From Jimmy Swaggart’s sermon this weekend:
“I’m trying to find the correct name for it … this utter absolute, asinine, idiotic stupidity of men marrying men. … I’ve never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I’m gonna be blunt and plain: if one ever looks at me like that, I’m gonna kill him and tell God he died.”
Fundamentalist death threats aimed at 10% of the population — imagine substituting any other minority in there (easy to imagine, actually: “If a nigra looks at my daughter like that, I’m gonna kill him and tell God he died”).
Hard to believe? Watch the video: http://www.oliverwillis.com/stuff/swaggart.wmv
And don’t stop until the very end, when he gets a big round of applause with the words “our president, George Bush” and his proposed constitutional amendment. This is the face of the base, and it’s terrifying.
I have several things to add:
1. Jimmy Swaggart is in little danger of being hit on by a homosexual.
2. What the fuck is an “abomnation”? There’s an i in there, genius. All three times.
3. As for these “abomnations,” it always bugs me how selective the Christians are with that. They seize on Leviticus 20:13 (“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”) and on Leviticus 18:22 (“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”) But a search for “abomination” (with an i) in the King James Bible comes up with a lot of results, many of which lead to the inevitable question, why don’t fundamentalist Christians keep kosher?
Some favorites:
Leviticus 11:10-11: “10 And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you: 11 They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination.” (Note that that’s two abominations, as many as homosexuals get. No more lobster dinners, Christians!)
Deuteronomy 22:5: “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.” (No more pants suits for you, Christian ladies!)
Deuteronomy 27:15: “Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image, an abomination unto the LORD, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and putteth it in a secret place. And all the people shall answer and say, Amen.” (No more Franklin Mint goodies for you, Christians! In fact, no more coins at all!)
Proverbs 11:1: “A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight.” (Make sure your bathroom scale is calibrated, or it’s hell for you!)
Proverbs 12:22: “Lying lips are abomination to the LORD: but they that deal truly are his delight.” (Guess Dubya and Colin Powell and all them folks are an abomination to the LORD.)
And none of this even begins to get into the zillions of weird Levitical laws that Christians are more than happy to ignore. Basically, if you’re gonna start throwing around lines from the Books of Moses as your justification, you damn well better be an Orthodox Jew, because Orthodox Jews are the only people crazy enough to follow each and every commandment in that wacky Ancient Near Eastern epic. (No, they no longer sprinkle blood around with their thumbs in the Tabernacle, but at least each missing sacrifice is replaced with a prayer.)
If you can stomach shellfish, you have no business condemning other people’s Levitical “abomnations.”