Houston's "Godly" Freak Out and Threaten to Kill the Mayor

I've noted before the sick need of the self-anointed "godly Christians" to be superior to others - to demand and need special rights in order to feel good about their miserable selves.  With the city of Houston's recent passage of non-discrimination protections that include LGBT people, some of the godly folk have simply gone berserk.  Having others be equal to them under the law and not being able to discriminate and mistreat others is, in their warped minds, discrimination against them.  And it's not just gays they dislike, although we always seem to engender at special level of animus.  No, its anyone who is "other" due to race, faith, or sexual orientation.  These godly folk are truly nothing less than mentally disturbed.  A piece in Transadvocate looks at the hate and venom being spewed by these :godly Christians" simply because others have been guaranteed equality.  Here are some excerpts:

On Wednesday, May 28, 2014, the Houston City Council approved a sweeping non-discrimination ordinance barring discrimination against 15 protected classes, including an explicit protection against discrimination due to one’s religion. The city’s right-wing community immediately claimed to be oppressed, threatened to recall everyone who voted for the ordinance and pledged to put their own religious protections up for a popular vote in the November election. More worrisome, the Mayor of Houston is now protected around the clock due to death threats.

If you’re having trouble understanding what has the foes of equality so upset it’s simple: equality isn’t supremacy and they want supremacy. For instance, a well-known Houston area Christian pastor asserted that people should have the right to discriminate against Jewish people.  

Speaking before City Council, anti-equality activist Karina Alvarez said, “I feel [that] I have been discriminated against today!” The nature of the oppression she said she faced was that queer people weren’t forced to give up their seat to her, a heterosexual women. Having shown up late to the City Council proceedings, Alvarez had to stand because all of the seats were taken. Since some of the seats were occupied by LGBT supporters of the ordinance, Alvarez complained, “The [ordinance supporters] have seats and I had to stay standing and I see this as a very discriminatory situation!”

Imagine, a world in which a Jew was equal to a Christian and a queer person didn’t have to surrender their seat to a hetero person. For the forces of anti-equality, equality is unacceptable because it means surrendering their status as a members of a superior class.

Those who benifit from oppressive systems are generally never truly honest about what bothers them about equality. Instead, bigots have devised a set of attacks that they use to obfuscate the reality of their true purpose. In practically every anti-equality moment, the plays are the same:

The one-two punch: appeal to authority while demonizing the oppressed

   The Klan Fallacy: cherry pick data to make sweeping generalizations about the oppressed  (often  used as “proof” that demonizing is warranted)

           Violence: the threat of violence is made known and/or carried out

I’ll refer to the the foes of equality - the racists, homo/transphobes, anti-Semites, etc – simply as bigots. They – in one way or another – want to privilege their group(s) at the expense of another precisely because, to them, equality is a resented loss of superiority within society. Equality feels oppressive to the privileged because instead of being superior to those they once oppressed, the’re now no better than the group they hate and that’s unacceptable to them.

In a perverse twist of irony, the group that stood against the most recent Houston equality ordinance recruited may black Christian pastors to be voice of their bigotry. While waving their bibles in the air, these bigots asserted this fight for equality was in no way reminiscent traditional civil rights efforts. However, PoC leaders like past City Council Member, Jolanda Jones, the TransAdvocate Editor, Monica Roberts, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, the NAACP, the Urban League and LULAC didn’t see it that way.

This is a human rights issue. It is a civil rights issue and if people haven’t noticed, I happen to be black since people seem to think there is a distinction between being black and being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. It is the same. You are who you are; you are born like that. I am hurt [begins to weep] that I hear people using religion to figure out ways to discriminate… I hope that those who vote do it for the right reasons because god forbid you have a GLBT person in your family; I’ve had 2 friend’s kids commit suicide over discrimination against that community. So, I urge you to vote for it because it’s a human rights issue!   – City Council Member, Jolanda Jones

Republican State Representative Dwayne Bohac claimed that the Houston equality ordinance is a “threat to religious liberty” because it would force people to treat LGBT people equally. Furthermore, he claimed that equal rights would mean that children may be molested.

 The take away from all of this?  That the "godly folk" are neither nice or decent people.  The sooner that society as a whole recognizes this reality, the better off the nation will be.