I think the whole point of calling out the “disgusting” act–Prajean’s words not mine–is to show the rampant hypocrisy that the right-wing moralists continue to exemplify.

2.The professional bigots at focus on the family, NOM, et. pick up his story and kindly leave out the details of his idiotic rant, maybe even refuse to acknowledge the whole thing, and cry about how “this man was fired for his views on homosexuality!”, kindly forgetting to remind their hateful, moronic followers that he would have suffered the exact same fate if his rant were about blacks/jews/women.

3. This idiot’s FotF and NOM backed lawsuit fails, he makes a career telling his constantly refined story to give bigots the illusion they have some justification for their prejudice.

4.afew decades from now america is equal and he’s left performing for a handful of hate groups as he realizes what a pathetic prick he is.

Okay, that last step is hard to prove. But if the first 3 happen you must all acknowledge my prophetic powers.

It never ceases to amaze me as I watch the religionists enact and re-enact their homo-hatred, finding always some way to express their antipathy towards people they do not know, know nothing about, and who have done them no harm– well, I should say no DEMONSTRABLE harm, apart from offending them by existing. And of course, it is even more offensive when they must rationalize the damage they do to gay people as a show of faith and virtue. It erases the fine and necessary line between hypocrisy and sarcasm, for as Rochefoucauld noted sarcastically, hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.

Or, as Mark Twain so ably put it, nothing needs minding so much as other people’s business.

The Evil HomoBigot (EHB) has AUTHORITY for his pleasures. He has his bible clutched firmly in his left hand, proclaiming his divine and moral authority to stop the Doers of Manly Evil, though lesbos are hawt. And the Scalia-stained fingers of his right hand, cupping both urbis and orbi, proclaim his legal authority. Both hands combine to say, “We can do whatever we want to you because we believe everything we think, and there are more of us than there are of you.” All this to keep someone else’s rampant homosexuality in check lest it turn everyone queer. Or something.

After all, it worked so well for Larry Craig, Bob Allen, Ted Haggard, Lonnie Latham, and a good portion of the non-heterosexual clerics. Dare we say their taste is catholic?

Little Miss Sonshine (LMS)? Well, she basks in the Eternal Sonshine of Her Spotless Mind. She doesn’t hate or despise or devalue or think less of or denigrate anyone, just like Jesus. She loves everyone, just like Jesus. She doesn’t want to control anyone, or deprive them of anything except their sins. And she knows, of course, all about other people’s sins. She only wants you to know Jesus like she knows Jesus… and oh, oh, oh what a girl! And certainly, she is not judging anyone. She’s just reporting the news, just like Jesus.

There isn’t even the faintest whiff of judgment anywhere, because that would make her very much not like Jesus, and her mind would no longer be spotless. She might have to think, to be conscious that she does very real harm to people whom she does not know, and whose lives and happiness have no effect on hers. As Jesus himself would have noted, spotlessness is simple, especially when it is purchased with the easy coin of other people’s lives. It wouldn’t even cost 30 pieces of silver. Just a smile and a vote. Ask Miss CarriePornia.

Actually, Jesus did note that simplicity every time he said, “Judge not!” or “Scribes. Pharisees. Hypocrites.” And I’m sure he would have added fundamentalist Christians to the list, had he known any– or wanted to.

EHB and LMS form the pattern and ground, if you will a literal yin and yang, of a single object– anti-gay prejudice, or homohatred– that is both the cash cow (Naggie Gallagher) and the pornography (The Peter) of the Religious Reich, and its bastard child, the anti-gay industry. It’s very appropriate to compare pornography and the anti-gay industry, because both make a lot of money from the fascination we have with all sex in our deeply puritanical culture. EHB and LMS, like that other yin and yang, Naggie and Peter– now there’s an image you don’t want comin’ atcha in the middle of the night– believe, without question, and possibly sincerely, that they might possibly understand something that might possibly be about homosexuality, as least as far as it was understood by desert tribes 2000 years ago and 8000 miles away, in a book that some people think has divine authority, in one or another of its legion of versions. A book that has gone through 2000-2600 years of translation, interpretation, redaction, editing, confusion, retranslation, reinterpretation and– dare we say it?– MISUNDERSTANDING. Also, the only authority for that claim of authority is said book and the beliefs of people just like EHB and LMS, despite all contradictions and disagreements, and this despite the fact that 2/3 of the world’s population thinks this book is utter nonsense.

As an entirely relevant aside, 1/6 of the world knows FOR A FACT that the Midianite Storm God formerly known as El was neither Prince (of Peace) nor incarnate Son of God. Jesus was just a prophet, as his church is just for profit. Allahu akbar!!! The final revelation of El was given to yet another desert dweller with an agenda for the Ages, and a sword to enforce it. Inshallah!! Just bend over and face the east.

