Dear Peter:
You claim not to hate gay people and make a post last week about supposed hatred toward anti-gay activists because they made fun of your weight. Then you post a letter in which mere inclusion of gay people is labeled “EVIL” in all caps. A whole segment of the population, people you have never even met and know nothing about except for one identity trait are branded evil for simply being who they are. Inclusion of people that are different by a web business counts as “caving into evil” in your views… mere inclusion. Nobody, absolutely nobody hates like the religious right. The object of that hate might change from decade to decade but the rhetoric, reasoning, and rationalization remains the same.
"[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts." Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America.
"My feelings as a Christian point me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people."
–Adolf Hitler, in a speech on April 12, 1922
Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942
“We can read it in the gay, secular and religious press. Homosexuals are out of the closet and parading their perversion in the streets. They are highly motivated, well financed, politically astute, effectively organized, and dedicated. To underestimate the capacity or goal of this enemy is to guarantee defeat. They have thrown down the gauntlet, hurling their deadly agenda directly in the face of this nation’s democratic institutions, constitution and family values. We are under attack and will not survive unless we fight! We have been ambushed on all major fronts and our ability to prevail has already been severely sabotaged. How did this happen? In what way have we nurtured the enemy we now must defeat? We are a young, adolescent nation, and the chapter we are now writing has been written before by much older nations, nations which no longer exist. They too danced to their demons and were buried by them. Is it too late for us to learn from history, or will we follow this diabolical trail to our own demise?” – Lee Taylor, posted by Peter LaBarbera on AFTAH May 5, 2008. http://americansfortruth.com/news/gay-pride-tactics-of-tyranny.html#more-1913
I am aware that as soon as one person uses the Nazis to make an example they have lost the debate. Even considering that, I look for anyone to show me one salient difference between the propaganda used to whip up universal fear and condemnation of Jewish people for decades before the Holocaust and the rhetoric used by the mainstream religious right today. I am not talking about fringe kooks like Westboro Baptist and their funeral protests. I am speaking of the supposedly reasoned, influential “christian” leaders of the religious right. There is no substantive difference between the two examples. Both use supposedly “christian” arguments to universally condemn millions of nameless people because of one label but do not openly advocate violence or extermination. Instead they couch their rhetoric in the necessity of harsh legal treatment such as exclusion from civil institutions. And both point to the necessity of political inequality for the protection of nation, state, order, and governmental principles.
Christianity is not innate. It is a choice. People choose to self-identify as Christian and live a Christian lifestyle. It is not immutable. People alter the label and level of devotion to faith throughout their lives. And yet, it is and should be illegal to fire, jail, exclude from office, deny benefits, or make any legal distinction whatsoever between someone who self-identifies as Christian and someone who does not. If some group advocated that Christians should be denied insurance, fired from their jobs, or precluded from civil contracts because of their choice to identify as Christians I would rightly call that group bigoted, classically illiberal, and undemocratic. This is not because Christianity is immutable, like race, but because in a liberal democracy we have ontological freedom to choose and order our lives as we see fit. Anyone that advocates political inequality over a difference in opinion about morals is practicing hate. The religious justification or assertion of faith is irrelevant to the consequence of political inequality. Hate is hate; and no group calling you names or fighting back against your opposition to civil equality will ever be as hateful as your agenda.
Sincerely,
Gabriel S. Hudson
November 23, 2008
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