Donny, In short, “hate” is not even close. The old saying …Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam… comes within striking distance of describing my feelings on the matter. I’d pay for the salt. I have, actually, though I won’t live to see it.

The psychologist who attacked me? As a fourteen year old, I couldn’t do anything.
Five years later, when I came into my majority and had funds, I hired private investigators. Astonishing what good cameras even back then could do with poor lighting and motel furnishings.
His wife found the prints adequate for a very public divorce…and the school simply couldn’t have a divorced Christian in their employ. At least not one which prints shoved under the door of the principle’s office showed engaged in astonishingly flexible activities with another staff member.
Who also got fired – collateral damage. We provided financial help until HE (yup, no surprise there) was able to find another position).

This individual managed to continue his private practice until he died about 15 years ago. I went to the funeral (an 18 hour flight for me at the time), danced on the grave after it was filled in, paid the fine with pleasure, and made sure to buy the plots to the left and right. Donated them to a local chapter of a group of people he also didn’t like. I’m not in Ohio often, but when I am, I always make a point of stopping by to piss on his headstone. I’ve got first purchase option on the plot and left both money and detailed instructions for the end of the 21 century. He’ll be thrown out and the plot filled with salt then covered with a stone with an obscure but clear text.

But that is merely “don’t get mad, get even.”

The real trick is to prevent those Christians who hate us from attacking anybody, ever, again. Look at the attack on women on 8 April in the US Congress. They are literally willing to bring the country’s recovery to its knees to destroy a woman’s right to choose.

Enough Already said:

We face an implacable enemy. Either we win and become fully human and enjoy full civil rights in the US or they win and it will be my homeland’s 1930′s all over again.

A great many straight people feel as though we oppress them in some way or another. This is not a new sentiment by any means, so its clearly a durable one. The message of straight victimization by gay marriage, gay activists, etc., is one that appeals to a great many straight people and we would do well not to forget that.

I watch a lot of recent entertainment television and see a lot of subtle and not so subtle anti-gay content, even in shows that are supposed to be “groundbreaking” because they do something or another positive in regard to us. Hollywood is extremely savvy about its viewers and wouldn’t make so many of its gay characters irritating, self-hating, villainous, lusting after straight people, even pedophilic, if many to most straight people didn’t buy into those stereotypes. With all the hopeful rah rah’ing about how much better things supposedly are these days, its necessary to remember that secondary schoolers using gay to mean bad/inferior/pathetic didn’t start happening till the 1980s, and has spread from Gen X to pretty much every generational group in the intervening years.

So I can believe that things could go horribly wrong and move us seriously backwards in regards to our rights and how we are treated day to day. We have to keep working so they don’t.

Enough Already wrote:

I grasp the importance many here place on viewing everyone as either neutral or, at worst, misguided and that one must not take the actions of individuals within a group to mean the entire group.

That said, when you actually have experienced what those Christians who hate us stand for as I did as a child and as I did many decades later when my husband was torn from my side as I lay critically ill in the hospital – then you have not got much patience with such armchair platitudes.

. . .

No doubt there are also good Christians in this world. I understand Hitler was very good to Blondie, his dog.
I will, however, continue to view every Christian Justice in the US with the utmost scepticism on questions involving our queer human status and civil rights.

If I was in your place, I would probably hate all Christians, and expect any individual Christians to prove to me they aren’t what I’d come to expect from them. Beyond that, all I can say is that there’s a tremendous diversity among American Christians, and I’m not sure how much self-identification as Christian on the part of an American even means by itself. It’s the specific version of Christianity they associate themselves with that matters.

I should say that I’m not strongly wedded to my assertion regarding one’s self-identity as Christian. It’s just an impression that has accumulated within me over the years. I certainly don’t have any studies to cite.

Additionally, in churches of a Pentecostal slant, with populations of young adults – there is a rejection of and almost fear of ‘relgiousness’ that can lead to abandoning demoninatinonal labels. They want to experience faith as something fresh not forced. They don’t want to consider a church heirarchy. But I think this creates a mini-crisis as to what is a religious ritual (you should see how they tithe!) and what is openness to the Spirit.

So, they may say Christian, to downplay the role of dogma and highlight the boundary-less nature of faith. This does not mean it isn’t a conflicted position to hold.

If you ask people their religion, and they answer Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Catholic, Methodist, Moravian, or Quaker, etc., the odds are that they are rational/reasonable people. But if they answer Christian, it should raise a big red flag, as they are likely using that term to differentiate themselves from the inferior Christians.

Perhaps some.

But I think that the majority who call themselves “Christian” do so because they are not frequent attendees of any particular church, don’t have a strong preference, and can’t articulate the difference. So on Christmas and Easter they will go to whatever church their friends or family wish to attend, send their kids to some other church’s summer program, and occasionally attend sunday service at whichever church is closest.

I grasp the importance many here place on viewing everyone as either neutral or, at worst, misguided and that one must not take the actions of individuals within a group to mean the entire group.

That said, when you actually have experienced what those Christians who hate us stand for as I did as a child and as I did many decades later when my husband was torn from my side as I lay critically ill in the hospital – then you have not got much patience with such armchair platitudes.

We face an implacable enemy. Either we win and become fully human and enjoy full civil rights in the US or they win and it will be my homeland’s 1930′s all over again.

No doubt there are also good Christians in this world. I understand Hitler was very good to Blondie, his dog.
I will, however, continue to view every Christian Justice in the US with the utmost scepticism on questions involving our queer human status and civil rights.

I certainly hope they were prosecuted by civil authorities for their crimes, and not given a pass because they were merely exercising their religious freedom special taxpayer-subsidised rights.

I understand your position (think I do, at least). I did not say all Christian judges may not be trusted to be neutral. I stated that I have seen no reason to assume neutrality towards gays when a judge identifies as a Christian.

While I wouldn’t ASSUME a Christian would be neutral, I still cling to the belief that the majority of people in the US who identify with some form of Christianity are fairly rational/reasonable people. (That statement may surprise some who seem to believe I’m militantly anti-Christian.) Unfortunately, that still leaves many millions who are eager to share their certainty that they are America’s finest Christians. If you ask people their religion, and they answer Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Catholic, Methodist, Moravian, or Quaker, etc., the odds are that they are rational/reasonable people. But if they answer Christian, it should raise a big red flag, as they are likely using that term to differentiate themselves from the inferior Christians. (I don’t know Southern Baptist, so I don’t know how they would answer the question.)

The swing vote on the US Supreme Court that made possible the overturning of sodomy laws in the Lawrence v. Texas case was Anthony Kennedy, a devout Roman Catholic (as far as I know). Kennedy wrote the opinion, and reading it literally brought tears to my eyes back in 2003.