Federal Hate Crime Law signed today.

Excerpt from Spring Break Missionaries:

The Moral Majority once again came to Trinity Baptist Church.

Our first period class had been cancelled due to the presentation, AMERICA, YOU'RE TOO YOUNG TO DIE. It was difficult to tell who was meant to be converted. The students were already on Falwell's side, after all, we wrote letters for him twice that year!

We gathered to watch a multi-media presentation complete with singing, dancing (fundamentalists called them 'stage movements'), and video clips of senators, congressmen, aborted fetuses, and grind houses. The feeling received after such a presentation was, "I'm glad I go to a Christian school where drugs and violence are not a part of everyday life!"

After the presentation, we returned to our homerooms waiting to be dismissed to our second period class. A student expressed disgust over a photo of two homosexuals.

"In my day, we knew how to deal with faggots." a teacher said, "They used to gather at Friendship Fountain. When I was going to high school, a bunch of my friends used to go over and pick on them. We once knocked a guy's head into the side of the fountain! He was bleeding like a squashed tomato."

"That's awful!" said a girl.

"They were queer!"

The boys nodded their heads.

"They're still hanging out at Friendship Fountain." One guy said, "I would have done the same thing."

Something about my teacher bragging about violence bothered me.

"There's a teacher at Trinity who brags about beating up gays. Do you think we should tell Brother Gray?" I asked a youth leader.

"Why should it concern you?"

I asked a teacher his opinion.

"Are you thinking of turning gay, Dwayne?"

"A gay person cannot be saved." It was explained to me, "The Book of Romans teaches that God gave men up to unclean lusts. When God gives men up and withdraws His Spirit from them, nothing will stop them from perverting God's plan. Once they step over the boundary into homosexuality, they cannot be saved---even if they want to! As far as God is concerned, their souls are dead. God looks upon them as animals."

"I know they can't be saved." I argued, "But what about public relations? Wouldn't it hurt our testimony if people knew we were beating up gays? It might keep them unsaved."

"Why should we worry about what the world thinks?" another friend shrugged, "God does not want us to be cruel to animals, but if it happens God won't send anyone to Hell for being cruel."

NOTE: To this day, whenever the scene comes up in Bible Madness where my fundamentalist alter ego expresses the same sympathies, I still have people, who knew me then, and should know better, treating this viewpoint like it was an aberration on my part.

"You won't go to Hell if you're gay! When did we ever say that?"

Plenty of times! In those days, however, I wasn't going around with a video camera documenting people's opinions.

Talk to any gay person who went to a fundamentalist school during the seventies and listen to what they say!

How can fundamentalists have such short attention spans when it comes to their history of gay bashing? They'll conveniently forget how they stood against inter-racial marriages, condemned gays to hell, yet still remember everything the Catholic church did to Baptists hundreds of years ago.

Interesting.

Now, if we could only pass some legislation regarding corporate responsibility regarding child abuse in places heavily frequented by children.