The Christians commenting on this site – who I share a great respect for – do not share the same religion as James Dobson or even Rick Warren. You only share the same title. As soon as you come to grips that your faith differs as much with these guys as it does, with say, the Moonies, you’ll be in a much better place to address these issues from a faith perspective.

But, let’s stop pretending that there is anything in common with intolerant bigots. The divide is too wide and the gulf too deep. You are not going to close this divide. Period.

What you can do is convince someone to leave a fundamentalist tradition or they can convince you to become a fundamentalist.

Or, you can agree to disagree and not use the political system to oppress one another. But, thinking that you can find real common ground is not going to be successful.

Why? Because, as I have pointed out, the God Loving do not share the same God as the God Fearing. The only shred of commonality is the Christin label.

In other words, skeptics, nonbelievers and the God Loving vs. the God Fearing.

Political fundamentalism (of all types) is a cancer. It breeds war, famine, and spiritual, economic and cultural impoverishment wherever it takes root. No place that embraces fundamentalism treats gays (or women) as equals. From Wahhabi Islam to the current Pope to the Southern Baptist Convention to right wing Jewish sects. They are all about power, controlling, manipulating and oppressing people.

We must steer people into God Loving religious traditions (Yes, there are many) or into no religion at all. Whatever suits the individual’s conscience. But, we can no longer give right wing fundamentalism a pass. We do so at our own peril.

We should always, as a core principle, respect their right to believe whatever they want. But, we do not have to respect beliefs that are backwards and opposed to science, education and realty. We must be very clear that religions that strive for the Middle ages, rather than the modern age are detriment to American society and the world.

But, it is not adequate that we simply oppose these barbaric and discriminatory views and religions. We must – with great clarity – say what we stand for and articulate our vision of the world.

We ought to be able to say what principles we represent as clearly as we can say why we are opposed to Pat Robertson. When we succeed at this, we will begin to win.

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?

Very well said. Thank you. The more and more heterosexuals who will come out for gay equality are the younger generation that will soon replace the dogmatic older generation.

Bob is the maximum leader of a third-world country called Bobzimbwe.

Bob requires all the people of Bobzimbwe to take a special loyalty oath that elevates Bob above everyone and everything, even the person’s children. Absolute fanatical loyalty to the death is the #1 law of the Bobzimbwe, and all other laws derive from it.

A long time ago, Bob got really mad at the people because they weren’t following the #1 law, so he murdered everyone but a single family. Lucky for Bob, that family was quite fecund, and promptly repopulated Bobzimbwe. Bob has since given public assurances he’ll not to do that again.

Bob has indeed limited his destruction to a few cities, the firstborn of his political enemies, and a genocidal campaigns on few neighboring countries.

One day per week is dedicated to honoring Bob and donating property to him. Bob is an obsessive micromanager, who tells people what to wear, what to eat and what hairstyles they may sport.

If a Bobzimbwean is guilty of committing a crime against Bob, his relatives and children may be subject to punishment for many generations. Slavery is encouraged, as it is the appropriate punishment for the crimes of the slave’s ancestors.

Bobzimbwe law encourages child-marriage and obtaining wives by raping virgin girls. Marriage is between one man and any number of wives and concubines. Women are male property and barred from any position of leadership. Adultery is punishable by death, and remarriage is absolutely prohibited except where the woman’s spouse has died. Men are required to marry their widowed sisters-in-law and have children with them.

QUESTION: Would any sane person find Bob an admirable leader or want to move to Bobzimbwe?

ANSWER: No, but they worship a God that does all this crap, and revere a book full of this and even more nonsense.

That’s not worthy of respect. It’s depressing.

“The Mishnah was not written down until 200 AD/CE. In what parallel universe can you claim anything therein predates Jesus’ teachings?”

Because they were SPOKEN until then. That’s why it’s called the “Oral Torah.” My exact quote was:

had already been said in the Talmud.

Anti-gay attitudes are not based on anything so much as fear/hatred/ disgust for a skewed perception of ‘what gays do.’ Push a ‘macho man’ to tell why he’s anti-gay and you’ll get either knee-jerk Bible quotes, or a torrent of words our moms never taught us, or an ignorant-albeit-graphic description of ‘what gays do.’

This ‘doing’ is always related to gay men, never to lesbians. Ask these same men if they have a problem with ‘pretty lesbians’ (emphasis on ‘pretty’) and you’ll hear ‘Absolutely not!! Pretty gals? *I* can convert them to heterosexuality … and would love to try!’ And bear in mind, these are ‘religious’ folks … churchgoers who spout ‘holy words’ as then damn gays and lesbians in the chat rooms and in society in general.

Again — after 15 years of fighting for gay equality I’m confident that this is the sad secret of why voting against gay marriage has been so successful for the anti-gay side. They stir up followers with the ‘what gays do’ mantra … they talk about ‘the Bible’ … they put fear into older people (most of the anti-gay votes seem to come from the older generation) about ‘what gays do’ … then mention ‘children’ in the same breath to bring in the younger folks. A no-lose situation, this.

How to get beyond it? I don’t know, although I’d bet that if more and more heterosexuals came out publicly for gay equality, the tide would turn. When whites joined in the civil rights battle, change happened. And yes, this IS a civil rights battle. God is always on the side of justice and equality, and God WILL have the last words, i.e., JUSTICE and EQUALITY.

That law-breaker. Just like the gays.

I didn’t claim that at all. I wrote:

‘Yes, he abrogated certain religious laws but he also upheld plenty and went further than some.’