If the majority is supposed to win because there are more of them and they say so, I think we can see the future of Christianity… if we were ever to have a popular vote on the subjects on the true nature of god, of who it is that god doesn’t approve of, or who he wants us to hate, or whose lives and relationships and families are worthy of social support and rewards, and whose are not. Not that we would. We would never have a vote on other people’s participation in and value to society. We would never force our religious beliefs on other people. We would never persecute them and make their lives as difficult and unpleasant as possible, hounding them from New York to the middle of the uncharted west, say, for example, because we didn’t like their religious beliefs and marriage practices.

In fact, Scientology and mid-19th-century mid-Western unpleasantness aside, we would never have a vote on whose religious beliefs are going to be enforced by social policy and constitutional law in a society which claims it is egalitarian, free, secular, and committed to truth, justice, and the American Way. We wouldn’t do it because it would be wrong, because we want to do unto others what we would have them do unto us. Or something.

Unless it’s about gay people.

Not to mention the corruption of our nation, of our principles, our morals, and our laws, that is inherent in the process of cherry picking from the Bible what is useful in the service of the political, cultural, and social agendas of religious and political conservatives, to instill fear in their followers in exchange for their votes and their cash, or for keeping a job (you know who you are, AC), or exorcising your very own personal demons.

Or exercising them, if you’re a certain class of priest, politican, or youth minister.

Subtext is everything. How can you say “I HATE QUEERS” without actually having to say “I HATE QUEERS”, especially if your religion tells you it is wrong to hate anyone? (Except, possibly,of course… actual QUEERS.) Why, if you’re LMS, you call it love, smile cheerfully, and congratulate yourself on your direct line to your very own Heavenly Substitute for Personal Responsibility. You wave goodbye to your handsome gay friends who will, unfortunately, burn in hell forever for their sins, and support efforts to strip other people who have done you no harm of the benefits for their families that you claim for your own. Too bad for them all. You’re just reporting the news, after all. It’s not like you actually care.

If you are the EHB, you grip that big ol’ club hard in both hands and start shaking it at every sinner you see, except for the ones you don’t actually care about in some way for reaosns that you owuld probably prefer not to articulate. Scampi lovers (OT) and adulterers (NT) need not fear the stroking of your mighty club. And then you enthusiastically support efforts to demonize and marginalize people whom you do not know and who have done you no harm.

I don’t know why. I only know there is no truth you and your kind will not distort and promulgate, no lie you will not tell or believe, no fear you will not excite in yourself or invoke in others, no dagger cut that you will not cheerfully deliver to someone, in service to that end. It actually reminds me quite a bit of the closet itself. The closet is about living a lie. It IS a lie, it is based on lies, and it engenders lies. It distorts, perverts, and debases everything it touches, as the sorry life of Ted Haggard will attest.

For you and your kind– I just love the power and superiority I feel when I say that! Don’t you?– the desire of gay people to end this vile, vicious, and wasteful prejudice is an affront and a threat. Homophobic heterosexuals, conservatives, right-wing Christians, and village idiots don’t have to question any of their assumptions, whether religious, social, political, or sexual– especially sexual, because that scares the living bejeesus out of them–don’t have to actually solve problems of divorce, adultery, family breakdown, and child abuse, don’t have to care about the waste of time and energy and money, don’t have to look in the logs in their own eyes, can continue to use The Children (TM) as pawns in their fear-based culture war, because they are fightin’ (other people’s) sins and expressing the clear will of God. And what an added bonus if your goal is power and/or money and/or eternal glory while you’re washing, swimming or backstroking in the Blood of the Lamb! What better way to ingratiate yourself with your concept of The Almighty One than to hate exactly what you have convinced yourself that he hates? And you get even more points if you can convince yourself that you love those sinners as he would have loved them, except for the part about, you know, ACTUALLY loving them in a way that doesn’t feel like an assault to them.

Pardon my zoological anomaly, but when did the Lamb of God become a scapegoat, Little Miss Sonshine? Evil HomoBigot, in service to what has the Word of the Prince of Peace been converted to a weapon? That to me is the great irony. The innocents and the minority are punished, the sins of the majority and the guilty are conveniently forgiven. How could a right-wing, literalist, bible-believing, homo-hating Christian not get a bang out of that, even without a sex-video and the personal attention of The much-married Donald?

What did Jesus have to say about homosexuality? Somehow, this subject escaped him. Or perhaps it was left out of one of those many translations and interpretations and editions of the bible. Or maybe he just didn’t think it was particularly important. After all, there are only 7 passages in the entire bible that may possibly have something to do with what possibly might be homosexuality, and well over 250 telling heterosexuals what they will burn in hell forever for. He was quite specific about adultery and divorce for virtuous heterosexuals, but you can bet neither LMS nor EHB are going to start any political campaigns against offenders. you can bet it is fine with them for any adulterer to get married and divorced as often as they can afford it.

