The current brouhaha over “Duck Dynasty” is getting the predictable treatment, both in the largely-liberal mainstream media and in its right-wing equivalent. Those who aspire to wield the power of big government over the peasants must, by all means, control the narrative. And as usual, the supposed rivals are actually working off of the same script.
It is of little consequence to me what some fool on trash-TV says about gays. Despite the outrage generated on the left, this is exactly what we might expect from a redneck with voodoo-fundamentalist religious beliefs. If he’d been ignored – as he deserved to be – none of this tempest in a piss-pot would ever have arisen.
Then, of course – in the spirit of the game – the right had to become outraged because A&E, the network that ran the popular filth in question, punished the yokel who made the anti-gay remarks. Social conservatives, and those who toady to them, would have us believe that he is the victim of full-scale persecution. As if he were being marched off to a gulag.
What actually happened was exactly what conservatives usually claim should happen — until it happens to them. A private employer disciplined its employee. At no level did government become involved, so there was no censorship. As my colleague at Purple Elephant blog, Lori Sanders, pointed out, this all happened the way it should in a free society.
Let me explain, for those in the Heartland, what is really going on here. Gay Christians are too inconvenient for either the statist right or left to mention. We’re the proverbial fly in their ointment, because we don’t do the bidding of either side. They don’t know what to do with us, so they ignore us in the hope that we’ll disappear.
This is called lying by omission.
The social-conservative right wants a new way to demonize gays. It intends to do this by painting ALL gays as anti-religion, and especially as anti-Christian. No gay Christian flies must be permitted into their ointment.
The secular left wants to demonize religion, in particular Christianity. It plans on accomplishing this by painting ALL religious people as anti-gay. No gay-welcoming churches, or heterosexual Christian allies – not to mention actual gay Christians – may be allowed to toss any monkey wrenches into their works.
Social conservatives know very well that gay Christians exist. So do secular liberals. In omitting us – on purpose – from the dialogue, they are bare-assed liars.
Social conservatives are also abject, lily-livered cowards. They are afraid of the public debate — on whether that handful of Scriptural snippets they’ve clipped out of context to “support” their argument actually say what they claim — that would surely follow if the truth about gay Christians’ existence were more widely known. Lying by omission is not the behavior of people confident that the argument is theirs to win. It’s the behavior of those who know that they would lose.
I will point it out. I will shout it from the rooftops. I will do my utmost to mobilize other gay Christians, and our allies in the churches, to loudly, vigorously and insistently enter the fray. If the spiritually-sick and twisted souls who want us out of the Church want a fight, they’ve got one.
Okay, by their chickenhearted dishonesty, they’ve indicated that they DON’T want a fight. They’re going to get one, anyway.
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Born on 9-11 
How are those verses taken out of context?
They are taken out of context because none of them address the issue of committed same-sex love between consenting adults. The writers of these texts would not even have known such a thing existed, therefore they cannot logically expect to have written about it.
That’s the short answer, because I am not going to haggle over every detail of it on a political blog. If you want a longer answer, I can refer you to a stack of good books on the subject.
If you want to fight about theology, you are going to need to do it somewhere else. If you want to talk about sin, the only context in which I will consent is if we also examine your life — meaning your entire personal life, including your sexual behavior and relationships — to see if I think they’re sinful so I can comment on them. If you’re willing to do that, you need to find a priest or a minister. If you’re not, you have no business biting off a topic you can’t chew.