By now you’ve probably heard or read about the Friday Night Massacre of Christians in the Castro that allegedly took place last Friday evening in San Francisco. It’s a given that anytime the leading homo-sex-obsessed dim bulbs of the radical religious right jump on the same story and start yammering about an incident involving peaceful Christians set upon upon by an angry mob of militant homosexuals there is bound to something completely fishy in their account of what actually took place.
According to self-professed ex-gay, ex-addict, ex-con James Hartline, who recently tried to pin the California wildfires on gay people, Sodom Has Resurrected: Video of Horrible Gay Assault Against Christians. Professional homophobe and gay porn aficionado Peter LaBarbera, of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, true to form, also wants a steaming wad of that hot, homo-hating action: ‘H8ing’ the Christians: Video Shows Aftermath of Homosexual Mob Attack on Christians in San Francisco’s Castro District.
And these ‘mo-haters aren’t alone. Via Joe. My. God, we learn that veteran anti-gay-rally-organizer Lou Engel has christened the incident, The Elijah-Jezebel Showdown. Now that’s Christianist melodrama on a Cecil B DeMille scale! Joe has a video segment from Engel’s yammerings that features one of the Castro crusaders who, with tears in her eyes, alleges she and the others were violently attacked in the Castro.
As for the whole peaceful Christian myth, Joe points to Engel’s involvement with Joel’s Army, an extremist militant fringe group of Dominionists that wants to bring the United States of America under the Christianist equivalent of Islamic Sharia law. Under their rule, gay people and other sex criminals would be stoned to death in the public square.
If you’re shaking you head and saying that’s too crazy to be true, or that can’t happen here, read the Southern Poverty Law Center’s dossier on Joel’s Army. For the record, SPLC has been fighting hate and hate groups like the Klan and Christian Identity for 37 years. Here’s just a bit of what they say about Joel’s Army:
Despite their overt militancy, there’s no evidence Joel’s Army followers have committed any acts of violence. But critics warn that actual bloodletting may only be a matter of time for a movement that casts itself as God’s avenging army.
Those sounding the alarm about Joel’s Army are not secular foes of the Christian Right, few of whom are even aware of the movement or how widespread it’s become in the past decade. Instead, Joel’s Army critics are mostly conservative Christians, either neo-Pentecostals who left the movement in disgust or evangelical Christians who fear that Joel’s Army preachers are stealing their flocks, even sending spies to infiltrate their own congregations and sway their young people to heresy. And they say the movement is becoming frightening.
“The pitch and intensity of the military rhetoric of this branch of the global Dominionist movement has substantially increased since the beginning of 2008,” writes The Discernment Research Group, a Christian watchdog group that tracks what they call heresies or cults within Christianity. “One can only wonder how long before this transforms into real warfare with actual warriors.”
Peaceful Christians attacked in the Castro?
I first read about this story last Saturday morning, the day after the incident, at Lavender Newswire.
Yes On 8 Thugs Take Page Out of Fred Phelps Playbook, Try to Disrupt Funeral in Castro; Christian Street Preachers Run Out of Neighborhood
This could be one incident or two; it’s not clear.
First, I saw this on the 11:00 p.m. news (local NBC affiliate), but I haven’t found any videos or links online: A memorial service was being held tonight in the Castro for someone identified only as “an AIDS activist” (I don’t think it was Hank Walsh, whose memorial was slated for last Monday), and a small group of protesters showed up yelling “Yes on 8! Yes on 8!”
Real classy. Not.
Lavender Newswire provides an excerpt from and a link to this article at KTVU News:
Anger Over Prop. 8 Erupts In San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO — In San Francisco’s Castro District, people on both sides of the same-sex marriage controversy confronted each other on Friday night, as police tried to keep the peace. Proposition 8 passed in a close vote and eliminated the right of same-sex couples to marry.
Members of the gay community said that almost every Friday night, a Christian group meets at the corner of Castro and 18th Streets. They try to convert gays and lesbians into a straight lifestyle.
This Friday night, the message didn’t go over well. Some gays and lesbians reacted by trying to chase the group out of the Castro.
“Their rights were respected,” said Joe Schmitz, an opponent of Prop 8. “They got a chance to go ahead and pray on the sidewalk and I had the opportunity to express my freedom of speech which is telling them to get out of my neighborhood.”
San Francisco Police officers in riot gear formed a line and escorted the religious group into a van to safely get them out of the area.
Members of the gay community insisted that their reaction to the Christian group was spontaneous. “It was not an organized thing. We’re tired of it. It’s not religious. It’s not a racial thing. It’s about hate. We’re trying to send a message across the world that we’re standing up and we don’t want this to go on anymore,” said Adam Quintero.
According to their own account, the Christian proselytizers refused the warnings of the police:
When it was getting more heated, the cops [said warnings] like, “You guys should leave.” and Roger said “We want to stay.”
