10 Snappy Comebacks to Your Crazy Fundamentalist Relatives

Summer is coming, which means you will probably be dragged out of the safe haven of your home and family, shoved onto an airplane, and forced to spend ten days "back home" in the Straight World.

Where, inevitably, one or more of your crazy fundamentalist relatives will spend the entire 10 days hitting you with a Bible and shrieking "God hates you!", presuming that you have never heard the message of hate before.

Or, if you are not out, walking around the house muttering "God hates gay people!"

When faced with such a relative, I suggest leaving.  Get out of the house.  Go to the gym or the park.  Maybe you'll see a cute guy lifting weights.

But if you can't get away, or you are tired of the homophobic diatribes, here are 10 facts guaranteed to have an impact.  Maybe not change their mind -- haters gonna hate -- but surprise them enough to shut them up.

1. "Gay people are more likely to be religious than straights." According to a recent survey, gay people are just as likely to be religious as heterosexuals.  In fact, gay men are more likely than straight men to think that going to church is "very important" in their lives.

2. "Most churches accept gay members."  About 40% of Protestants in the United States belong to denominations that accept LGBT members.

3. "There are some gay churches." There are five Protestant denominations with a mostly gay membership.  The largest, the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, has congregations in over 40 countries around the world.

4. "There are only five verses in the Bible used to claim that God is a bigot, and they aren't about gay people at all." 

5. "There was no word for gay people in ancient Hebrew or Greek."  The word "homosexual" in your Bible is a homophobic mistranslation of the Greek  arsenokoitai ("men who have sex"), and malakoi ("men who are soft").

6. " The Sodomites weren't gay." The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is about being inhospitable to strangers, a terrible sin in desert cultures.

7. "According to the Bible, eating shrimp is worse than being gay." That verse in Leviticus, "Thou shalt not lie with man as with woman," is a reference to temple prostitution, not a general prohibition.  Leviticus also states that anyone who eats shellfish, disobeys their parents, or engages in interracial marriage should be stoned to death.

8. "Most straight weddings have a celebration of a gay couple." The Bible verse often used in wedding ceremonies: "Where you go, I will go...your people will be my people," was spoken by Ruth to Naomi.  A same-sex couple.

9. "Jesus made a pro-gay statement." Jesus didn't mention gay people, but he did mention eunuchs, who often engaged in same-sex activity.  He liked them.

10.  "If God hates me so much, why didn't He say anything about it when I talked to Him this morning?"

Shock-headed Peter: Castration and Gay Panic in a German Children's Story

When I was in Germany a few years ago, my friend Doc took me to a restaurant called the Struwwelpeter Apfelweinwirtschaft (The Slovenly Peter Apple Wine Tavern).

Its logo was a boy with wild blond hair and long sharp nails like Edward Scissorhands.

Nearby there was a statue of the same boy, along with some other children.

"You've never heard of Struwwelpeter?" Doc asked.  "He's a national hero, like Bart Simpson in America!"









Turns out that all German schoolchildren read Der Struwwelpeter, written and illustrated by Heinrich Hoffmann (1809-1894), about children who misbehave and get their comeuppance -- usually a violent retribution.

A girl who plays with matches burns to death.
Kaspar, who won't eat his soup, wastes away and dies.
Hans, whose "head is always in the clouds," falls into a river.
Robert, who goes outside in a storm, blows away.

Hoffmann was a psychiatrist, though he lived before Freud's discovery of the unconscious, and many of his stories have been analyzed for their psychosexual undertones

The most obvious gay connection is in the story of Konrad, der Daumenlutscher (the Thumb-Sucker).  

Though his mother warns him to not suck his thumb, Konrad persists in the bad habit.  Then he encounters the Tailor with the Scissors (in modern versions, the monstrous Scissor-Man), who cuts both of his thumbs off.  

Oral fixation, symbolic castration, gay anxiety, and a 19th-century Freddie Kruger!

The stories have been translated into several languages.  They were adapted into a 1955 movie (available on youtube), an operetta (1992) and a musical (1998).  

In 2010, Richard Mansfield filmed an explicitly homoerotic shadow-puppet version,  of the Daumenlutscher story, "Suck-a-Thumb." It made the rounds of the gay film festivals.

In an even more explicitly gay sequel, Konrad is sent to a psychiatric hospital for a brutal "cure."

Don't worry, that's a door handle, not what you're thinking.

Bible Beefcake

When I was a kid, our church forbade any books except the Bible and authorized Nazarene books.  My parents were more lenient, permitting comic books and Scholastic Book Club selections, but the Bible had an advantage -- you could read it anywhere, during choir practice or Sunday school or a screaming hellfire sermon, and the adults would pay no attention -- or they would think you were especially devout, as you got your quota of beefcake, bonding, and sex.  Not to mention violence.

1. Beefcake.  David looks like a veritable Conan the Barbarian, wearing only a loincloth, wielding a magic sword as he stands over the slain Goliath.  And who knew that Cain assaulted Abel by kicking him in the crotch while they were both naked?

2. Bonding.  David and Jonathan had a love "surpassing the love of women."  That is, their homoromance far surpassed hetero-romance.  If only David didn't insist on bring Goliath's head along on their dates.  And why did Joseph reject women's advances to spend all of his time schmoozing with the Pharaoh ? 

3. Sex.  After the Flood, Noah was lying around drunk when his son Ham "uncovered his nakedness."  But to "uncover" someone's "nakedness" means doing more than sneaking a quick peek, and God got so upset over the incest that He decreed that Ham and all of his descendants (the Africans) should be slaves.  The Biblical support of slavery caused the first chip in the edifice of my fundamentalism.

Fast-forward a few thousand years to the New Testament, and Philip the Apostle sees an Ethiopian eunuch on the road, invites him to spend the night in his tent, and in the morning baptizes him.  Eunuchs are castrated, unable to have sex with women.  So who do they have sex with?  Just ask Philip.  

See also: The Sacrifice of Isaac.