Aggrieved Christian Soldiers

[Content Note: Christian supremacy; homophobia.]

Over at The American Prospect, Paul Waldman documents the outpouring of self-pitying aggrievement from a number of conservative Christian commentators who are lamenting their "second-class citizenship" because they support the "traditional definition of marriage."

Here's CBN's David Brody lamenting the sorrows of Kirk Cameron and Tim Tebow. Here's Red State's Erik Erikson predicting the coming pogrom ("Within a year or two we will see Christian schools attacked for refusing to admit students whose parents are gay. We will see churches suffer the loss of their tax exempt status for refusing to hold gay weddings. We will see private businesses shut down because they refuse to treat as legitimate that which perverts God's own established plan."). Here's Fox News commentator Todd Starnes on the oppression that has already begun ("it's as if we're second-class citizens now because we support the traditional, Biblical definition of marriage").

Which is only the tip of the monumentally martyry iceberg: Here is Pro-Prop 8 Pastor Jim Garlow warning that if the Supreme Court rules in favor of marriage equality, Christians will be "forced underground. Their buildings will be taken away from them, many of their rights will be taken away from them." Sounds legit.

And here's Pat Robertson (of course) warning that "the foundation of our society since the founding of our great Republic is under attack" by "a few people [who] want to have their way doing of sex affirmed by everyone else." Solid commentary as always from the biggest bozo in the hate biz.

But it's Brody who really takes the garbage cake with his hilariously headlined column: "Are Evangelicals Now More Scorned than Homosexuals?"

Direct from the school of, "Counter-Intuitive Thinking," I bring you this question: When it comes to the issue of same-sex marriage, are Evangelical Christians actually the ones more ridiculed than homosexuals?

In the media's narrative, you would think that homosexuals are the poor souls who have been banished by society like ugly stepchildren and are now rising to overcome incredible odds.

But what about today? Let's be honest: If you are a conservative evangelical who believes in the biblical definition of traditional marriage then guess what? You are one of the following: An outcast, a bigot, narrow-minded, a "hater" or all of the above. It's a different type of ridicule but it's still ridicule.

The tables have been turned. Evangelicals are now the ugly stepchild. In our American culture today, you can easily make the argument that it is harder to stand for biblical truth than it is to be a supporter of gay marriage in today's society.

Executive Translation: Direct from the school of "Self-Pitying Aggrievement at Losing the Undeserved Privilege We've Justified with a Cherry-Picked Religious Text," I bring you a load of codswallop that anyone with a modicum of decency would be embarrassed to think in their most private thoughts, no less write and publish for public consumption. Let's be honest: I am a jerk who uses contemptible anachronistic idioms to simultaneously engage in projection and appropriation. I am a colossal dirtbag who makes money by pretending that systemic discrimination is "ridicule," and that being ridiculed for innate characteristics is the same as being ridiculed for one's beliefs, and, further, that it is my beliefs being held in contempt rather than my insistence on trying to legislate them. I am being rightly marginalized for being a hateful vessel of kyriarchal norms, but I'mma pout about it. Boo-hoo.

Anyway.

Christians are not in danger of losing their sway in this country anytime soon. It is execrable that there are conservative Christians—whose paternalistic, retrofuck, unscientific, indefensible views on reproductive rights and women's agency are currently being legislated all over the nation with nary a peep from the office-holding pro-choice president—who have the temerity to whine about how oppressed they are simply for having their undiluted right to legislate how every other person should be allowed to use their bodies and live their lives minimally eroded via marriage equality.

Losing the capacity to oppress is not oppression.

And there's no equivalence, none, between a position that wants to reserve marriage for some and deny it to others, and a position that wants to extend marriage to all, for anyone who wants to take part in whatever way they wish, with no one compelled to participate.

Which is my polite way of saying: No one's forcing you to get gay-married, dipshits.