Thinly Veiled Hate Speech: "Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin"

Besides being a total hypocrite when it comes to supporting Israel, Huckabee and his fellow Christofascists love to claim that they don't hate gays.  Indeed, they claim to "love gays" - they disingenuously claim that they "love the sinner, but hate the sinner."  They make these claims, of course even as they strive to make the lives of LGBT individuals a living hell and demand the right to mistreat us and discriminate against under the guise of religious freedom.  The take away?  That these people are vile hypocrites and few people lie more often than the self-anointed "godly folk."  A piece in Huffington Post calls out these modern day Pharisees.  Here are highlights:

“I love her, but she’s got to learn right from wrong,” he said … after beating her half to death. And there she lies, one foot in this world and another in the next--but fully “loved.”

I imagine that’s what LGBTQ folks hear when yet another Christian says, “I love the sinner, but I hate the sin.”

Now, I can imagine that immediately upon reading the connection between those last two thoughts, cries of righteous indignation will rise as a chorus unto heaven. “We’re not abusers, simply because we hate what homosexuals do with their private parts. We’ve never actually, physically struck a gay person because of their gayness.”

Nevertheless, I don’t think that gets you off the hook for the violence that is done in the name of your religious commitments for two important reasons.

First, when you fight against anti-bullying laws written to keep LGBTQ kids safe from being abused, you are propping up a system of violence that steals the dignity, and often the lives of those children you say you love. If a gay or trans kid commits suicide because you want to retain the right to loudly and repeatedly announce to the world your moral disapprobation, giving energy to a system dedicated to never letting LGBTQ kids forget that they are sinful aberrations for which the fires of hell are regularly stoked hotter, you bear some responsibility for their death.  

When LGBTQ kids get beaten, when they’re kicked out of their homes and forced to live on the streets and struggle to do some of the despicable things they have to do to stay alive, you may not be raising a hand against them, but you’re certainly massaging the muscles that do the damage. When you support a vision of the world in which LGBTQ people daily have to live in fear for their livelihoods, their homes, their right to a peaceful and flourishing existence just so you can proudly announce your doctrinal purity and your commitment to a world where only your religious beliefs matter, you may not be drawing anyone’s actual blood--but don’t kid yourself that there’s not blood on your hands.

Second, physical violence isn’t the only kind of violence. The abuse that takes place in families, for instance, is often not physical abuse. You can lay claim to having never physically harmed a person, while at the same time being guilty of killing that person’s soul.

[Y]our attempts at “loving” the object of your disapproval always seem to come off as a self-righteous assertion of your moral superiority (at best), or downright antipathy (at worst). 

 Saying you love someone as you punch them in the mouth, or standing by (while cheering or remaining silent) while somebody else punches them in the mouth or loudly fighting for laws that will continue making punching them in the mouth legal in the name of “religious freedom” isn’t love. 

A cursory reading of the Gospels suggests that, for those of us who follow Jesus, love isn’t the perpetual need to make everyone else conform to our understanding of righteousness; it’s the merciful realization that Jesus has freed us from the responsibility of thinking that’s even our job. 

I will be honest.  I do not like or respect Christofascists.  They are horrible, self-centered people, many of whom can't stand the thought of having to think for themselves.   They would rather harm others and childishly follow the dictates of often parasitical clerics rather than use their minds and think for themselves.  They deserve no place in decent society.