Hi, I’m Wayne Jones, and welcome to re:Christian, a critical and satirical reconsideration of Christianity, the Bible, and God. This is episode 13: “God Hates Fags.”
There was some good news last week when Greece became the first Orthodox Christian country to legalize same-sex marriage. Sure, it’s a good twenty years too late—my own country, Canada, which is secular but chockfull of Christians, has had legal gay marriage since 2005, and was one of the first countries in the world to pass such legislation (so far, fingers crossed, the heterosexual marital fabric of the nation has not been torn asunder).
I often worry that I am not going to be able to get my eyes to return to their looking-forward position after they have rolled so far back when I read almost any news that involves Christians and homosexuality, and doubly so—one time, I was actually able to see out of the back of my head—when marriage is brought into the threeway. Then the blather starts about redefining traditional marriage or even destroying and defiling that definition. So, congratulations to the Greek legislators for finally doing the right thing (https://news.sky.com/story/greece-becomes-first-orthodox-christian-country-to-legalise-same-sex-marriage-13072696).
The individual states of the United States used to decide whether to legalize gay marriage or not, and though, federally speaking, gay marriage is legal in all fifty states, it’s enough of a mess due to the interventions by some states to the federal ruling, that (as I see it anyway) gay marriage can’t be said to be universal in the US as it is in other Western countries. One of the annoyances that results from that is that various American groups protest gay rights in general, just as they protest other progressive rights such as freedom of choice regarding abortion.
One of those groups is the infamous and dumb-as-fuck Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. They’re a charming group. They send protestors to funerals of gay people, and those protestors have signs reading GOD HATES FAGS. The church considers America to be doomed because of its general acceptance of homosexuality in society. It also has some beliefs that kind of defy understanding—these are real people who are allowed to drive cars and go to restaurants?—and here is just the smallest of selections of what might not even be their greatest and most offensive hits:
- There’s a 66-page document called “Admonishment to Wives” that starts with: “1. In domestic arrangements, the husband is to be regarded as the head of the family; and he has a right to direct as to the style of living, the expenses of the family, the clothing, etc.” And it gets worse from there (https://www.godhatesfags.com/doctrine/20141205-husbands-and-wives.pdf). Also, just in passing by the way, the church’s internet domain name is godhatesfags.com. And, no, I’m not making that up.
- There’s also online their latest sermon, at an hour and eighteen minutes, but also with a handy transcript so that a poor atheist like myself can easily scroll through the hatred and stupidity. In this sermon (part 3), they bring us all up to date on the falseness of the other Christian denominations. There are some beauties here:
- “The Methodist church is a source of great evil especially in this country. It is very easy to see this when you drive through America’s cities and towns and see some of the biggest and most prominent pride flags hanging outside Methodist churches.” The Westboro church does seem to be kind of a one-issue church. All gay, all the time. There’s probably a calculus you could apply whereby if a large group of people is so homophobic so often, then probably a good 60% of them are likely gay themselves.
- “To put it mildly, the history of the Baptist church is a hot mess.” Hot mess? That has got to be the gayest way I’ve ever heard to denigrate another group who believes in more or less the same bullshit as you do. You go, grrrrllll !!!
I’ll leave it there. The website is a cornucopia of things that would be hilarious if they hadn’t been marinating in dumbness and hatred for sixty years.
I’m a big fan of standup comedy and one of the greats is the awesome and wonderful Lisa Lampanelli. She had a run-in with the Westboro Church in 2011 when they vowed to stage a protest against her show. Lampanelli knew an opportunity when she saw one, and so she promised to donate a thousand dollars for every Westboro protestor who showed up. Forty-four did, and so she rounded it up to $50,000 and gave it to the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (an advocacy group) in the church’s name. Megaphone in hand, she also went protest to protest with the Westborians. Here’s a sample:
[AUDIO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntPOCnIVFgs&ab_channel=JeffDavis]
(Source: Advocate, https://www.advocate.com/news/daily-news/2011/05/21/lisa-lampanelli-turns-westboro-hate-aids-cash-cow)
Well now.
The Westboro Baptist Church’s obsession aside, there aren’t actually that many references to homosexuality in the Bible, though it has to be admitted that none of the references are in support of it, or even tolerant. The Bible, just like the Westboro Church, hates fags too. Some of the best-known direct references to homosexuality are the following:
- Leviticus 18:22—“Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.” That’s how they phrase it in the New International Version. You may be more familiar with the King James phrasing: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.” Ah, yes, abomination. That’s the sweet sweet condemnation that we expect from our old-tymey Bible.
- Leviticus 20:13—“If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” Oh, my, it’s kind of tiring to read such unexpurgated hatred and ignorance. And it’s hard to figure out what the so-called logic and rationale of the prohibition would be. This one by the way seems to be permitting gay acts between two women, or at least not calling them out as abominable.
We have to wait until the New Testament before the Bible has at the lesbians as well:
- Romans 1:26–27—“Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.”
Those may be three of the most prominent mentions, and there are maybe half a dozen more in the rest of God’s Holy Word.
There’s an important thing to note, though, in the quotation from Romans. “Because of this,” it says. So I had a look at the context of this diatribe, and it turns out that the reason God “gave them over to shameful lusts” was because of his insecure sociopathic crybaby hurt over the fact that people had been worshipping things other than God himself. Who the fuck is this guy? If I were omnipotent and omniscient, why would I care if I were worshipped or not? God is the equivalent of the man with a micropenis who has been bragging about both the length and girth of his, ah, member, but it turns out it’s all a sham. Reach under those flowing robes and you find a hefty ripe banana strapped to his thigh, right next to—holy fuck, what is that thing anyway? Can someone get me an electron microscope?
But I digress a little. Here’s the actual text from the Bible:
- Romans 1:21–23—“ For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.”
So they had images of themselves and other animals, and our mighty God was jealous. Note the reference to the snakes: you have to believe that that was particularly galling to him.
For me there’s actually an important issue of accountability here. And fault. Did the people actually know that having images of other animals would upset God? And can they be responsible for the resultant gay orgy when it turns out that it’s God who “gave them over”? In other versions of the Bible, the wording for “gave them over” is even more odd and troubling:
- “God abandoned them to their hearts’ desires”
- “People wanted only to do evil. So God left them and let them go their sinful way.”
- “God allowed their lusts to control them”
- “They gave up God: and therefore God gave them up”
And my favourite from a version called The Message, a translation by Eugene Peterson in which he attempted to capture the tone not of the well-known King James version nor to create a Modern English version, but to make a version in the same spirit of the original Greek and other sources. Here’s what he came up with:
- “So God said, in effect, ‘If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.’ It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them—the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes!”
That last part sounds like a gay orgasm to me. Eugene, do you have something you want to tell us?
And that’s all for this episode. Thanks for listening. Please check the show notes for a full transcript and for how to contact me. If you have suggestions and comments, I’d love to hear them. And please join me again on Thursday.