Homophobia and The Religious Wrong

I couldn't resist clicking on this link at Huffington Post when it labelled an interview with Franklin Graham "One of the Most Homophobic Things We Have ever Seen".  In a world where batshit evangelicals assert that Disney movies and popular children's novels are out to turn people gay, and where hate-pimps like Scott Lively advocate the murder of LGBT people, you really have to go out of your way to be "the most homophobic" anything.  But I would say this is pretty gross:

 "Gays and lesbians cannot have children," Graham commented. When Funk pointed out that they could adopt, he retorted, "Yeah, they can recruit."

          He went on to imply that gay adoptions are tantamount to exploitation of children:

You can adopt a child into a marriage, but you can also recruit children into your cause. I believe in protecting children, OK? From exploitation, all exploitations.

During the interview, Graham insisted that he was simply speaking out the way his father once did, despite the unpopularity of his views.

And here is why I find that appalling:

 This straight couple is charged in the murder of a four year old boy because the mother alleges that she thought her child was gay.  She murdered her own small child. Because she thought he might be gay. 

Parent of the Year material, obviously.


But see--somehow this nasty pair got the idea that being gay was such a terrible sin that even a four year old should be punished unto death for it. Where could they have got that notion? Well, they got it from people like Franklin Graham, who don't mind slandering people they don't even know. And they somehow got the idea that beating a defenseless child was the right way to correct him. Where could they have gotten that sick idea, except that it prevails in a culture that believes that the abuse of gay children is somehow "reparative"?

LGBT kids are most frequently born to straight couples and know they were "born this way", often when they are young.  This idea of recruitment is a way of basically associating LGBT people with pedophiles and other harmers of children. You want to know who recruits? Religious fanatics.  But more than that--they poison the culture that gay children have to grow up in, resulting in tolerating the bullying that can make their lives more difficult, and looking away from the higher rates of suicide among them that result. It means adult LGBT people have to fight harder to be treated equally under the law in terms of marriage and employment. Their sanctimony fig leafs naked bigotry against their fellow human beings.

Frank Schaeffer isn't far off the mark when he maintains that a lot of the Religious Wrong have a seed of bad old Father Phelps in them. We can laugh off kooky old Fred and his loathsome little clan, but when Focus on the Family and NOM spokespeople get platforms to talk shit about gay people on national television--it does serious, real, measurable harm. When political figures campaign on restricting gay people's rights or even taking them away--that does serious, real, measurable harm.

So, what I think is, Franklin Graham and a whole lot of these pious,  lying asshats can fold up their "Oh we just worry about the harm to children" crap, fold into all sharp corners, and use it for a bookmark in that place in the Bible where is says "Thou shalt not bear false witness." And if they have such a concern about the safety of children, maybe they can work for the safety of all the children including the gay ones by not demonizing them and not advocating their being broken.

Note: I tried writing about this earlier and did it no justice at all. Sometimes when this sort of thing feels personal to me--who has a buttload of straight privilege as a femme, straight-married bisexual, no duh, I get carried away. So I can just about get how it impacts so many others that people can promulgate abuse and pretend it is holy and right for them to do so.