Joe Brummer asks a perfectly reasonable question: "What does opposition to homosexuality minus the hate look like?" 

Many times on this site, I have offered to anti-gay Christians the idea that they could still oppose homosexuality without spewing hate or contributing to the culture of violence that exists for gay people. I still truly believe that can be done. I would like to start offering some concrete suggestions that anti-gay, Christian organizations could use to oppose homosexuality but without the hate speech.

But then he goes a little further…

I would appreciate pro-gay folks taking a moment to empathize with those who are oppose gay rights and give them some concrete requests to how they can voice religious opposition to homosexuality and gay marriage without promoting violence or hate toward gays. Understanding that some people believe homosexuality is against their religion, not everyone who voices opposition to us is a religious extremist. Some people just hold different beliefs. Perhaps we can talk about better ways to voice those beliefs and even run organizations that lobby for anti-gay rights groups without hate.

I have several problems with this Joe.  Thirdly, you shouldn’t assume that us "pro-gay" folks haven’t tried…hard…to understand what is motivating the opposition.  Do not assume that its easier to write off the opposition as malicious and hateful unless you’ve looked, really looked, into that Pit called Hate.  There is nothing easy about walking up to that terrible edge, and looking in.  There is nothing easy about having to go on living with what you saw.  Nietzsche was right about the danger of gazing into an abyss.  

Secondly, opposition to some things, like same sex marriage, is predicated upon the very dehumanization of gay people you’re asking them to refrain from.  There is just no way to oppose same sex marriage while upholding opposite sex marriage without dehumanizing gay people first.  It’s one thing to assert that marriage is essentially a religious rite and another to oppose even civil unions, let alone civil marriage.  A lot of deeply religious people see the difference there perfectly well.   The problem is that haters tend give their principle objection to same sex marriage a religious gloss to prevent people from actually looking right at it and seeing it for what it is. 

If atheists can marry in ceremonies utterly bereft of any acknowledgment of God, then what, really, is the objection?  It isn’t religious.  It’s constitutional in the sense that they regard same sex relationships as a perversion of normal love.  That’s what is being said in the opposition to same sex marriage.  They’re not objecting to sinners marrying in sin.  Someone else’s sin does not defile their own marriages or every 24 hour church in Las Vegas would have been closed down decades ago.  Sinners are free to marry every day of the year as long as it’s to a person of the opposite sex.  What the haters have been saying, unambiguously for decades now, is that letting gay couples marry defiles their own marriages.  By making a mockery of their feelings for one another.  Because homosexuals are incapable of those same feelings.  Because all we can do, as Orson Scott Card once put it, is play at house. 

Witness their insistence lately on that so-called complementary essence of heterosexual unions.  Really look at it.  What they’re saying is we don’t even have genuine sex, let alone authentically love the person in our arms.  What they’re saying is that by calling our damaged, degenerate, empty assignations marriages we are mocking, deliberately mocking, their authentic humanity.  That is not about sin, it’s about how they regard gay people as subhuman deviants.  Perverts.  Degenerates.  That is what we are to them, and that is the basis for their opposition to same sex marriage, or they wouldn’t be using the language of defilement to describe their opposition.  Two heterosexual drunks getting married after having sex in a Las Vegas hotel doesn’t devalue marriage.  Two sober homosexuals claiming to love and cherish one another just like heterosexuals do does.  You are asking them to stop dehumanizing gay people in their opposition to same sex marriage when the bedrock of that opposition is how thoroughly they’ve dehumanized us.

But my first and biggest problem with your suggestion is that the folks who aren’t extremists have never acted toward us in hateful ways.  There are many devout people out there who aren’t waging kulturkampf against us but are simply and sincerely, if misguidedly, trying to steer us away from what they regard as sin.  They aren’t lobbying against us in the statehouses and in Washington.  They aren’t flinging mud at us, at our relationships, at our homes, at our hearts.  They are instead, offering us a kind of hospitality.  The "Good News" as they say.  But that hospitality is hard to see beneath all the static the religious right is throwing out into the public discourse.

We don’t need to give those folks any of this advice because they know it all instinctively.  And…this is important…they know it instinctively because They Can See The People For The Homosexuals.  We are not some faceless other to them.  We are not monsters.  We are their neighbors.  We are human beings to them, as real and as human as they.  They have always known this, and they have always treated us as they would treat any neighbor in this life.

Joe…I think you should look…really look…at the advice you are giving the ones you think should hear it, and ask yourself in all seriousness, what sort of person needs to be told any of this…

…start talking about anti-gay violence and condemning it very vocally…

…be sure your information is balanced and based on PEER REVIEWED research…

…If your message is truly about “reaching out” to gays and lesbians than stay away from calling us insulting and dehumanizing names like sodomite and militant…

…Promote youth safety.  If you are opposed to teaching about homosexuality in schools or anti-bullying campaigns that include homosexuality as a subject, then you damn well better have a solution to offer that stops the violence and shame that makes life miserable for these kids…

…Gays and lesbians want the same things out of life that you do. I cannot and will not believe that you unable to come up with ways to present your message without the barrage of negative pictures of gays and lesbians…

…Gays and lesbians really are reasonable human beings. Have you ever thought of setting up some meetings with your organization and pro-gay organizations to see what you can work on together and what you can agree on…

…The only reason this is a “war” is because you continue to promote it as one. If you promoted it as a collaboration or a disagreement, then it would be that instead of a war…

…Admit it when someone on your side just goes too far. Comparing us to terrorist went too far…

…We would appreciate it if you could acknowledge that our requests are valid requests even if you disagree with what we want. There is no secret agenda. We want equality and safety…

…Lastly, vow yourself and your organization to abandon myths about homosexuality, especially the one about us choosing to be gay. No one chooses to be gay. Each time you say that you minimize the whole issue to a simple choice and if it were so simple, I wouldn’t be writing this list of requests right now…

Exodus has been saying out of both sides of its mouth for years how "thousands have made the choice to leave homosexuality" and at the same time when asked to back that up with some cold hard facts admits that it is not, as you say, so simple after all.  Do you think they cannot hear themselves talking out of both sides of their mouths? 

Who needs this advice Joe?  No one who would actually take it is who.  You are looking for good faith where there is none.  What does opposition to homosexuality minus the hate look like?  Well I’ve seen it…rarely…but I’ve seen it, and it looks like hospitality.  Nothing more.  Nothing less. 

I would also ask pro-gay folks to try their best to frame their request in Positive Actions Language. In other words, ask people what you DO want them to do, not what you DON’T want them to do.

I want them to get off my back.  I want them to get the hell out of my garden.  I want them to finally one day look at themselves in a mirror and die of that shame they’ve been running away from ever since they sold their soul to hate because it was easier then living in a world where other people are happy and content.  That positive enough?

[Edited a tad…]