... And Just What Is The Difference?

So, the kingpin of Wingnuts, Fred Phelps, and the oh so lovely gems from Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas are threatening to come to Red Deer, Canada to "picket" the Laramie Project play.

Phelps is a particularly vile form of humanity, renowned around the world for his blatant hatred for anybody, and anything that runs contrary to his particular brand of scriptural mangling. Assuming that he even gets into Canada, their shrieking "picketing" campaigns are hard to take seriously - they are so obviously unreasoning in their claims it's almost laughable.

But, in a move that I can only call pure irony, the Red Deer Advocate decided to turn to Stephen Boissoin for an opinion on the Phelps clan coming to Alberta.

“Their interpretation of the scripture and how they choose to manifest that interpretation is a disservice to the Christian gospel of God’s grace. Grace means unmerited favour and unmerited love to all human beings, who are all sinners,” Boissoin said.

Boissoin’s anti-gay letter to the Advocate was ruled by the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission to have broken Alberta’s human rights law. He said it is unfortunate that in the middle of his appeal to the Court of Queen’s Bench, the Kansas group is coming here. He said it will cause further confusion about what other Christians — like himself — believe, which is that God loves all people equally, but not all of their behaviour.

Funny how he's so willing to lump GLBT people in with all sorts of malfeasance, but doesn't like it when his actions might be lumped in with an even more extreme expression of fundamentally the same thing by someone who is so brazenly insane that they are just obviously hate-filled.

From Boissoin's own letter:

These activists are not morally upright citizens, concerned about the best interests of our society. They are perverse, self-centered and morally deprived individuals who are spreading their psychological disease into every area of our lives. Homosexual rights activists and those that defend them, are just as immoral as the pedophiles, drug dealers and pimps that plague our communities.

The line between Phelps' obviously insane rantings and Boissoin's tirade isn't exactly much of a line, in my view. One talks about war and victory, the other shrieks about it - the difference is probably a couple of valium pills at most.

I see Boissoin is now trying to soft-pedal his words and self-justify the bigotry that underlies them by using phrases like "believe, which is that God loves all people equally, but not all of their behaviour.".

I just love the "it's the behaviour" line that comes out of these people. What a bunch of nonsensical garbage. I have never seen a single, solitary attempt to define what they mean by "behaviour". What is "homosexual behaviour" in their lexicon? Frankly, I don't think any of the people that use that phrase have a clue, much less any ability to articulate what they are talking about. The phrase is little more than a catch phrase that is really intended to represent a group of human beings that they wish to treat as second class citizens.

What gives these goons the right to insist that others live by their religious ethic? From that perspective, there is very little difference in my view between calling an entire class of people "wicked" - based on what one imagines of their "behaviour" - and the screaming insanity of the bile that Phelps and clan spew on a regular basis. Both boil down to the same fundamental demand.