Do I Laugh Or Cry Over Right Wing Despair Over Gay Marriage?

Lots of people were happy over last week's U.S.
Supreme Court ruling regarding gay marriage.... 

I admit I've been pretty snarky the past few days about the over the top reactions among some conservatives regarding the U.S. Supreme Court gay marriage decision.

It started moments after news broke. 

The ever-reliable Bryan Fischer of American Family Association immediately released a seriers of melodramatic Tweets soon after the Supreme Court announced its decision:

First he compared it to the 9-11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York:

"June 26, 2015. The day the twin towers of truth and righteousness were blown up by moral jihadists."

Then, oddly, he started channeling Don McClean, famous for the song "American Pie"

"I saw Satan dancing with delight the day the musti died in the United States of America."

I know I'm being too literal here, but I heard lots of music once the gay marriage decision came out. Happy partiers, especially gay ones, bring on the music in happy times. But what do I know?

Republican presidential candidates' were quick to follow Fischer and his ilk:

Bobby Jindal had one of the better ones:

"This decision will pave the way for an all out assault against the religious freedom rights of Christians who disagree with this decision.....I will never stop fighting for religious liberty and I hope our leaders in D.C. join me."

That's picking your battles, Bobby! Fight a nonexistent battle against an "assault on religious freedom." As if anyone cares what goes on in the church you go to.

....but Bryan Fischer was one of the right
wingers who was VERY displeased.

Predictably, the activists started blaming bad weather on The Gays. Any time there is bad weather anywhere, be it a storm, flood, drought, heat wave, cold wave or hail, it's because of The Gays.

If we gay people have so much control over the weather, why can't I make it stop raining so I can get some work done out in my garden?

Anyway, the day after the same sex marriage ruling, there was a pretty good thunderstorm in Washington DC. Imagine! A thunderstorm in humid DC in the middle of summer!

The storms caused some local flash floods, and Todd Starnes of Fox News or shall I say Fox "News" had this to say:

"Record breaking floods (editor's note: Not really) have inundated Washington DC just days after the Supreme Court decided they knew better than God. I seem to remember another time in history when there was a record breaking flood."

Uh, yeah, there have been other record breaking floods. I suppose the Biblical Noah's Ark one, if it happened, was probably record breaking.  And........?

The wackadoodles on the right are now expecting a cascade of new awful things now that gay marriage is legal. Tom DeLay probably topped them all, explaining there's a secret Department of Justice memo that will now legalize bestiality and pedophilia.

He hasn't offered any proof, but hey, trust him! Why not?

This all leads me to a Washington Monthly article by David Atkins on why the religious right is so, SO upset over gay marriage.

From their worldview there are a lot of things to be upset about. Why gay marriage especially.

Evangelicals are also upset over abortion. As the Washington Monthly points out, if you go with the evangelicals' line of thinking, this makes sense. They think that life starts at the moment of conception, so if you kill off a small collection of cells that could potentiallly become a human being, yeah, I can see their anger.

However, if two guys or two gals marry each other, nobody gets hurt or killed. So we're good, right?

Wrong, apparently.

Atkins writes:

"An array of obviously specious slippery slope arguments notwithstanding, even under the Christianist worldview marriage equality hurts no one but the supposed sinners in question, who will either repent and be saved or not - but their souls are subject to their own God-given free will. 

It's not as if LGBT people haven't heard the 'good news' from evangelicals before; what they do with the 'information is their business and their potential salvation is entirely in their own hands."

So why can't evangelicals just keep giving their, ugh, 'good news' to us and if we don't take the bait, fughettaboutit.

Well, Atkins explains this in is Washington Monthly article, too:

"Some of the more unhinged on the religious right believe that God is actively protecting the United States because of America's religiosity, and God's grace will be removed by cultural coarsening. But again, so what? The United States is not Jerusalem. It's existence is obviously not part of any scripture or prophecy. 

In the supposed end times, the entire world is supposed to come under the spell of the Anti-Christ, which means that the U.S. will either exist or fall under Satan's dominion. In either case, the removal of divine protection isn't much to be feared, as it seemingly must happen sooner or later."

Atkins points out the radical right is not railing under other sins, like divorce, selfishness and hypocracy. Maybe because these yellers and screamers are hypocrites themselves?

I can only come to exactly the same conclusion Atkins did in his article. The right wingers are are using religion as, as Atkins puts it the "most socially acceptable veneer for exercising that bigotry. Which is really what it's all about."