Sometimes, I’m so distracted by how batshit crazy the right-wingers have become that I forget how utterly despicable they can be.
To appropriate an old Henny Youngman joke (google him), “Take Eric Miller. Please. Take him.”
Miller–who makes a comfortable living pretending that bigotry is religion–has a new “Urgent Legislative Alert” that will be distributed Sunday to the network of far-right churches that support his salary (thinly disguised as membership dues to his organization, Advance America).
The “Urgent Alert” has a banner headline: “BMV Approves Pro-Homosexual License Plate!” In only slightly smaller font is “Help Protect Children-Revoke License Plate Now!” This is followed by the usual sanctimony, text piously bemoaning the harm to children that will be caused if the Indiana Youth Group receives the “seal of approval” that issuance of a license plate would imply. What is truly disgusting is the assertion, which is repeated three times in the text of the flyer, that IYG “targets” children as young as twelve.
Well, yes indeed it does. It has to, thanks to people like Eric Miller.
IYG is an organization that only exists because people like Miller cause so much pain to so many young people who don’t have the wherewithal to fight back, or even understand what the fight is really about. It is an organization that opens its arms to young, vulnerable, hurting kids –too many of whom have been thrown out of their homes by parents who care less for their own flesh and blood than for the illusory security offered by a rigid, punitive, unChristian theology.
IYG “targets” these teenagers by providing them with acceptance, a healing message and a safe place to figure things out. The message is simple: no matter what hateful people say, you are a valuable human being who simply happens to love differently. Being different is neither right nor wrong–it’s just different. So don’t hurt yourself, don’t hate yourself, and please don’t kill yourself.
That’s the “pro-homosexual” message Eric Miller finds so offensive.
I could point out that what Miller wants the State to do is unconstitutional–he wants the State to deny IYG the equal protection of the laws–but I’m sure he knows that. He just doesn’t care–just as he doesn’t care if the children he is helping to hound and demean, the children he is targeting, end up physically or emotionally damaged or dead as a result of the attitudes he is promoting.
We certainly should lock up our twelve-year-olds–not to “protect” them from IYG, but to keep them away from heartless bigots like Eric Miller.
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