Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Insane Christianists Fail to Get Arrested

Even though the Matthew Shepard-James Bryd Hate Crimes Act is now the law of the land, the far right Christianists continue to disseminate lies and untruths about the Act and continue to depict themselves as a persecuted segment of society. How Christians can be a "persecuted minority" when they constitute a majority of U.S. citizens is of no concern to the loopy religious zealots and professional Christians who seek to squeeze every possible dollar out of bigots, homophobes, and the ignorant. In order to try to maintain the drumbeat that they are being persecuted by "thought police" some of the most unhinged of the Christianists held a protest yesterday in Washington, D.C. - likely hoping that they would be arrested to aid their persecution complex. Unfortunately for them, they were largely ignored and found themselves surrounded by gay activists. Here's some video of their delusional rants:

Dana Milbank has a hysterical column on the "persecuted" Christians' non-event. Here are some highlights:

Conservative Christian ministers from across the land, determined to test the bounds of a new law punishing anti-gay hate crimes, assembled outside the Justice Department on Monday to denounce the sin of homosexuality and see whether they would be charged with lawbreaking. Anything other than sex "between a male and his wedded wife," announced the Rev. Paul Blair, "is a perversion, and the Bible says that homosexuality is in fact an abomination." No arrest was made.
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The evangelical activists had been hoping to provoke arrest, because, as organizer Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission put it, "we'd have standing to challenge the law." But their prayers were not answered. Nobody was arrested, which wasn't surprising: To run afoul of the new law, you need to "plan or prepare for an act of physical violence" or "incite an imminent act of physical violence."
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Instead of getting arrested, the ministers got something else: A couple of dozen gay activists, surrounding them with rainbow flags and signs announcing "Gaga for Gay Rights" and "I Am a Love Warrior." By the end, the gay rights activists had taken over the lectern and the sound system and were holding their own news conference denouncing the ministers.
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The gay activist smiled. "God," he said, "works in mysterious ways." In this case, God took the form of Chuck Fazio, from DC Podiums. Fazio was hired by the religious conservatives to provide the sound system for the event, but upon learning of their cause, he decided to donate his proceeds to the gay rights activists and to give them a chance at the microphone before shutting down the amplifiers. . . . . But there was no evidence of persecution at the corner of 10th and Pennsylvania. In fact, the cops at one point intervened to help the ministers, by ordering the gay rights activists to move away.

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Inshort, the "protest" turned into a farce and helped to underscore the dishonesty of the professional Christians and just out of touch they are with objective reality, not to mention the plain language of the Hate Crimes Act.

1 comment:

ZIRGAR said...

Don't these people have anything better to do than hate on other people? Ya know, there are plenty of good, decent Christians who think the "Christians" like those mentioned above are total idiots and that gay people should be left alone to live their lives as they see fit, that what they do is between them and god.