Do not believe the Christian right when they tell you they love gays

They are lying, which is breaking one of the Commandments, but I won't get into that. I got into a tangle with some right wing Christians at Hugo's blog over this issue and I'm going to vent here because people at his blog are courteous and a flame war is not necessary. My basic point was simple--the Christian right's incessant harping on homosexuality, especially considering that they use dehumanizing words like "base" and "unnatural" and rhetoric that paints gays as monsters, has helped create the enviroment where gay-bashing flourishes. Duh--if you hear that Jesus hates gay people all the time in terms that imply they are little better than animals, it's a lot easier to justify kicking the shit out of a gay person to yourself.

Well, no one likes to have to face the ugly consequences of his actions, so of course the responsible parties swarmed to deny responsibility. First, I hear it's tedious to harp on gay-bashing. It was tedious for the NAACP to harp on lynching, no doubt, but it sure was necessary. And of course, the argument is brought out that hateful words don't lead to hateful action, a laughable argument coming from the same sector of society that just knows that a flash of Janet Jackson's boob ruined the morals of young men around the country. For people who are unclear on how it might be problematic for authority figures like preachers, etc. to harp on a class of citizens and how this might lead to people in the community to actually start thinking those citizens are lesser, I would suggest reading David Neiwert's blog on a daily basis.

And after the preliminaries are out of the way, time for the biggest bullshit of all--that they love the sinner and hate the sin.

Fuck that. Loving the sinner and hating the sin doesn't include reciting the pain of hellfires in tones that barely hide the speaker's glee in imagining the "loved" sinner's anguish as God gives him what for.

And even those who conceal that pleasure well are still not making the sort of sense they think they are making. They claim that they are judging homosexuality like any other sin, like gossip or bad manners or whatever. I am not naive--I know that homosexuality is not condemned in anything even resembling strong terms in the Bible. It is not comparable to adultery, which is condemned in strong terms. Anyone who claims equivalency between the two, once again, LYING. Hell, the way that the Christian right is carrying on about homosexuality, you would honestly think it's worse than adultery.

I get two or three emails a day from Focus on Family about homosexuality and I have yet to get a single one on adultery. There are more adulterers in this country that homosexuals. There are probably more fundamentalist Christian adulterers in this country than homosexuals. I'll bet my money that adultery factors into more than half the divorces in this country. Adultery is a direct violation of the sanctity of marriage and you don't have to make a bunch of nonsensical arguments in order to demonstrate this. One of the big 10 is spent condemning adultery specifically and another one condemns just thinking about it. So why are homosexuals considered a bigger threat than adulterers?

I also pointed out that people gay-bash because they think that it's appropriate to pass out a little of god's justice here on Earth, and the wingnuts disagreed, saying that they don't believe in passing out punishment here on Earth in god's stead. Is that so? Then why the hell do I get email after email after email after email requesting that my cat, who is a fake evangelical as well as a fake Republican, boycott P&G until they fire all their gay employees? I don't get emails suggesting that any other sinners lose their job for their sin, which seems like it's punishment on Earth to me. You know, like gay-bashing. Why is it that the Christian right advocates for sodomy laws so that they can make sure that homosexuals go to jail now? Isn't god going to roast them on a flame for eternity after this? Why then the rush?

They hate gays and they hide their ugliness under a thin and easily punctured blanket of platitudes about love. Don't believe it for a second.