Two Views From the Right on The Priority Given to Homophobia

Matt Barber, right-wing mouthpiece for the Concerned Women of America (I wonder why they couldn't they find a woman spokesperson, but I digress) and his somewhat more moderate brother Jared, debated the priority given to the perceived sinfulness of homosexuality. I'll post a couple of excerpts, first from Jared, then from Matt, and follow with my comments.

Jared:Christians, as a whole, focus too much on the homosexual issue alone. They attack it solely, denounce it, and live whichever way they please. Adultery, fornication, racism, pride, jealousy, selfish ambition, drunkenness; all of these immoral acts take to the background in view of homosexuality, and so we as Christians are set up as anti-gay instead of anti-immorality. We need to end our own hypocrisy, all of us, I as much as any, so that we can more blamelessly broach this subject and others.

Matt: Unlike the sin of homosexuality, the other sins you cite -- the sins of adultery, fornication, racism, pride, jealousy, selfish ambition and drunkenness -- do not have the benefit of a tremendously powerful and prosperous lobby which is blindly supported by people in positions of political influence, and other leftists in media and elsewhere who have been duped by the crafty and disingenuous rhetoric of "tolerance" and "diversity."

Proponents, practitioners and enablers of homosexual sin demand that we all renounce God's express condemnation of such conduct and embrace this spiritually and physically destructive behavior as virtuous -- as a wholly equal, alternative sexual "orientation." They believe that the only thing objectively immoral is to reckon there are things objectively immoral. Yet, when others find freedom from the homosexual lifestyle -- as untold thousands have done through the loving and redemptive power of Jesus Christ -- those former homosexuals are maliciously maligned for committing a betrayal most immoral. Like that popular hotel in California, "You can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave."

While of course disagreeing with the notion of homosexuality being inherently sinful, Jared offered a well balance view, calling out fundamentalists for ignoring their own sins and those of ones who believe as they do at the expense of dumping all their guilt on homosexuals.

Matt, of course, couldn't let that stand, offering the ludicrous, lame excuse of focusing on homosexuality essentially because it has a powerful political lobby. The countless thousands he refers to as finding "freedom from the homosexual lifestyle" are for the most part also nameless. Beyond the cottage industry of "ex-gays" who make a living holding seminars and being interviewed, there are few documented situations of people actually having their orientation changed. There are a larger number of celebate or delusional homosexuals who have chosen, mostly out of guilt or conviction by people like Matt Barber, to deny how God made them and live as a heterosexual.

Matt Barber's weak rationalization, assuming that's the best he could come up with, demonstrates that there is truly no good reason for the right wingers to jump all over gay issues, other than to divert attention from their own sins and shortcomings.

They may think they are coving up in their churches and right-wing organizations, but God knows who is a hypocrite and who isn't.