Without further ado, and inspired by the hilarity of the Vatican blaming child rape on gays (funny, since gays, and liberals in general, are the ones exposing these scandals most consistently and most thoroughly), Ranker made a list of the seven craziest things blamed on gays. Numbers one and two are Catholic child rape and 9/11, and you’ll have to click the clicky to read the rest. But the entire piece can be summed up in one sentence from entry number four:
It seems that fundamentalists blame that which they don’t accept or understand (science) on other things they don’t accept or understand (homosexuality).
Yep yep yep! All religious fundamentalists do this, be they Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, or whatever else. Because they’re fundamentally incurious people, and because many of them actually believe that their worldview, however insane and discredited, is correct, things that don’t easily fit, like science, gays, magnets (how do THEY work?) and rainbows have to be awkwardly explained within the confines of their beliefs. The results are absurd.
Things that they don’t like are blamed on gays, blacks, feminists, liberals, Yurp, etc., while things they do like are attributed to, yes, miracles.
If you’re not familiar with Rod Dreher, he is one of the most comical of the Christian conservative writers on the internet, because he’s one of those who really wants to be one of the cool kids, really wants to appeal across cultural lines, and so it’s all the more hilarious watching him fall flat again and again. (And if you really want to know more than that, just click here.) But this quote, from a longer piece about how the rock and roll music the kids listen to is simultaneously awesome, and also terrible, and also saved the Russians, but also killed the Russians, etc., just struck me as funny:
I remember another night long ago, when I was in college, and listening to George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex.” A thoughtful Christian who lived on my hall in the dorm asked me how I could listen to those lyrics and remain so unaffected by the sentiment. He wasn’t asking in a prudish way; he was a fan of classic jazz and pop, and as an appreciator of the refined longings expressed in, say, the songs of Cole Porter, he was appalled by the barbarism in the George Michael song. I didn’t have an answer for him, but he did make me reflect on how the lyrics of so many songs I dearly loved expressed sentiments I found at the time distasteful, and, as I matured, would come to find gross.
Just two straight Christian dudes, holding each other accountable over which gay dudes’ music they should and should not be listening to…
I wonder what higher faculties of the soul are nurtured by contemplating Eminem’s couplet in which he discusses ejaculating into someone’s anus, then eating the semen. (Sorry to shock you, but if we’re going to talk about this, let’s be clear what we’re talking about).
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is preparing a first-ever study of alleged housing discrimination against homosexuals.
Federal officials are brainstorming with residents of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco on how to conduct the study that is to begin next year. Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, believes the purpose is to gather data to advance the cause of homosexual activists. “But beyond that,” he adds, “this is the classic attempt to equate homosexuality so-called ‘discrimination’ with other traditional civil rights discrimination.”
The president of the conservative group also believes the government is manufacturing a crisis because there are very few reports of attacks on homosexuals, and that that begs the question as there are apartment projects and residential neighborhoods throughout the country owned by homosexuals who bar heterosexuals.
“I’ve heard of cases where people who are sort of driven to sell their homes because all the homes are being sold to homosexuals,” he accounts. “So is the Obama administration going to investigate discrimination against people who are not homosexuals?”
What huh?
Okay, first of all, housing discrimination does exist, and the study is basically trying to find out where and to what extent. My guess is that it happens in rental properties a lot more than anywhere else. But his contention that straight people are being discriminated against because gays are buying in their neighborhood is truly bizarre. First of all, it’s not discrimination, in any sense of the word, if the house across the street sells to a gay couple, or a straight couple, or a fundamentalist couple, or whatever. It’s actually just a house changing ownership.
But I find this particularly strange because when a neighborhood gets gayer, the property values tend to go way up! The neighborhoods get safer, the houses get fixed up, the neighborhood looks better, in general! Seriously, go to any major city in the nation and find the neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of gays. Compare the price per square foot in those neighborhoods to, say, something in the suburbs where the Peter LaBarberas live.
Or here, I’ll do it for you. According to Peter’s dark little corner of the internet, Americans for Truth and Peter are based in Naperville, Illinois, a whitebread suburb of Chicago. Here’s what’s on the market in Naperville right now. Some of it is all fancy dan, but it’s mostly cookie cutter McMansions, which are boring. If you want to live in Naperville right now, you’re going to pay between $144 and $176 per square foot, on average. Let’s compare that to Boystown, on the north side of Chicago, where there are um, lotsa gays. Right now, if you want to live in Boystown, you’re going to pay between $220 and $254 per square foot.
Good taste is more expensive, you see. But Boystown didn’t used to be that way. It wasn’t until the gays started moving in that the neighborhood started to turn into the high value cultural center it is today.
It’s not just in Chicago either. It’s happened in Tampa, Midtown Atlanta, Logan Circle in Washington, the Cooper-Young District in Memphis (hey-o!), etc. The phenomenon has even been studied, by science! Not only do we make neighborhoods better qualitatively, we give you more return on your investment by putting down roots in your neighborhood.
And here’s Stephen Colbert talking to Richard Florida about the “Bohemian-Gay” index,which shows the correlation between interesting people slash gay people moving in and rising property values. Because, as Stephen says, people these days want a “house with a view of some goateed beatnik playing his bongos while he smokes a clove cigarette and chisels a sculpture of k.d. lang.”
Exactly!
So really, is this what Peter is complaining about?
To any fundamentalist mouthbreathers who have been “forced to sell their houses” because of all the gays moving in, we can only say this: Take the profit from your increased-by-gays property value and run away to Wal-Mart Hell if that makes you feel better, and oh, by the way, YOU’RE WELCOME!
Should homosexuals face execution? Yes, we accept it is a stark and disturbing question. But this is the reality behind an Anti-Homosexuality Bill being debated on Friday by the Ugandan parliament which would see some homosexual offences punishable by death.
What next? A question that asks: “Is human sacrifice okay as long as it is done for religious reasons?” Someone should be fired for such an offensive and foolish question.
Update:
The BBC has apologized (although a weak one) after complaints about an online debate which asked: “Should homosexuals face execution?” in response to proposed anti-gay legislation in Uganda.