And, they claim they were sexually molested:
It wasn’t long before the violence turned to perversion. They were touching and grabbing me, and trying to shove things in my butt, and even trying to take off my pants – basically trying to molest me.
Trying to shove things in my butt? At that moment, according to an eyewitness, 15 to 20 officers wearing riot gear were already on the scene and had formed a protective line around the so-called street preachers.
The Bay Area Reporter has what boils down to a he-said-she-said account of the incident with more details.
From The Bay Area Reporter:
Missy Huff, a 21-year-old with Promised Land Fellowship, says they were just singing when “a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence – approached them and ‘started getting pretty upset.‘”
[ … ]
Huff said the Sister, who apparently was Timothy Ryan, also known as Sister Mary Timothy Simplicity, approached another of the group and said things like, “We don’t need to be saved. How dare you come out here.”
Ryan told the Bay Area Reporter in an e-mail what he said was, “Do you have absolutely no respect for our community? Why tonight and why in front of [Hank Wilson's] altar? Why is it always the Castro? We do not need to be saved and we are not a ‘broken’ community!”
Wilson was a longtime gay and AIDS activist who died November 9. Friends had set up the altar after his death last week.
Regular readers might remember my post about AIDS and queer community activists, Hank Wilson and Noel Walsh, who both recently passed away. In that post I mentioned, “A temporary memorial/shrine has been set up at 18th & Castro in San Francisco for those wishing to pay their respects and leave flowers.”
Where did these peaceful Christians decided to set up shop in the Castro? You guessed it.
The truth is these militant Christianists have been showing up in gay neighborhoods and at gay events, including funerals and memorial services, for decades with their bullhorns, their Bibles and their God Abhors You banners. When they don’t play by the rules or follow police orders and they end up in the slammer, it’s always the same cry-baby laments: “They’re violating our religious freedoms,” and “we were set upon by an angry mob of militant homosexuals when we were simply peacefully praying and preaching the Word of God.”
Theirs are the tactics of Westboro Baptist Church, the Christianist militias, and the Ku Klux Klan: Disruption, disrespect and the dissemination of fear. Their brand of Christianity is the Christianity that meets epochal natural disasters with truckloads of Bibles instead of humanitarian aid. These are the same militant Christianists that march into non-Christian countries to proselytize and convert the infidels, and who, when they’re tossed in prison or executed, shriek “Christianity is under attack.”
Why should the Castro, of all places, have to be tolerant of invading gangs of homo-hating Bible-thumpers whose transparent agenda is disruption, disrespect and conversion?
Enough is enough. When these militant Warriors-for-the-Lord in sheep’s clothing show up in our neighborhoods and at our events, let them know as loudly as you like that you don’t appreciate their presence. Drown them out, but as Joe. My. God. thoughtfully advises, “Don’t touch. Don’t hit. Don’t throw.”
Read more at Box Turtle Bulletin and Truth Wins Out:
- About those “Peaceful Christians” In the Castro
- S.F. Gays Practiced Peaceful Defense against Violent Theocrats
Click for Printable Version
Better yet, just point at them and laugh hysterically.
I almost puked last night. I’ve been watching more FOX News and Bill-o, just to “keep my enemies closer”.
Yesterday Bill-o has a nice, sweet, “innocent” young woman describe the “pain” she experienced while using her religion to harass and persecute gays. YES – if YOUR religion represents ANTI-GAY tenets, YOUR RELIGION is a threat.
Her final words? She just wished we knew that she “loved us” and we should not think she is trying to hurt us in any way. [I can't paraphrase well....I'm still livid]
I do NOT blam ethe man who took her bible and hit her over the head with it; what her religion has done to my own life is far, far worse than her little bump on the head.
Another tactic I like to use;
Surround them, hold hands, and sing “YES, JESUS LOVES ME”. LOUDLY.
Where is our guerilla musical theater? We have the talent and creativity to counter-protest in AMAZING ways….plus we’d be pretty freakin’ entertaining.
>>>I do NOT blame the man who took her bible and hit her over the head with it; what her religion has done to my own life is far, far worse than her little bump on the head.
Yes. The Bible tells us not to judge, so we shouldn’t judge our brother for whacking the rhymes-with-rich, as Joan Collins once put it, up the side of her head. But it’s in our best interest to remain non-violent.
And, I’m still having a shrimp cocktail with my martini at six. It might be an abomination, but it’s a delicious abomination.
It is sad to me that some of my Christian brethren, including the good reverend James Hartline, see our faith as an opportunity to cast the cold eye of judgment on others
Gay marriage should not be allowed. Rather, it should be encouraged.
There is no way I’d describe Hartline as “good.”
He’s also blamed the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake on gay people during a recent radio interview.
Words like “deranged” and “demented” come to mind, not “good.”
I do appreciate your support of marriage equality.