Nicholas F. Benton

Is Falwell Bent On Hell?

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate mercifully killed a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have, for the first time ever, denied rather than extended rights to a whole class of Americans. On the same day, a stunning expose of the hypocrisy, lies and intense personal damage associated with the religious right-driven so-called “ex-gay movement” was presented within blocks of the White House at the National Press Club.

While this combination of developments marked a step forward for rationality and civility in modern America, it can hardly be expected that the religious right will take it lying down. They and their desperate friends in the U.S. Congress trying to hold onto their seats in the mid-term elections in November will blame President Bush’s loss of political clout due to Iraq and other issues for the failure of the Constitutional amendment to pass, and will gear up their hate campaigns against both immigrants and gays with even more strident, more radical rhetoric and campaigns.

These right wingers have knack for appealing to the lowest, basest, most primitive strands of human nature to advance their cause, tapping into the ugly, irrational fear of “outsiders,” whether they be “aliens” or gays and lesbians. Their appeal is to the exact opposite of what Abe Lincoln referred to in his first inaugural address as “the better angels of our nature.”

Their answer to the atrocities of the super-rich against the American people is to divert attention to the alleged high crimes of the poorest of the poor, and a class of people already subjected to deep discrimination and stigmatization.

Instead of rallying against the obscenely-high salaries and profits taken by oil company magnates while gas prices at the pump hit record highs, or against the latest tax cut that advantages the tiniest percentage of the richest while doing nothing for the rest of us, these people want to build both legal and physical barriers against the most vulnerable in our society. They don’t focus on the epochal atrocity that has been the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the terrible, wanton loss of life that has been caused by it on all sides. They’d rather demonize dirt poor immigrants and socially-estranged homosexuals.

How despicable is that? How unholy is that? How sinful is that? How damnable is that? These hypocrites are running the risk, by their own standards, of the eternal fiery flames of the very holy hell they like to preach about. That’s because they not only set their own hatred and vile, but enflame it among others, against the poor, the widows and social orphans and, in general, the helpless among us. I think that among others, Jerry Falwell’s soul is in grave danger.

One of the most moving speeches delivered at yesterday’s National Press Club event announcing the formation of Truth Wins Out, an organization founded by Wayne Besen dedicated to exposing harm and lies of the “ex-gay movement,” came from a mother of a gay person who is highly religious. It was 15 years ago when her son revealed his gay orientation to her for the first time.

In an emotional talk, she began by saying, “I am angry at people who call themselves Christians who do so much harm.”

She said that her initial hostile reaction to the news from her son was repressed by what she called “a small voice in the back of my head that said ‘don’t do anything to push him away from you.’” Still, she said, it took her years to fully accept her son and then, when she learned of the suicide of a 15-year old boy in Ohio, she decided that she must become active in defense of gays and lesbians against the hatred being directed against them.

By contrast to this mother, another speaker, an 18-year-old, told of being verbally and physically abused for months by his mother for failing to be “converted” to a heterosexual during a summer-long forced participation in an “ex-gay ministry.” He finally had to run away from home.

His case underscored one of the great harms caused by the ex-gay effort, to deceitfully raise expectations of parents and peers that a change can occur such that when it doesn’t work, the gay person is subjected to even more venom and alienation than before.

Others at the press conference exposed the fact that within the inner circles of the ex-gay ministries, its leaders acknowledge that actual change is not possible, but only a change in outward behavior. This is an entirely different message than they tell the public, thus serving only to heighten alienation and dissolution of family ties for those who become the victims of all this. This ugly movement simply plays on fear and loathing to destroy families and family bonds while fueling hate, including self-hatred.

But don’t expect any of this to deter the hell-bent religious right.

You can e-mail Nicholas F. Benton here.