Sickness, misery, and death?

It seems a recent trend by those defending the Fundie's traditional stance on gays is to not use Scripture, but to warn of Dire Consequences. The argument is something like this: Homosexuality is a lifestyle full of sickness, misery, and death. Christians are not acting with the love of God when accommodating that pain. Instead, the compassionate action is to oppose homosexuality and lead the sufferers to God.

The Dire Consequences argument has a long and deep history in Christianity and has long been applied to everyone who is not Christian -- the godless simply must be miserable and joyless, especially compared to the rich rewards and blessings of the faithful.

This is an argument that I personally find more and more distasteful as I get to know non-Christians who are not miserable and joyless (and Christians who are). And though the Fundies don't see it, being gay does not consign you to a life of being miserable (except, perhaps, if you're growing up in a Fundie household). And that is the first problem of Dire Consequences theology.

The second problem is that to portray gays as miserable and joyless (all you happy gays out there are just -- hmpf -- ruining everything!) Dire Consequences theologists dig up all kinds of statistics to prove gays are full of sickness and will die young. Never mind that all these statistics were created by crackpot scientists. But as regular people find that gays are just like them they will lose trust in Dire Consequences theology. Soon the only people who believe it are the ones that manufacture it.

In a similar slavish insistence on religion over reality, here is a story about an ex-gay program. The program insisted (as they all do) there was a particular cause of homosexuality that could be cured. If a gay man thought about his youth and childhood the leadership said he wasn't trying hard enough and supplied him with a template with which to construct a personal mythology. Parents Weekend would come and Mom and Dad would be subjected to the same treatment -- you did something to make your kid gay, let's root it out. This, of course, caused a great deal of angst all around. Yes, there was a lot of delusional thinking at these meetings. And none of it was being done by the gay kids nor by their parents.