At first, I used to joke about it. sometimes I used the topic in my standup comedy. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago I tried out a bit:
I don’t think the coronavirus will hurt me cause I’m basically dead inside. Not that I have anything against dead people, some of my best friends are dead. But what really surprises me is they haven’t started blaming “the gays” yet. (It got a combination of “ahs?, and D’ohs, and laughs.)
Well, now they have. I knew it was a matter of time, but literally the day after I did this bit, my news feed started filling up with articles regarding the pending apocalypse, and the role that “my people” are playing in it. And quite frankly, it’s getting annoying. REALLY annoying. Not to mention aggravating, irritating, and frustrating. More than that though, it’s downright dangerous.
In part, I understand their fear and animosity since I grew up in an Evangelical family. Our Jesus was white, straight, heavily armed, and a proud ‘Murican angry that anyone but us were taking gummint handouts.” We put the FUN in “damental.” At ten years old I was baptized into the Seventh-Day Adventist church. In my early twenties I was re-baptized into the Assemblies of God denomination, and I spent my thirties as a full-blown member of the Foursquare denomination.
Once I became sexually aware, I started to realize that instead of getting excited over girls like my friends were, I liked looking at the guys. Unfortunately, living in Riverton, Wyoming, in the 1980s, this was a dangerous turn in my sexual progression. Literally. So to protect myself, I started counseling to “heal” my sexuality. I would spend well over fifteen years in various forms of reparative therapy (pray the gay away). Hell, I even had demons cast out of me. All in an effort to “make me straight” (that’s the joke).
Which is my point. As a gay man, the one thing that all these Evangelical organizations have in common is that they are terrified of ME! Apparently, I have some the power to:
- Cause earthquakes, drought, famine, flooding and pestilence
- Single-handedly incur the wrath of God to bring down entire civilizations
- Cause bad Yelp reviews for pizzerias, bakers, florists and photographers.
- Break up straight marriages.
- And make fundamentalists to marry their pets
Not necessarily in that order.
As an aside: If you hear the phrase “gay marriage,” and the first place you go is pounding little fluffy out behind the litter box, gay marriage is the LEAST of your problems. And if you try to adopt a pet, you stance on gay marriage should be the first screening question they ask.
Another aside: we get blamed for hurricanes, tornadoes, and massive flooding. Yet all of these seem to be prominent in the South (the Bible Belt). In theory, there shouldn’t be enough gays in the Bible Belt to incur that kind of wrath… unless there are a lot of closeted Evangelicals protesting gay parades, and then jumping on Pornhub as soon as they get home.
Now comes my latest accomplishment: creating and spreading a worldwide pandemic.
- Religious figures blame LGBT+ people for coronavirus
Coronavirus Is Punishment for 'LGBT Sin,' Says Far-Right Pastor
And these are just a few of the numerous Evangelicals making these kinds of statements. Even a Rabbi is blaming us—for Pride parades—which happen in June, nowhere near the time the virus broke out.
While most reasonable people read these articles and laugh, there’s a dangerous problem. Back in the 80s, because AIDS was considered a “gay” disease, nobody cared. Instead, they saw it as God’s punishment, and welcomed it. Embraced it. They saw the destruction it wrought on the gay community as a good thing, even while real humans and their families were suffering… this was God cleansing the godless and immoral from America. That is until they realized straight people were getting it too. Then they started to care—or at least sorta—cause those who came in contact with AIDS must have some kind of sin in their lives (like caring about the fate of gay people), and therefore deserved what was happening.
Pastor Steven Andrew recently said about the coronavirus what Evangelicals said regarding AIDS:
God's love shows it is urgent to repent, because the Bible teaches homosexuals lose their souls and God destroys LGBT societies.
As you can see, not a lot has changed from the last century to this. By blaming gay people for all that is wrong in the world, and calling it God’s judgement, they not only justify their bigoted and hostile aggression toward the gay community, but they encourage others to act egregiously as well. Because we’re so dangerous, it’s okay—sometimes necessary—to cause harm. This is a spiritual war. Gay people are working directly for Satan, propagating disease and pestilence around the world. Like rats, who brought plague and other diseases, exterminating us will mean helping quell the pandemic and save humanity. If we cease to exist, the world will finally find peace.
The brutal irony though, according to the Bible, when it comes to judgment, God starts with his own people.
For the time has come for judgment, and it must begin with God’s household. And if judgment begins with us, what terrible fate awaits those who have never obeyed God’s Good News?
~ 1 Peter 4:17
The Deuteronomist blames Israel for its destruction—the immorality of the religious elite, not the people. Ezekiel compares the religious elite to Sodom and Gomorrah, even going so far as to say they’re worse than Sodom. Yet these are the parts of the Bible Evangelicals skip over, or at least try to get around.
In the twenty-first century, when science can look into the universe and pinpoint the big bang, or “see” the wind, or look into the human body and see how viruses work, there is a significant group of people still blaming those they hate, and justifying it by a book they’ve cherry-picked to death.
The only way I know how to deal with this is to fight fire with hellfire. When they quote the Bible to us, we quote it back to them, and we force them to deal with those passages of the Bible they refuse to acknowledge.
When I write articles like this, I always get that “equally fundamentalist” response from atheists: “the Bible is a book written by stone age men…”“This is irrelevant since God doesn’t exist…”“Religion is the opiate for the masses…” blah blah blah. True or not, that is not going to solve this problem. Whether or not God “exists,” he exists in the minds of billions of people, meaning that we must still contend with him on “His” terms. That the Bible is still relevant three-thousand years after it was written says more about our inability to evolve emotionally than it does its appropriateness. And yet, here we are. The Bible IS relevant to billions of people. Which means that it’s going to be impossible to reason our way out of this. If they’re going to use the Bible against us, it’s time for us to remind them that the same Bible has as much to say about them as it does us.
The bottom line is I’m getting really frustrated at being blamed for the suffering of others. Especially since that blame translates into persecution against those of us being blamed. If I may paraphrase the Merchant of Venice just a little:
Hath not a gay person hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as an Evangelical is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh?
Before I close, I want to be clear that this article is in no way ignoring the very real racist attacks against Asians worldwide, because those who cannot reason think this is a “Chinese” virus. And since those people don’t recognize there are many Asian countries, Asians en mass are suffering under the hands of those who refuse to understand science and choose to live by conspiracy. Many in our community have discussed these horrors, and what we can do to help.