I saw this one laughing in my face yet again…this time in my Facebook feed from a relative of a good friend. There are family issues going on below the public surface there that I don’t want to butt into so I didn’t respond. But this is one of those zombie bits of homophobic agitprop that pushes my buttons whenever I see it…

This is one from Rick Warren, a devoted homophobe and pulpit thumper. Near as I can tell it was something he put out there in 2013 around the time of President Obama’s second inauguration. Warren, as you may recall, was invited to give the invocation at Obama’s first inauguration, thereby spitting in the faces of all the gay Americans who worked so hard to get him elected over John McCain and the lunatic Sarah Palin. It’s a clever bit of misdirection, begging the question of what the disagreement is all about. It seems so reasonable on it’s surface, but beneath the surface it’s a sewer of shifty morals intended to make bigoted attacks on our lives appear to be reasoned and compassionate. Warren is giving us the motto of someone who can’t see the people for the homosexuals. It is itself the huge lie it purports to stand against.

There’s nothing complicated here: LGBT people don’t have lifestyles, we have lives. Not all disagreements are equal. If your convictions aren’t grounded by verifiable provable truths they are mere conceits. And where love is ruled by empty convictions, and not by sympathy, kindness, charity, and above all empathy, then it isn’t love at all, it’s sanctimony.