About a month ago, a mayor of a small town in Alabama who also happened to be a cross dresser was exposed by a local news station, and as a result, he committed suicide.
The mayor, who was affectionately known as Bubba Copeland, was also the pastor of First Baptist Church in the town. He was quoted as saying that his wife was aware of his transgender status and that he did it to relax. He felt this was normal behavior and that he had a right to privacy. He was correct!
What weighed far more heavily in this case had to be public opinion. For whatever reason, it must have mattered to him how people would judge him. This behavior doesn’t even make the news if he’s not the mayor and if he’s not a pastor. If he was the mailman, this would not even be a story.
I’m bothered by the pain this has called His family, church, and others who cared about him. The fact that the judgment doesn’t end at his death and that he seemed to have taken the easy way out and left his loved ones to mourn and deal with his choices.
It is very difficult when you feel you have to live your life in the expectations of others. Shame on us for putting people through that. Shame on us to have expectations on any other than ourselves. How do you hold someone to a standard you don’t hold yourself to?
Does as pastor or mayor position come with the cost of expectations and why? What right do we have to expect? Before he was a pastor or mayor, he was a person. The exposure of his personal private activities robbed him of his personhood and was completely irresponsible. As a result, he is gone because he could bear the judgment. If this is OK in America, then there lies the real problem.
ClydeStyle 