Thanks to this past weekend's Values Voter Summit, I am learning that I am not an ordinary gay American.
Apparently I am Darth Vader.
The speakers at the supposed Christian rally have said that gays are evil. We are out to destroy America. We are threats to public health.
And we are very, very, very unhappy.
Don't worry. They will attempt to temper their rhetoric by claiming that someone was supposedly discriminated against for furthering the belief that gays are evil, out to destroy America, and a threat to public health.
Only these charlatans would claim that said fake martyr is being "persecuted" for expressing his or her Christian faith.
This conference is nothing unusual for the gay community. We have come to expect the rhetoric from these folks, so at this point, I find the homophobia slightly annoying.
But it's not just the gay bashing that I find annoying but the constant strain of doomsayer rhetoric:
America is in decline.
We are heading toward the abyss.
God is going to turn away from us.
Isn't that what these losers said last year, and the year before that, and the year before that?
At what point do we get the simple fact that these folks are not interested in the salvation or preservation of America, but the salvation of their status and the preservation of their bank accounts?
They don't offer solutions, and they don't give hope.
These so-called Christians push lies. They peddle fear and deceptive talking points, all under the shadow of a supposedly approving deity. Never mind that junk about benevolence and integrity. The God these "values voters" serve is a cross between J. R. Ewing from Dallas and Alexis Carrington Colby from Dynasty. Power and the spreading of lies to increase that power rules the day.
They seem to think that Christianity is a capitalist design and that the chapters in the Bible where Jesus tells the rich man to sell all his possession and follow Him, and where Jesus drives the moneylenders out of the Temple, were later added via a liberal conspiracy.
In the world of these "values voters," Jesus actually said, "Pick up your cross and follow me, and I will give you a nice car, a nice house, 2.5 kids and a Republican in the White House every four years." And somehow the empty, jingoistic theory of "American exceptionalism" -- a bland version of the Master Race theory, but still nonetheless nauseating in its audacity -- can be reconciled with Jesus' decree to show love and humility, or, even worse, rationalized so much that guillible folks will think that it is exactly what Jesus was talking about when he said show love and humility.
Seems to me that if God hasn't let loose with a huge thunderbolt on America for allowing these characters to soil His good name, then maybe this country has nothing to worry about when it comes to His judgement.
But that's not necessarily a good thing. I have a feeling that we will be hearing the same messages of doom from this cast of characters next year, which would prove that maybe God has a strange sense of humor.