On Sunday 27 June 2010 for the first time in my life i fought back against my persecutors of the past seventy years.
I marched (or actually rolled on my Segway since i'm too lame to walk very far) in San Francisco's Gay Parade carrying a sign reading
STRIKE BACK AGAINST YOUR
PERSECUTORS: TAX THE CHURCH
Aside from the stink eye from the cops, who we suspected all along were also religious fascists, i basked in the greatest affirmation i've ever experienced in my life. Thousands of people lining Market Street gave me thumbs ups, laughed, applauded, shouted encouragement, and filmed me...and that's just the ones i could see at the front of the crowd lining the street.
The high point was when a couple of young men shouted rhythmically FUCK THE CHURCH, FUCK THE CHURCH and were immediately joined by dozens (hundreds?) of bystanders around them.
And OK, right here at the beginning i need to point out that there are millions of decent Christians in this country who ignore the hatred of gays that their churches preach. And for that matter i learned on Sunday of a fourth Christian denomination that has (at least for the time being) stopped teaching hatred of gays as official church doctrine: the Disciples of Christ. It joins the Episcopal Church, the United Churches of Christ, and the Lutheran Church in tolerance. And while i'm pointing, i'll point out that the Unitarian Church, not being Christian, never taught hatred of gays.
But please, don't let the rest of them give you that hideous bullshit about 'loving the sinner and hating the sin' while they gather millions of dollars pushing legislation that would force all Americans, gay and straight alike, to follow the rules of their vicious churches. They hate you right along with your sin, and they have always done everything they could get away with to force everyone else to toe their line.
Think about it. Do you really believe that the leaders of the Christian churches stopped burning heretics at the stake out of the secret sweet kindness of their hearts or simply because they no longer had the power to do so?
In one of John Adams' letters to Thomas Jefferson, he observed that a primary reason he wanted separation of church and state was that the churches would still be inflicting hideous punishments on the people "if they but could."
Nothing has changed. It is the nature of religions to force everyone they can to follow their rules - at swordpoint, if necessary. The only thing that ever stops them is meeting resistance they cannot overcome. What i shall do in this blog is further my attempt to start an active movement against the church here in San Francisco instead of merely mounting a feeble defense against their continual assaults - most especially attacks from the Roman Catholic and Mormon churches led and organized by His Evil Excellency, George Niederauer, Archbishop of San Francisco and Persecutor of Rule Breakers. His rules, not yours.