What did seem to get him going? Love god. Love one another. Keep your religion to yourself. Do as you would be done by. Judge not. Feed the poor. Heal the sick. Homo obsession? Just not there.

You and your kind– God, I love saying that– now pursue and attack, slander and annoy gay people with exactly the same moral certainty that you are doing and expressing what god wants with which your spiritual ancestors justified the burning of witches. How many innocent women died long and horrible deaths for being what everyone but Pat Robertson and some sub-Saharan savages know do not actually exist? 1600 years of officially, biblically, and theologically sanctioned anti-Semitism eventually resulted in the murder of 6 million Jews. Martin Luther, that prince of a man, thought that Jews were devils.

Of course, Little Miss Sonshine will cry out that the people who committed those atrocities were ignorant or evil or sinful, or something. People Like Us don’t do Stuff Like That anymore, except to gay people. EHB finally has it right about who is going to be the object of god’s wrath and who is going to be the instrument of his might and anger. Not that either would murder us or anything like that, because you love the sinner and hate the sin, and Scalia-like, the Law will solve The Problem. But you are absolutely fine with other people hating us. You just get to follow along, and your mind remains spotless, your heart as vacant as your smile. Hence, few Christian voices raised in protest as gay people were slandered as threats to family, children, religion, marriage, freedom, and god, for daring–DARING– to ask for an end to the prejudice and to be treated as the law abiding, productive, tax-paying,contributing members of society that so many of us are, as equal members of society.

Equal, in fact, to any two heterosexuals who met five minutes ago and have and $50 for a marriage license and enough alcohol to spend it. Equal to night stalker Richard Ramirez who married a woman he had never met while in prison for his crimes against women; ironically, this occurred on the very day Our Previous Fierce Advocate signed the Defense of Marriage Act after getting Monica’d-while-married in the Oval Orifice.

People Like Us don’t do Stuff Like That anymore? No, you still do exactly as you have always done, for exactly the same reasons, and with exactly the same results. It’s just that homohatred plays and pays, and in a certain evangelical’s case, lays so much better. Only the truly iggerunt and fearful believe in witches any more, and they are usually over-weight, tease their hair, and dress poorly. And Jew-hating is no longer fashionable, and certainly not acceptable if it’s out loud, even among Baptists. It’s impolite. After all, it was more than 30 years ago that F. Baily Smith proclaimed that “God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew.” You’ve tried attacking the Muslims, but they have all that oil and money and suicide bombers and atomic technology and everything. The Mormons used to be pretty good as victims, but they also have money and organization, and Elder Bob is just so cute in his white shirt and black badge bearing the inscription “Elder Bob.” Who could resist that corn-fed smile?

And besides, despite all of your profound theological differences and disagreements on the nature of god and his message to the world, despite all the murders and misery and war those differences have caused, there is one thing you can agree on: get those dirty homos. And that is enough.

Jesus had nothing, not one word, to say about homosexuality, as understood in either his own day or in ours. He did say, and clearly, “Feed the poor.”

So here is my question to you two good Christians: how many children died of hunger in Darfur, in Iraq, in Zimbabwe, in Congo, in Bangladesh while you spent your resources blocking my access to civil marriage? How many children are suffering from horrible diseases because they have no medical care, in the favelas of Rio or the slums of Mexico City, because your money and energy is used to attack my family, without even the shabby excuse of a benefit to your own? What’s truly sad is that it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to you in either case, because ultimately, you don’t care about us or them.

How much pain, misery, and suffering do you endorse for others while you obsess over what makes MY dick hard?

God, as my prayers went, bless Tom with health, wisdom, peace, and grace. Give him everything he needs.

Amen.

Or even whether any Senator or Representative would have the courage to make such a motion on the floor?

Perhaps, while the desire to see someone see the error of their ways and realize they are hurting people is the same argument / sentiment the anti-gays are using toward us. They feel we are in error (in not following interpretation “X” of religious texts and are hurting ourselves and others by living our “lifestyles). By only wishing wishing the person love, he wishes that filled with love, the person will be guided in his/her heart, filled with LOVE and not with HATE.

I hope I understanded this correctly. :-)

I’m amazed that someone whose half-logic is so outdated knows how to blog, to be honest.

And the way I take this prayer is rather than asking God to directly and immediately change someone’s mind, which is a wholly unreasonable and insulting thing to pray about, he’s asking God to help him realize how petty our differences are compared to the love we’re supposed to share for one another.