The Christian Fundamentalists' Obsession with Sex

As noted in a post over the weekend, the real reason the fundamentalist Christians hate gays so thoroughly is because we have the potential to cause doubt about their ultimately very fragile, house of cards like belief system.  And psychologically, these people cannot handle doubt.  Similarly, the thought of having to think and make moral judgments on their own without a check off the box guideline to follow is utterly terrifying to such emotionally and psychologically crippled individuals.  Andrew Sullivan sums it up well, especially the obsession the Christofascists have with all things sexual:

Again, as Christian doctrine, this is bonkers. There are obvious levels of sinfulness; the smallest white lie is not the same as a rape, and committing one does not mean committing them all. But you can hear the rhythms of the terrified fundamentalist psyche behind all these words. It is not enough for sins to occur (because that would make our time no different than any other); it is always the case that we are confronting a crisis of sinfulness, and that crisis is always spinning out of control into apocalyptic scenarios. So you give in to the gays, you give in to everything evil, because “if you break one sin you may as well break them all.” And if you break them all, America ceases to exist.

To recap: fundamentalism is not the same as Christianity. It has certain psychological tropes. The first is to see sexual sin as far the worst of them and the root of all of them. The second is to see gays – whose very being represents sexual sin – as an enemy class within a society bringing about its destruction if they are not stopped or converted (see: Jews, Europe, circa 1300 – 1945). The third is to see these gays as opening the door to every other sin and evil. The fourth is to “lose our country.”

 Sullivan is 100% on point in comparing the modern day obsession with gays as a threat with the past obsession with Jews.  We all know where the latter led.  In my view, fundamentalist Christians suffer from a form of mental illness, just as Sullivan suggests.