A response to Orlando - No more excuses!

Like so many people around the world I am physically sickened by the news of the massacre in Orlando. It seems to me there are two principal factors that contributed towards this horrible event.
The first is the ongoing ease of access to guns in the United States which makes such massacres a regular headline on our news cycle.
The second, and the one in which I feel somewhat complicit is the ongoing failure of Christian churches including my own Church of Ireland to be totally unambiguous in its welcome of people of all sexuality to participate fully in the life, witness and leadership of our church.
Yes it was a Muslim extremist that carried out this appalling crime but it could just as easily have been a Christian. The scale of this atrocity is perhaps unprecedented but there are no shortage of gay people who have been murdered by so called Christians in the name of God. And if we consider the tens if not hundreds of thousands of people who have committed suicide because of the rejection of their sexuality by their churches then we are talking about a genocide and one which is certainly not confined to foreign shores.
This is a problem for all of us who call ourselves religious - The Orlando massacre may have been an act of terrorism but there is little doubt that the choice of target was in no small part due to the ongoing and historic negative and pejorative portrayal of those who are gay by people of religious faith
For too long and at incalculable cost we religious have hidden behind misguided legislation that protects our right to discriminate against people on grounds of their sexuality.
We have also attempted to fool ourselves by insisting that we 'love the sinner and hate the sin' while ignoring the fact that what we perceive to be sin and thus licensed to hate is something that those who we talk about but not to, see as integral to their identity and their humanity. Our dishonest semantics if anything add to the impact of this hate.
Some within my own Christian tradition will argue that this is a matter of principle and indeed of Gospel principle which they must stand for. To stand up for ones principles is indeed a worthy thing and even more so to be prepared to die for ones principles  but when others die because of our principles we need to reconsider those principles!
I as a Christian priest who longs for the day when my church is fully inclusive find it hard to contemplate that God would wish us to defend our personal religious principles at the expense of the life of another child of God.  For me the Gospel message is life-giving and liberative and anything that gives people an excuse to hate and hurt another human being is not of God.
Being a Christian does not absolve us from difficult choices - We in the Christian churches have a choice to make and it is one between life and death. We can no longer afford the luxury of principles that allow us to perpetuate the culture of them and us and as long as we do we will be complicit in the hatred and fear that leads however indirectly to events like the massacre in Orlando. It is time to stand up and be counted not only for our principles but for the lives of those that are taken in our name.