The next time an anti-gay religious person tells you they really love homosexuals and wish them no ill will, bookmark this article and read it over and over again so you will never forget their true agenda: elimination of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
I do not write that with either snark or irony. Instead, this article petrifies me because it lays bare the true feelings of supposedly “good Christian” people toward their LGBT brothers and sisters. Sylvia Thompson, who identifies as a “black conservative writer,” praises Russia for its new laws against the very existence of LGBT people, calling them “about as sensible as it gets.”
She continues with a mind-numbing screed about how this law is “protecting children (minors) from the indoctrination of adults who would use them for their own ends,” and completely ignores the growing and incomprehensible violence against Russian children who happen to be LGBT. (So much for “protecting” those children.)
Since the “sensible” law was enacted, the senseless violence against LGBT people has increased.
Thompson’s article is also a reminder that the religious right continues to support (and helps author) bills like Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill, which won praise from the likes of Tony Perkins at the Family Research Council and Scott Lively from Abiding Truth Ministries. Even pastor Rick Warren refused to go on record against the bill until public pressure forced him to tweet a weak protestation.
Of course, it’s understandable that the religious right would turn its sights to other countries, as more and more surveys show that young people in America (commonly called Millennials) are abandoning their flavor of hateful religion in droves. The other thing that scares Thompson and her ilk is that Millennials (those born after 1984) are coming to believe that homosexuality is neither sin nor sickness. Instead, it’s simply the way some people are—and because they know that nearly three-quarters of them support marriage equality.
With the tide turning against their bigotry and hatred in the U.S., the religious right is forced to turn to other countries with leaders who harbor the same hatred of LGBT people in their hearts to continue their heartless agenda.
Even some anti-gay leaders in the United Methodist Church are looking toward these backward-leaning countries and their draconian laws and beliefs about homosexuality to keep that denomination from becoming welcoming to LGBT people. Recently, several regional UMC conferences have adopted resolutions saying that “the church is in error on the subject of homosexuality’s incompatibility with Christian teaching.”
Growing membership outside the U.S. may doom those resolutions at General Conference according to John Lomperis, director of the United Methodist program at The Institute on Religion and Democracy who said, “Our global denomination is growing overseas, where members are generally orthodox. Non-American delegates are getting close to having a majority at General Conference.”
It’s easy to disregard the extreme rhetoric from the religious right when they are taking aim at LGBT people in some foreign land, but make no mistake, this is the real agenda of the religious right, and they’d love to import it back home. What they want is not “compassion” or even “tolerance” for LGBT people. They want a government that will give it carte blanche to abuse, torture and even kill LGBT people. In short, they want a government, much like the one in Germany in the 1930s (as actor Stephen Fry so eloquently elucidates), that will give them the right to finally solve “the homosexual problem.” For the children, of course.
