Matt Barber lacks self-awareness, so he probably has no idea that the chances of he or any of his friends starting a trend or changing language in any way are slim to none, but no matter. He really wants people to start calling gays “homofascists,” and he feels like if he says it enough, it’ll catch on. Why are we “homofascists?” Well, because of what happened at Mozilla. In case you’ve been playing hooky from the news, the basic rundown is that Brendan Eich was elevated to CEO of Mozilla, creators of the Firefox browser. It came to light that Eich had donated to Proposition 8, and people within the company, aided by Twitter users, started a campaign to get him to step down. When it was revealed that Eich had also supported Pat Buchanan in 1992, that was the last straw for the progressive, LGBT-friendly company, and Eich stepped down for the good of everyone. The institutional gay rights movement had approximately nothing to do with it.
But in Matt Barber’s professionally aggrieved fantasy land, we made this happen because we are “homofascists” and the “gaystapo.” He even illustrated his not-at-all-insane piece with this picture, because, for the small number of people who are scared and misinformed enough to respect Matt Barber, it sends a message:
Before I even quote any of the piece, can I just say how much I sincerely love the fact that Barber and his ilk are using this kind of imagery? Every time they do something like that, the great majority of Americans, who know, interact with and love LGBT people see it and go, “God, you’re insane.” It helps us. Every time.
Let’s see what old Matt’s got to say:
Many Christians have been warning for years that the radical homosexual activist lobby is made up of Christian-hating fascists who are in rebellion against both God and nature, who are hell-bent on criminalizing Christianity and pushing to the fringes anyone who publicly acknowledges natural human sexuality and the age-old, immutable institution of legitimate marriage as created by God.
Sadly, many people, even many Christians, think that I and others are using hyperbole when we refer to this sexual anarchist “LGBT” movement as “homofascist” or the “Gaystapo.” I hope you’ll think again. It’s time to wake up and smell the impending anti-Christian persecution. It’s fully at hand.
And how is this happening? Because of the Brendan Eich thing, which, again, Big Gay had very, very little to do with.
But Matt’s not writing to normal people, but rather weird people who start sweating when they flip by a syndicated re-run of Will & Grace, so it makes sense that he should pile on some more Nazi analogies:
Do you see what’s happening? Did you read that? That’s fear — deathly fear. Fear of a radical, hateful, intolerant, obnoxious, fascist, evil and power-crazed group of sex-obsessed anarchists who demand that we all affirmatively celebrate their deviant and self-destructive sexual sins and unnatural perversions.
Christians, buckle up. Your whole world is about to change. The Rainbowshirts are emboldened and they’ve broken out the long knives. “Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence” – Psalm 73:6.
Goodness. If I wasn’t so certain that Matt Barber is even more heterosexual than he says he is, I’d say he was queening out. We also note how ludicrously silly it is that Matt in any way thinks he’s addressing “Christians.” He’s not. He’s talking to a certain cohort of Christians who value anti-gay hatred more than they value anything Jesus said.
They smell blood in the water. I’ve often said that these folks want those who speak Biblical truth about human sexuality and legitimate marriage either 1) dead, 2) imprisoned or, if they can have neither of these, 3) marginalized to the point where they can’t even support their families.
Actually, we just want to live in a country where theocracy-loving wingnuts can’t deny the rest of the country their Constitutional rights, based only on the fact that our freedom makes them feel uncomfortable. Matt Barber and his friends grossly overestimate how much the rest of the country really cares about them when they suggest that we want to kill them, imprison them or deny them the right to employment. The truth is that, as the anti-gay movement dies off, the great majority of the country will just go on with their lives, trying to live them to the fullest. Nobody is going to be thinking about those who are so bizarrely homophobic that they can’t go an hour without worrying about what the “homofascist threat” is going to do next. And no, we won’t try to deny them their Constitutional rights, as they have done with us.
At the end of his piece, Matt says that “freedom is hanging by a thread,” but offers no proof for his thesis, just as he offers no proof that the “homofascist gaystapo” exists anywhere outside of the fever swamps of his imagination. Keep writing, Matt, and we’ll keep quoting you verbatim. As I said above, it helps us more than you’ll ever know.
