I had intended to write this last week, but certain events in Texas, Sunday, 5 November, compelled me to write a completely different article. But this is still an article that has been percolating in my head for quite some time, and I still feel that it’s something that has to be addressed.
The catalyst that pushed me to actually write this article, happened on Friday, before the Texas shooting. It happened while watching Real Time with Bill Maher. One member of Bill’s panel was Trump Supporter and intellectual acrobat, Jeffrey Lord. (The acrobatics required for Lord to defend Trump during that show made me think that ‘mentally’ he could perform Circ du Soleil kind of anti-reasoning.) Bill’s mid-show interview was with Graeme Wood, author of the book: The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State. As often happens on Bill’s show, the conversation turned to all the ways Islamic terrorists are so much worse than anything we have in American Christianity. It was there that Jeffery Lord jumped in to proclaim: “These guys are throwing gays off roofs…”
Conservatives love this talking point. Years ago I lived in the very gay area of Seattle, known as Capitol Hill. One day I had a discussion with a conservative activist on the streets trying to get me to sign some petition against “Muslims(?)”(I had no idea what the bill was actually about—and I don’t think he did either.) Whatever it was, though, I felt it was bigoted and refused to sign it. It was then he decided to “school” me on how Muslims treat gay people and why I should care about that.
This argument was then and is now absurd at every level. Conservatives have nothing but contempt for the LGBTQ community, and yet, when it comes to trying to make themselves look better than those wascally “Islamists,” the first place they jump is to explain how Muslim extremists treat gay people, juxtaposed to how benign and accepting they are. Yet this is a lie, and it’s one that never gets challenged. When Lord made this comment on Real Time, Maher and everyone else on the panel pretty much agreed with the comment, and nobody challenged Lord’s politics on the issue.
But this is an argument I think needs to finally be challenged directly. While conservatives might not have literally thrown a gay person off a roof and then pelted his body with stones, they have just as much blood on their hands as the Muslim extremists.
All around the United States, Conservative legislators and governors have either passed or tried to pass various forms of “Religious Freedom” bills which will allow companies to fire gay people based on their sexuality, and allow businesses to refuse to do business with individuals based on their sexuality.
On the surface, this might not seem “extreme,” but it does have some extreme consequences. If a man, woman, or transgender person cannot work, they can’t support their families, pay bills, afford healthcare, or even put a roof over their heads. So in essence, it is death, but a slow and torturous death, and one that also involves the innocent lives of children.
Many conservative states are trying to make it illegal for transgender people to pee in public restrooms.
In Georgia, a state representative—seriously and without irony—posed the question: Can people with HIV be ‘legally’ quarantined?
There’s also a lot of wishful thinking among Conservatives.
North Carolina pastor Charles L. Worley fantasized in front of his congregation on putting gays and lesbians in electrified fences—essentially concentration camps—right here in America, to kill them off.
During the 2016 elections, candidates such as Ted Cruz, Mike “the Huckster” Huckaby, and Bobby Jindal, all publicly embraced another extremist pastor Kevin Swanson who advocates that gay people should be stoned to death just as the bible commands.
Roy Moore, Alabama’s likely next Senator, has made clear his position against gay people. He claims the Supreme Court’s decision to allow gay marriage was even worse than its decision on the Dred Scott Case.
Right now, as Americans come to the realization that our election was influenced by Russia, and that our President knew about it, Conservatives have embraced Putin as a strong leader. (Although to be fair, they did that when Barack Obama became president.) And Putin’s anti-gay stance and his attempts to harm gay people living in Russia have garnered him accolades from Conservative pundits.
But there’s also the extreme damage they have done (and are doing), particularly in the name of “Conversion Therapy.” I wrote about this earlier when one of the architects of gay torture, Joseph Nicolosi died.
Techniques used in conversion therapy prior to 1981 in the United States and Western Europe included icepick lobotomies; chemical castration with hormonal treatment; aversive treatments, such as "the application of electric shock to the hands and/or genitals"; "nausea-inducing drugs ... administered simultaneously with the presentation of homoerotic stimuli"; and masturbatory reconditioning. More recent clinical techniques used in the United States have been limited to counseling, visualization, social skills training, psychoanalytic therapy, and spiritual interventions such as "prayer and group support and pressure", though there are some reports of aversive treatments through unlicensed practice as late as the 1990s.
Thanks to Vice President Mike Pence, these tactics were officially endorsed in the Republican Party Platform as a way to eradicate gayness from the United States. The Family Research Council (a very anti-gay organization devoted to stripping gays of all legal rights) admitted that they were only able to establish their Washington office thanks to the assistance of Betsy DeVos.
Even throughout the rest of the world, Conservative groups like the Family Life Network, and Self-Proclaimed “anti-gay crusader,” Scott Lively have helped to spur hatred and even death among African nations, particularly in Uganda with the “Kill the Gays Bill,” making it lethal to express oneself as gay.
The bottom line is simple: Conservatives have no right use the way Muslim extremists treat gay people as a way of showing that they’re somehow better. In most Muslim countries where it is legal to kill gay people, it’s also the case that Islam IS the government: meaning extremism is pretty much a given. However, in the United States, our forefathers created a wall, a separation between church and state, which has prevented this abuse from our own extremists.
But Conservatives are doing everything in their power to tear down that wall, even while trying to build a wall to keep everyone else out. If they are successful, based on their rhetoric, they too will begin to treat gay people the very same way—right down to torture and physical stoning (and we have historical evidence to support what they do once they gain power). So it’s time we stopped letting Conservatives use that argument. They are not gay-friendly, and they are no different from Islamists in their ideology. They have the same goals as their Muslim extremist counterparts, and the only thing preventing gay people from suffering under their animosity is the Constitution of the United States… but even that’s hanging by a thread of late. Conservatives are desperate to destroy our democracy in favor of fascism and white nationalism, meaning that those who do not fit their very narrow concept of “American” will suffer greatly under their rule.
So it’s time to challenge them every time they talk about how Muslim extremists treat gay people. Ideologically, they’re no different.