Tuesday, November 17, 2009

A Little Window Into The World Of The Anti-Gay Conservatives

I have often wondered what really makes the religious conservatives so rabidly hate-filled when it comes to homosexuality. It has often seemed to me that the anti-gay message is rooted in a particularly narrow, literalist view of scripture.

After reading this gem ... and in particular the comments over at No Apologies, I'm afraid I must revise my opinion.

The vitriol is not really rooted in any meaningful understanding of Scripture - at best, that seems to be an excuse - something that they can point to that allows them to justify not taking personal ownership of their feelings and reactions.

What needs to be understood about these people is that they are not content to be sodomites and just carry on with life. They want to promote that wicked lifestyle. We know this because God says so.


Hmmm...what an interesting set of inferences. First of all, there's an underlying wish that GLBT people would quietly stay in the closet - after all, why on earth would anyone that was GLBT want to be a full participant in society? When someone from the GLBT community does participate in our society's government, they are immediately accused of "promoting their wicked lifestyle" or "recruiting".

Underlying this seems to be two basic themes:

(1) A desire to keep the unknown ("the Others" in society) from being full and equal participants in society.

(2) Fear - plain old fear. Once you make another human being "the Other", it becomes easy to think of them as less than human; of being capable of all sorts of malfeasance and misdeeds.

In short, although the mask they draw over their words and deeds is made of the fabric of faith, it is but a mask. Underneath it lie attitudes steeped in fear and ignorance. When confronted with evidence that contradicts their assumptions, they will inevitably dismiss it out of hand, rather than trying to assimilate it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The big "fear" is yours - of a true conservative like Craig Chandler or Rob Anders.

MgS said...

Neither of those individuals is a "true conservative" - they are both extreme reactionaries.

... and you have utterly missed the point of my post - which applies equally to statements that Chandler and Anders have made at different times in the past.

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