Why I Changed My Facebook Photo

Like many others, I've changed my Facebook and Twitter photo to this:

Want one like it? Get yours here.

... to the shock and dismay of many who know me and apparently thought they had me pegged.

I knew people would be shocked. I knew some would be downright angry and disappointed. And I know some people will probably put this down to my grieving and being really confused right now, etc. etc.

The thing is, my position is actually that the government should get out of marriage altogether. We've built so many systems around whether people are married or not (I've spent years checking that box on oh-so-many forms), but I remain unconvinced that it's the government's business who I'm spending my life with.

So much for what I think about that. Why change my public photo and upset so many friends and family members?

1. I have a lot of good friends who get a lot of ugliness from people who call themselves Christians. It's time for me to stand with them for a while.

2. I see so much nonsense, from all ranges of the ideological spectrum, on my feed every day. And while I'm chuffed to have such diverse friends, it's also wearing on me. I have an "unfollow without remorse" policy, meaning that if I'm just getting tired of what someone is saying and can't read another word, I click the button to get them out of my newsfeed. But I'm tired of doing all the work, so I'm using this to weed out the friends list a bit.

3. I think it's well past time for Christians to stop spending so much energy on this and redirect that energy into other things instead of acting like the whole Bible is about gay marriage and abortion. Let's go picket outside the Golden Corral for a while (gluttony). Let's protest at the Lexus dealership and the Neiman Marcus (materialism). Let's stop being okay with people driving to our churches in cars that cost more than some of our neighbours make in a year, and walking into our sanctuaries wearing clothes so expensive that the money spent could have fed a family of four for two weeks. Let's go after the very real problems of poverty and homelessness, to name only two, in our cities instead of thinking it's their own fault for getting into that mess (loving your neighbour, doing for the least of these... I seem to recall Jesus saying something about that).

Do I believe that changing my Facebook and Twitter photo and shocking a few of my friends (some of them in a good way, btw-- there are people who didn't know I had it in me to take a stand!) will accomplish this? Of course not. I'm a lot more likely to get result #2 than result #3. But my silence is not always golden, and in this, I'll risk having fewer friends for the sake of using my voice.

(FYI, I won't delete comments for disagreement, but I will for ugliness. And if you leave me a long rant, I'm probably not going to read it, because I have other things to do. To paraphrase Javert, "Save your breath and save your keystrokes.")