The Rapture: This Week’s Religious Right Anti-Gay Hate Crimes

Rapture-Causing Nazi-Like Gays Worthy Of Death

The Rapture is coming! The Rapture is coming! And the radical right — furiously working to get their last attacks on “the gays” in before they depart the Earth during Saturday’s promised Rapture — have been hard at work this week. Fresh from worship services, Reverend Rubén Díaz, who apparently works part-time as a New York State Senator when his anti-gay religious chores are done, was toiling away with his fellow Evangelical preachers at an anti-gay marriage rally in the Bronx this past Sunday, telling gays how evil they are. Díaz’s fellow preacher, the Right Reverend Ariel Torres Ortega of Radio Visión Cristiana stood on stage in front of a few thousand people, and in Spanish, with a fellow priest translating into English, said that gays should die.

READ: Kill The Gays NYC? Gays Should Die Says Pastor At NOM Marriage Rally

Specifically, Reverend Ortega said, gays “are worthy of death.” The translator did not pause or miss a beat, and neither did Reverend Díaz — who spoke just minutes later — nor did Díaz, the elected representative of hundreds of thousands of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender constituents, bother to walk back or disavow that hate speech. It gives one pause to ask, if it’s illegal to yell, “Fire!” in a crowded theater, why isn’t it illegal to yell, “Kill the gays!” in front of a few thousand religious bigots?

While we’re pausing and musing, something Reverend Díaz, who does not believe in the separation of church and state when it comes to same-sex marriage, is allergic to, let’s think for a moment about what kind of person has not only the desire, but the time, to go to a rally in the Bronx and hang out in the rain, with other people whose sole focus that day is to make sure that two people who love each other are banned from walking into city hall, signing a few pieces of paper, and entering into a civil marriage? I mean, seriously, don’t these people have something better to do with their time?

Sunday’s Bronx anti-gay marriage hate rally, of course promoted and sponsored by Maggie Gallagher’s National Organization for Marriage (NOM) — which has yet to respond to a petition demanding they denounce the “kill the gays” rhetoric — was headlined also by Brian Brown, NOM’s president. Thursday, saying his hate rally had a “festive atmosphere,” Brown said “the warm response of the people in the Bronx made it seem like, well, a ticker-tape parade, if the Bronx had ticker-tape parades.” No doubt ticker-tape parade heroes everyone are nauseous right now.

Characterizing his hate rally as “the march for dignity” — because until every last gay person, evidently, is forever banned from marrying, no opposite-sex marriage can ever regain its dignity — Brown said, “we march in love to protect marriage as the union of husband and wife.” Nothing like a little “kill the gays” hate speech to strengthen and protect the loving marriages of husbands and wives everywhere, right, Brian?

 

“I mean, ladies and gentlemen, they are Nazis,” Fischer cried. “Homosexual activists, when it comes to freedom of speech, are Nazis. When it comes to freedom of religion, they are Nazis.”

 

 

Speaking of hate speech, Bryan Fischer, the public face and voice of the certified hate group, the American Family Association (AFA), decided to educate his readers about hate crimes today.

Offering this definition from USLegal.com, that a “hate crime is usually defined by state law as one that involves threats, harassment, or physical harm and is motivated by prejudice against someone’s race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, sexual orientation or physical or mental disability,” Fischer responds, “If hate crimes involve threats or harassment motivated by prejudice against someone’s religion, homosexual activists are the worst perpetrators of hate crimes in America.”

Because, you see, Fischer blames LGBT groups and individuals for Olympic official Peter Vidmar’s decision to resign from the U.S. Olympic committee because of his anti-gay comments on same-sex marriage and his $2000 donation to the Yes on 8 campaign that brought us Prop 8, the ban on same-sex marriage in California.

“Vidmar makes his living as a motivational speaker, and has now been tagged by the Grand Inquisitors of the left as a homophobic bigot,” Fischer writes. “Good luck getting speaking gigs with that on your resume.” Does anyone care to point out that Fischer makes a fine living as a “homophobic bigot?”

