Bigotry against gays, and attempts to discriminate against people for no other reason than because they are gay, is no better than bigotry against people for no other reason than because of their race, religion, gender, or ethnicity. This comparison infuriates Christian bigots who want to marginalize gays in society and they are fighting for the ability to discriminate.

The LA Times reports:

The legal argument is straightforward: Policies intended to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination end up discriminating against conservative Christians. ... “What if a person felt their religious view was that African Americans shouldn’t mingle with Caucasians, or that women shouldn’t work?” asked Jon Davidson, legal director of the gay rights group Lambda Legal.

Christian activist Gregory S. Baylor responds to such criticism angrily. He says he supports policies that protect people from discrimination based on race and gender. But he draws a distinction that infuriates gay rights activists when he argues that sexual orientation is different — a lifestyle choice, not an inborn trait.

By equating homosexuality with race, Baylor said, tolerance policies put conservative evangelicals in the same category as racists. He predicts the government will one day revoke the tax-exempt status of churches that preach homosexuality is sinful or that refuse to hire gays and lesbians.

“Think how marginalized racists are,” said Baylor, who directs the Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom. “If we don’t address this now, it will only get worse.”

Of course, conservative evangelicals don’t seek to discriminate against gays only when and because they engage in some particular kind of conduct (like gay sex). Merely announcing that one is a homosexual is sufficient to justify discrimination — and that’s not conduct, that’s simply a statement about whom one is sexually, emotionally, and psychologically attracted to. In other words, it’s a statement about who one is. People like Gregory S. Baylor defend the right of Christian student groups to ban “avowed homosexuals” from membership and/or leadership positions — in other words, he’s wants groups to have the right to discriminate against people based upon who they are, not simply conduct.

Gregory S. Baylor evidently thinks that the tax-exempt status of churches which preach the sinfulness of homosexuality will be revoked. Baylor probably knows that this isn’t true because he refers to the comparison to racism — and he has to know that racist churches never lost their tax-exempt status. Churches which refuse to hire women as preachers haven’t lost their tax-exempt status. Religion and bigotry often go hand-in-hand, and since the government gives churches favoritism when it comes to obtaining tax-exempt status, it will be easy for bigoted churches to exist — including churches that preach Baylor’s favored brands of bigotry.

Cathy Young points out:

Once, conservatives used to deplore the left’s cult of victimhood and ridicule the obsession with real or imagined slights toward women, minorities, and other historically oppressed groups. Now, the right is embracing a victimhood cult obsessed with slights toward a group that makes up 85 percent of the American population. [...]

They cry persecution when religious conservatives are denied the ability to impose their beliefs on everyone—for instance, to ban abortion or gay unions. In fact, much of the hostility they encounter is directed at this political agenda, not at religion as such: People who bash the religious right seldom object when faith is invoked to protest war, poverty, or racism. This is a double standard, to be sure, but it’s just as hypocritical for religious conservatives to suggest that Christians who don’t subscribe to their brand of values aren’t “real” Christians. [emphasis added]

People like Gregory S. Baylor don’t want to be associated with racists, but the fact of the matter is that’s precisely the sort of people they are. The arguments they are making are almost identical to those made by racist conservative evangelicals several decades ago. The position they have adopted is largely the same as the position of racist Christians. The target of their bigotry and discrimination differs, but the belief that such bigotry and discrimination are divinely mandated and religiously justified is basically the same.

Gregory S. Baylor and people like him are no better than the average racist — and perhaps they are worse, because they are fighting to have discrimination based upon their bigotry allowed in the public square. The long-term prospects for anti-gay bigotry is no better than the ultimate fate of racist bigotry, and I think that people like Gregory S. Baylor recognize this — that’s why the comparison with racists is so important to them. They recognize the society is going in the opposite direction of what they want and they realize that as people wake up to the fact that homophobia is no better than racism, the speed will only pick up. They are on the losing side of his issue, just like their predecessors were on the losing side of slavery, integration, and women’s suffrage.

 

Gay Rights & Gay Marriage:

• Marriage: Religious Rite or Civil Right?
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Arguments Against Gay Marriage:

• What's The Point of Marriage, Gay or Straight?
• Definition of Marriage in 1886
• What is a Marriage Between a Man and a Woman?
• Marriage is for Raising Children?
• Will Gay Marriage Undermine the Institution of Marriage?
• Are Gay Couples are Unnatural?
• Marriage is Sacred and a Sacrament?