Pope Francis emphasized in his morning homily of the 5th November this year : “Christ unites. He makes unity. By his sacrifice on Calvary He made it so that all people are included in salvation. (...) the Lord includes.”
This ending year 2015 has been a very significant one for me, Luke S. Ogasawara, for I started this activity of “LGBT Catholics Japan” with my friend Peter T. Miyano and some other friends of mine I don’t name here publicly.
If we are pro-LGBT Catholic activists now, it is ironically due to some Catholics who are judging and discriminating LGBT people. What those anti-LGBT obscurantists are telling in the name of the Catholic Church is absolutely opposite to Jesus’ commandment of love. So we cannot help proclaiming His all-inclusive love publicly not only to those who suffer discrimination and exclusion because of their sexuality, but also to the entire Japanese society which won’t cease to turn a deaf ear to the Gospel.
Fortunately we met some priests who are not conservative legalists but who have Christocentric faith as Pope Francis do. They are sharing with us firm opposition to any possible discrimination and all-loving inclusiveness regardless of sexuality in the Catholic Church.
Contrary to Jesus who includes, said Pope Francis in the above mentioned homily, “when we pass judgement on a person, we create exclusion. (...) we remain in our little group and we are selective, and this is not Christian.” While “God has included everyone in salvation, (...) we, with our weaknesses and our sins, with our envy and jealousy, always have this attitude of excluding which can end in war.”
So we pray with the Pope to ask for “the grace to be men and women who always include, who never close the door, but have an open heart to anyone.”
To conclude this Christmas reflection, I’d like to make some remarks on possible solidarity of LGBT activists with feminists.
The term “sexism” means usually a discrimination men do and have against women. But we can call sexism any discrimination based on sexuality. When LGBT people are discriminated or excluded because of their sexuality, it’s also a kind of sexism.
I’d like to name what makes the structure of sexism “male totalitarianism”. Heterosexual men considering themselves “normal human being” are forming a set (in mathematical sense), that is, a totality which excludes any element not belonging to it : for example, women and LGBT people.
Not to extend here detailed discussions, I’d like only to remark that male totalitarianism defines all kinds of discrimination (racism, discrimination against handicapped people, etc.), and that it makes also the fundamental structure of political totalitarianism.
LGBT activists and feminists can be solidary with each other in our battle against this male totalitarianism which constitutes the principal Evil opposing to the all-inclusive love of God.
Now, under its appearances of liberal democracy, Japan is in fact a totalitarian society with its marked sexism, xenophobia, ultranationalism and indifference to social injustice. Therefore God tells us all the more to proclaim His all-inclusive love in Japan to do away with any kind of discrimination.
Let’s pray the Lord for a renewed courage to undertake our missions in the coming year 2016.