You know who else makes a fine living as a homophobic bigot? Peter LaBarbera. LaBarbera’s claim to fame is that he founded a lie and hate-spreading organization (an organization of one, but still…) called Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH). LaBarbera Thursday night via Twitter accused the media of being unable to deliver facts objectively because their livelihood is dependent upon drumming up controversy. I’ll leave you to put those pieces together to find the blatant hypocrisy.

READ: Rapture: Gays Are Responsible For Saturday Being Judgement Day

Speaking of blatant hypocrisy, note that neither Bryan Fischer, nor Maggie Gallagher, nor Brian Brown, nor anyone else on the Right, has denounced the Right Reverend Ariel Torres Ortega’s hate crime (it’s a hate crime, right, Bryan?) of saying gays should die. We’re waiting, and, given you folks will be Raptured in about 24 hours, there’s not much time left.

But wait. Of course, there’s more!

You see, hate crimes are only a one-way street. If you accuse someone of a hate crime, in Fischer’s mind at least, you’re absolved of any guilt of committing one yourself.

Case in point.

This week on his talk radio program “Focal Point,” Fischer accused gays of being Nazis. I kid you not.

The 60 year-​old conservative claimed “the homosexual agenda is just like Islam,” then said of gays — repeatedly — “they are Nazis.”

“I mean, ladies and gentlemen, they are Nazis,” Fischer cried. “Homosexual activists, when it comes to freedom of speech, are Nazis. When it comes to freedom of religion, they are Nazis.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, they are Nazis,” Fischer, whose show on American Family Radio is broadcast by more than 180 radio stations in 40 states, repeated. “Do not be under any illusions about what homosexual activists will do with your freedoms and your religion if they have the opportunity. They’ll do the same thing to you that the Nazis did to their opponents in Nazi Germany.”

Let’s do that pausing and musing thing, an act that those of the radical religious right are allergic to committing. Let’s pause to solemnly remember that the Nazis killed an estimated six million Jews, and some put the total number of human beings murdered by Nazis at 11 to 17 million. We know that the Nazis targeted Jews and homosexuals specifically. How many millions of those were gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender?

But Fischer’s hate crimes and NOM’s anti-gay hate rally were not the only evidence of right wing gay-bashing this week. Despite three polls released this week showing that the majority of Americans accept their gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender neighbors, and want them be be given the right to marry — merchants of hate were selling their wares by the truckload.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who has become infamous for using every tactic in the GOP’s book for stripping union workers of their rights, effectively stripped the rights of every same-sex couple to visit their loved one in a hospital. That’s right, Walker, an Evangelical Christian who has been married for 18 years and has two children, believes he has the obligation to prevent same-sex couples from holding the hand of their spouse — legal or not — as they lie in a hospital bed, perhaps going in and out of consciousness, perhaps leaving this Earth. Walker would rather see gay men, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people die alone. How very Christian…

But none of this will matter much longer, you see, because when the Rapture comes on Saturday, all the good Christians, like Bryan Fischer, Maggie Gallagher, Brian Brown, the Right Reverend (and part-time Senator) Rubén Díaz, the Right Reverend Ariel Torres Ortega and, especially Harold Camping, the man who has predicted the Rapture will come Saturday, will of course be gone.

Sadly, however, my dear gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender friends, you should know the Rapture that is coming on Saturday is your fault. Yes, Harold Camping, the octogenarian who believes so devoutly that Judgment Day is upon us, that the end of the world is nigh, blames the gays for these end times.

The prevalence of homosexuality, and the rapid acceptance of homosexuality is “a tremendous sign that we’re at the threshold of Judgement Day,” says Camping.

We now have six major nationwide polls that state without a doubt that the majority of Americans support same-sex marriage equality, we have polls that find a majority of Americans believe homosexuality should be accepted, we have polls that find a majority of Americans want the practice of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell finally repealed (it has not yet been, despite a law signed by the president that paves the way for it to be,) we have polls that find that a great majority of U.S. Catholics support same-sex civil marriage, and we have polls that find a majority of Americans want DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act — already found by a federal judge, not to mention the President and the Attorney General to be unconstitutional — repealed.

Given all these facts, well, perhaps Camping is right: there is now a rapid acceptance of homosexuality. So if he says the Rapture is coming, who am I to disagree?

But allow me to quote Scripture as well.

Matthew 5:5 — Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the Earth.

 

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