Submitted for your idle viewing pleasure… A wee taste of what your gay and lesbian neighbors have to endure every single fucking day. To my heterosexual friends and family, those of you who have married…while planning your happy day, did you remember to take into account that one or more total strangers might decide to crash it, so they could hurl insults at you, your beloved spouse to be, and everyone else in the chapel?

Of course you didn’t…

More on the guy trying to piss on the happy couple’s big day Here…

…when my editors at SN&R decided that someone with journalistic sensibilities and a sense of humor ought to look into these folks—with their extreme approach to protesting; their bold, yellow “Sodomy is Sin” banner; and their retro use of language that even many anti-gay groups have abandoned as insensitive—I volunteered. The timing was right. Real anger had been stirred up between parts of the local gay community and some members of the Slavic evangelical churches, who have protested at gay events for a few years. And since Proposition 8, which aims to end marriage equality, is on the ballot for November, the upcoming months promised plenty of discussion of gay rights as well as ample opportunity to see Luke and company in action.

So through the rest of the spring and summer and on into fall, I followed Luke and his small crew of activists to protest after protest. With my notebook and camera, I trailed after them during the first local same-sex weddings at the Sacramento County clerk/recorder’s office, at the Sacramento Pride Festival and while protesting at an area McDonald’s, which they perceived as gay-friendly. I kept an eye on the activities of Luke and his friends Viktor Choban and Yuriy Popko at American River College, where they’ve stirred up quite a fuss over the past couple of semesters. They’ve managed to aggravate an impressive list of people: the GLBTQ club, Latinos Unidos, campus progressives, Muslim students and the Improv Club.

The most important thing I’ve discovered through all this: Luke and company won’t compromise. They believe they’re on God’s side, and as far as they’re concerned, if you’re arguing with God, you deserve what’s coming to you: death, destruction and eternal torment.

Gutter crawling bigots like these are no more representative of most of America then Ed Gein, but I’ve often wondered why more good people don’t speak out about the torrent of hate coming from them. I suppose there are a lot of reasons for that, but one is almost certainly that they don’t experience this sort of relentless hatred themselves, first hand. They don’t get to see how completely disconnected the haters are from anything remotely resembling reality, and how that unreality they live in gives them a kind of schizophrenic permission to attack anyone and everyone they perceive as an enemy, without any sort of moral or ethical restraint. They embody not just virtue, but God’s own righteousness, and so they are immune from the moral considerations the rest of us must live by.

Gay Americans have been living with this adversary for decades. We’ve watched it grow in reach from the political gutter to the summit of American political power. The only thing that surprises many of us, is how surprised, how shocked, the rest of America is whenever it catches a glimpse of its essential moral degeneracy. How easily…how effortlessly…they will look you in the eye, and lie through their teeth. How they cheat, and even when flagrantly caught doing it, will deny everything. How they ignore every moral law they insist everyone else must live by when it suits them. Because fighting for God’s truth excuses them from having to live it themselves. It’s not absolute power that corrupts, it’s absolute certainty.

We gay folk need to document our experience more, so others can better understand what America faces. These people want to take everyone down into their gutter and they are determined. It isn’t just our freedoms that are at stake here. If you think these people are just a bunch of irritating, but basically weak and harmless wackos, if you don’t think they’re dangerous, you aren’t paying attention. Perhaps that’s something your gay and lesbian neighbors can help you with. Look again. That guy in the video who called us ‘sodomites’…if you don’t obey his rules, then as far as he’s concerned, you’re one too, and you deserve what’s coming to you: death, destruction and eternal torment.