Bill Donahue is an asshole

This ruined my whole damn day.

There’s one pundit who can get under my skin and scratch at my insides. It’s not Michael Moore, who moralizes his childish antics in cosmic terms, or Glenn Beck, who scares people for money. It’s Bill Donahue, president of the dubiously named Catholic League for Religious and Civil Liberties, and frequent cable-news go-to guy for a shouter. Today, he got a guest column in the WaPo for some reason today. (Probably to promote his dumb new book for which couldn’t get blurbs for the back cover–at least from anyone other than Steven Colbert.)

Given a platform in a nationally read newspaper, he filled his space with this:

Sexual libertines, from the Marquis de Sade to radical gay activists, have sought to pervert society by acting out on their own perversions. What motivates them most of all is a pathological hatred of Christianity. They know, deep down, that what they are doing is wrong, and they shudder at the dreaded words, “Thou Shalt Not.” But they continue with their death-style anyway…

The culture war is up for grabs. The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they’re too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels.

When I’ve had the chance, I’ve been banging out a reply to these most egregious points. It’s right now 483 words, but still not presentable. Main point: It’s disappointing the Washington Post would run content so void of substance and full of unconcealed hate. Now, in the past, I’ve been hasty and dumb speculating out loud as to whether or not everyone who votes against gay marriage is a “bigot,” and have been looking for an excuse to apologize/correct myself. I take the opportunity to…apologize and say I was hasty and dumb.

But “deathstyle?” I can only imagine that if I were gay, “deathstyle” would be exponentially worse than “faggot.” That’s in the league of people who say AIDS or 9/11 are God’s punishments for breaches of Leviticus. We talk about people feeling threatened by overblown predictions about the repercussions of accepting gays or enfranchising them into marriage, or simply being stupid having never known a gay person. Bill Donahue just hates gay people.

I wonder what he would say to a closeted 12-year old niece or nephew facing bullying who tried to confide in him. I wonder if “deathstyle” would occur in the conversation.

Also, by way of factual errors: The claim that gays, collectively (as if they could be spoken of collectively) have a “pathological hatred” of Christianity is verifiably false. Earlier this year, I blogged a Barna Group study which indicated 70 percent of American LGBTple identify themselves as Christians, and 60 percent describe their faith as “very important” to their lives.

Fucking hell.

Fuck Bill Donahue.

Luckily, there are two forms of catharsis. First, there’s this video from a rally in support of Maine’s enfranchisement to same-sex marriage, which might be overturned in the upcoming elections:

Secondly, appealing on a more visceral level, here’s Bill Donahue getting sawed in half by Jesus, with help from Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

That’s better.