Christian Right Lawyers Are Waging War on the Constitution

[ck4829]

On a dismal, rainy afternoon, over tea and Pepsi and a plate of fries at the Bob Evans restaurant in Cannonsburg, Kentucky, Bill Scaggs, a retired government and public-relations executive of ARMCO Steel, told me why he thinks that homosexuality is the greatest threat to America. "AIDS kills," was his circa 1984 answer, "and the most common way to pass that on of course is from homosexual contact." His voice cracking with indignation, Scaggs added that he refuses to use the word gay. "It's homosexual, or worse," he says. "Gay is in our Kentucky song! They took it away and trampled on it. We want it back."

Scaggs is a board member of Defenders Voice, a local organization formed two years ago by a group of ministers and their followers who fought the formation of a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) at Boyd County High School, just up the road from where we sat. Located on a stretch of state highway dotted with churches, dollar stores, payday lenders, and a drive-through cigarette store, the high school had become a place where anti-gay harassment had become an everyday occurrence.

Most of the time, student organizers of the Boyd County GSA said, the basis for the harassment was religious. One of the organizers, Libby Fugett, said that "most of the people at school, even the younger people, who would call us names at school, they would cuss at us; they would say, You f'ing fag, you're going to hell. . . . They just think it's excusable because their religion backs it up. And that was a really big part of it. It's okay for them to sin against us because we're sinners."

Leading the charge against the GSA were ministers, led by the Rev. Tim York, who said they "believe the Bible to be the word of God; we believe that homosexuality is a sin." (In 2004, York, who is now the pastor of a church in Nashville, ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Kentucky Senate on an anti-gay-marriage platform, with backing from the state and national Republican parties.) York and his followers exerted such intense pressure on school officials that it influenced their decision on the GSA, ultimately forcing the students to sue the school system in order have the GSA recognized.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/50139/

[dsc]

1. I am so sick of these people

Just once I would like some of them to go through what I went through in school. I hated myself so bad and it was thanks to these arrogant prickes who made my life hell. Now all we hear about is how they are victims. Give me a frigging break.

[BOSSHOG]

2. "We believe homosexuality is a Sin"

And you lunatics are FREE to believe that because you live in the land of the free. Just keep your fucking hands off the constitution, the one and only law of the land. If the constitution doesn't suit you, leave. I'll hold the border open for you.

[Initech]

3. Damn it, why does the majority religion always think they are the ones being persecuted?

:grr:

[FreeState]

4. Because the end justifys the lies

Because the end justifys the lies. This is exactly what the GOP does as well. They spread miss-information believing its okay to mislead and plain out lie because the end result is "righteous". Your either with us or your against us. You are American or a Terrorist. You are Christian or you are anti-amarican. Repeat 10 times a day and rinse...

[undeterred]

5. Why don't they work on memorizing the 10 Commandments?

First of all, its really more at their intellectual level.

There's numbers and all.

Just pick a few: lying, stealing, killing. If you can get Republican lawyers to stop doing that, you'll make the world a better place. Then come back to DU for your next assignment.

[dsc]

6. Until no one can write a letter like this

these people can stfu.

http://www.vermontcivilunion.com/advice/0600.html

As the mother of a gay son, I've seen firsthand how cruel and misguided people can be.

Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough from you good people.

I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.

My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade. He was physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school because he was perceived to be gay.

He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like the other boys. He was called "fag" incessantly, starting when he was 6.

In high school, while your children were doing what kids that age should be doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he choked out that he just couldn't bear to continue living any longer, that he didn't want to be gay and that he couldn't face a life with no dignity.

end of quote

Yes, Christians have every right to think gays are immoral and undeserving of being treated equally. But they don't have a right to put their religious beliefs ahead of what society has determined should occur. Schools have finally, at long last, started to say that gay people are people too. You get to think I am moral scum. You don't get to call me names or perpretrate physical violence against me in the name of religion. It is that simple.