A bitter rant or, Congratulations to the Christian Right

I'd like to congratulate the conservative Christian Right.  You go on and on about the gay agenda, and how we must work to thwart it.  I admit I've talked to a lot of gay men and women, and the only agenda they seem to have is to be able to live their lives, to marry the people they love, to be able to go to work or school every day without being persecuted or harassed.  That's a pretty radical agenda!  I'm glad you're all here to help stop them.

Speaking of agendas, you've really gone a long way toward accomplishing your own agenda, haven't you?  After all, high on your list seems to be to reduce the number of gays in the world.  Well, congratulations.  The number of gay teens committing suicide has been increasing steadily since the start of the school year.  I'm sure you're rather proud of the work you've done, helping to reduce the number of gays in our school system.  I'm sure your wrathful Old Testament God is happy to see those poor young kids off themselves.

Of course, there are many people who aren't specifically part of the Christian Right but who still think homosexuality is a sin.  That's fine.  That's what your religion says, and I understand that.  Of course, some might say that there's an awfully fine line between following your religion and spreading outright hate, but what do they know?  I think somewhere in your Bible there's bound to be a quote about how it's for the best that you tell your kids all about how wrong it is.  It's important that you share those values, even if it means going to rallies and holding up signs like this for all to see.  I mean, after all, that's not hateful.  It's not sick and disgusting.  It's simply you exercising your First Amendment rights.

And there is absolutely no denying that the First Amendment protects your right to call homosexuals names.  It protects your right to call them sinners, or fags, or worse.  After all, God says homosexuality is a sin, and if he's not here to judge, then somebody needs to do it, right?  Who cares what that silly old carpenter had to say!  He didn't know much anyway.  That's why they nailed him to that darn cross!  We know that God does want us to judge those who might be different.  It says so right there in Leviticus.

And what about our children?  It's important that we protect them.  Because they go to school every day with other kids who might be gay, or who might just be a bit different.  And since we as adults aren't there to judge these kids and call them names, it's important that we teach our children how to do it.  It's for the best, isn't it?  This way, our children will know who to mock. They'll know who to ostracize.  They'll know that it's okay to exclude Susie, because she has two moms.

But it's true that you can't look at a person and know for sure whether or not they're gay.  So really, the only thing you can do is accuse anybody who might be a bit different of being gay.  That way, you're sure not to miss anybody.  So if Sally doesn't like to wear dresses, or Tommy is too small to play football, it's perfectly acceptable to assume they're gay and harass them appropriately.  After all, you have a right to protect yourself from their potential depravity, right?

And congratulations to those who have worked so hard to keep sexual education in the schools specifically hetero-centered.  Because it's important that young people, who are already struggling with so much with their own identities, be taught that they may wrong.  They may be sinners.  They may be an abomination in God's eye.  We wouldn't want these kids to erroneously think that they might be fine.  We certainly wouldn't want them to believe that being confused during puberty is normal!

And if a few kids kill themselves, what of it?  You know you're right.  You know God's laws.  I'm sure He's happy to see young kids, scared and alone and ashamed, hanging themselves in their closets rather than being perceived of as gay.  Because half of these kids are so young, they don't know yet whether they were gay or not.  But other kids called them gay.  Other kids teased them for being too small, or too girly, or just being different.    And so the Christian Right has succeeded.  Not only have you convinced kids that it's wrong to be gay, you've convinced them that it's better to end their own lives than to even be perceived of as gay.  And that's quite an accomplishment.

So congratulations, conservative anti-gay agenda Christians.  You've really made your nation, America, the so-called land of the free, proud.  I'm sure you've made your wrathful Old Testament God proud as well (and who cares about all that stuff in the New Testament anyway, right?).  And if that Lava soap isn't quite enough to wash the blood from your hands, try a little bit of self-righteous indignation.  I hear it works great.  And I'd sure hate for you to go to bed with a guilty conscience.