Longtime gay activist Frank Kameny wrote a letter to homophobic bigot Peter LaBarbera that has been ruffling feathers at WingNutDaily and Americans for Truth [sic] about Homosexuality (h/t: Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars). Here's the best part:
It is your homophobic God of Leviticus (and of the Bible as a whole) himself (herself? itself? themselves?) who is the sinner because of that homophobia.Bigotry is sinful, whether it be racism, anti-Semitism, or homophobia.
Your God of Leviticus (and of the whole Bible) is clearly a sinful homophobic bigot. He should repent of his sinful homophobia. He should atone for that sin, And he should seek forgiveness for the pain and suffering which his sinful homophobia has needlessly inflicted upon gay people for the past 4,000 years.
It is not homosexuality which is always wrong, immoral, and sinful. It is homophobia, including the homophobia of your god himself which is wrong, immoral, and sinful. And so your god is a sinner...
It was the inherent conservatism of revealed religion--and its need to protect ancient prejudices from criticism and revision--that I criticized in a comment here:
Since I don't believe in your god (or any other ones), I'm free to condemn sins such as tyranny, sexism, racism, slavery, homophobia, and other bigotries--not to mention rampant anti-intellectualism--wherever they are found. No sacred cows and no sacred books means that atheists have no reason to countenance evil in any form: we're not limited to the scientific (mis)understanding of a group of fishermen and goat-herders from two millennia ago.
Kudos to Kameny for continuing to fight the good fight! (Not that good fight--one that's truly good...)
It would be nice if LGBT-rights pioneers (Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, Harry Hay, Larry Kramer, Frank Kameny, etc.) were as well-known and celebrated as ML King, Rosa Parks, Bayard Rustin, and Malcolm X—but we're just not there yet.
Ah Cog, I need to read your blog more often. You introduce me to so many great people. :)