Why I Don't Trust Homophobes

In other words, "Thanks, faggot, for the math. Have an apple. No, not that one. Eat this one." - My guess as to what British authorities said to Alan Turing before his death by poisoned apple. Link to the Towleroad post found here.

If you think that this mindset is gone, you're delusional to the point of needing clinical assistance. Christians today know better than to say things like Phil Robertson recently uttered, unless they're in a setting of fellow bigots, homophobes, and misogynists, which he thought he was. I'd wager that he has no regrets about what he said, only to whom he said it.

Recall, also, that recent polls have shown that people claim not to harbor homophobic attitudes in a general or public setting, but will admit in private that they don't really care much for gays or what might happen to them. 

Now, combine those two things and you get a sense of what could happen and I will even go so far as to say what will happen unless a disruptive movement comes along and changes the projected course of our future history. I believe that there will be a gay holocaust, or homocaust as I've dubbed it. Look at the places today where bias and hate have sway: Sub-Saharan Africa, where a gay genocide is already underway, funded by American Fundamentalist/Dominionist/Evangelical/Extremist Christians; there's Russia where a coverup of the national homophobic zeitgeist is being carried out, at least until the Winter Olympics are over, then you can bet that there will be deaths; and right here in the US of A, where people like Phil Robertson not only exist, but they're cheered on and funded by their redneck and other hick supporters who think that he was just expressing his First Amendment rights. Which rights, many of them no doubt hold, include 'Matthew Sheparding' a few of us. And by "a few", I mean 'all'.

If you've ever visited a concentration camp and spent time reading or listening to the accompanying guides, the common thread among them is that the first internees didn't see it coming. They thought, oh, it can't happen here!  Uh huh. Visit Dachau, and as  you enter the camp and are passing through the museum on your way to the yard beyond, look carefully at the photos of the gorgeous German - not Jewish - young men who were used by the Nazis for "medical" experiments, most of whom are dead in the photos. They weren't Jewish:  They were gay.

If you think it can't happen here...  Well, I hope you're right, but I believe you're wrong.
(Also, read Sinclair Lewis's 'It Can't Happen Here', published in 1935)

Extremist Dominionist Christians

Going back to the early-1980s at least, extremist Christians and now the Dominionist movement, have wanted to create "God's Army" within the framework of the US military. I served under an extremist Christian in my military intelligence unit in Augsburg, Germany, who was on a campaign to eliminate gays, atheists, Jews and Muslims from the US Army. Incidentally, he had the lowest reenlistment rate in the entire US military, so bad that it warranted a Congressional investigation. Not only was he discouraging good soldiers from reenlisting, he was robbing the military of valuable, experienced manpower - each linguist, for example, cost the military millions to investigate their backgrounds for the necessary security clearance, to train them in their target language, and for further training in the specifics of their jobs.

The 'War with Islam' this BBC article references isn't new, it's just more contemporary, and is just the tip of the iceberg of the larger extremist Christian movement.

Military discharge of gays prior to DADT

People forget that prior to DADT, it was simply illegal to be gay or lesbian and serve in the US military. When I served, our battalion commander initiated a witch hunt to eliminate gays, lesbians and atheists (while it isn't/wasn't illegal to be an atheist and serve, he looked for any excuse, discharging one linguist for being 2 pounds over the weight limit). Since I fall into 2 of those 3 categories, I was high on his list to discharge. Luckily, I was at the end of my term of service, so I left voluntarily, although he tried to retain me so that he could have a court martial. That would have resulted in incarceration at the Federal holding barracks in Mannheim, Germany. He made very clear what he wished to do, which worked in my favor. I was able to enlist the aid of the then-Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sam Nunn, D-GA (who intervened only from a cost standpoint since my term of service was over), in order to get out without being jailed. The commander had gone to great lengths to carry out his witch hunt, using two junior enlisted men to seduce soldiers of rank in order to prosecute and discharge them. The plan was to claim use of force and fraternization although force was never used and the younger soldiers weren't in my, or any of the other affected soldiers' chain-of-command. It was a witch hunt, plain and simple.

Just after I left the unit and the Army, Congress sent a delegation to Augsburg to find out why this battalion had the lowest re-enlistment rate...not just in Europe...not just in the Army...but in the entire US military. Since we were an Intelligence battalion, US taxpayers had spent MILLIONS of dollars training each one of us, sending us to language school for a year or more, lengthy and entailed technical training, not to mention the year-long investigations into the soldiers and their families going back 3 generations for the required security clearances. He lost his command, but in an upside-down turn of events, went on to get his full bird (the rank of colonel). It was at that time (the late 80s, early 90s) that Fundamentalist Christians were infiltrating the military...all branches...in order to create what they thought of as God's Army. And that always made me wonder...if their god is so powerful...why does he need an army?