The Bible Says: ‘Nobody Loves Gays’

Barton, B. (2010). “Abomination”—Life as a Bible Belt Gay Journal of Homosexuality, 57 (4), 465-484 DOI: 10.1080/00918361003608558

For many years, up until about 2007, I was a volunteer telephone counsellor at the Gay and Lesbian Counselling Service of NSW (www.glcsnsw.org.au). It was common for callers to ring up depressed, distressed, or suicidal, and recount how they had previously called one of the Christian, faith-based telephone counselling services (Lifeline, Care Line, etc.). Instead of being offered support, these callers were often abused by the Christian telephone counsellors for living the life that was the ‘abomination’ of homosexuality. In short, they deserved to suffer in life and burn in hell forever because they were men who loved to fuck or be fucked by other men.

If you look at the gay press, gay academia, and gay health and community services here in Sydney, you will see an ever-increasing amount of material that constructs homosexuality as a subset of mental disorder. In one of the most poorly conceived community education strategies that I have ever witnessed, leaders of the GLBTI community have decided, perversely, to push the line that fags are madder, more drug fucked and more prone to topping themselves than their straight counterparts. By not grounding these spectacular hypotheses in context, what these leaders have effectively done is let them loose, to be branded as whatever by whoever so chooses.

In this article, about homophobia in the Bible Belt in the US, the author asks the question:

‘How does it affect an individual to daily hear comments that slander the group of which one is a member?’(Barton, 2010, p.466).

The logical answer to that question would be, ‘badly’. Through her research, Barton (2010) confirmed that the intersection of homosexuality with fundamentalist Christianity intensifies the sort of more insidious homophobia that we see elsewhere, for example, here in Sydney (pp.471-477). Haters in the Bible Belt can be out and proud about their hate, drawing on no less than God to justify their condemnation of fags. For example, 200 universities in that seemingly hallowed region openly prohibit homosexuality amongst students. That represents an abject and repugnant human rights abuse, in a nation that prides itself for upholding human rights for all.

Of all the usual ‘burn in hell’ sort of rubbish threats referred to in this article, none is more oppressive to me than what Barton titles, ‘no one will ever love me’ (2010, p.476). To take a young person and then to convince that young person that because they are gay, they are ‘unlovable’ by anyone, forever, is torture. It is cruel, heartless, and despicable, way outside of any accepted standards of decency or morality. Here, the author makes the essential point that fundamentalist Christians have latched onto the increasingly popular idea that sexuality is mutable, as the justification for trying to beat the fag out of the fag (2010, pp.476-477).

Sick and obvious as such hate might be in the Bible Belt in the US, it is pretty easy for anyone so inclined, anywhere, purposefully or inadvertently, to promote homophobic violence. Like, for example, telling every fag in Sydney that they are or are much more likely to be mentally disordered than their straight counterparts…