20 dead in Orlando gay club shooting

[Esquilax]

Now I realize this is AF and the tendency is to lump all religions in together. I've already seen lots of comments equating Christians and Christianity with Islam and Muslims. Say what you want about Christians, call us bigots, etc.. The fact is Christians, to the extent they care, will preach or verbally condemn. A few refuse to bake cakes or photograph gay weddings. I think there is a world of difference between not baking a cake and shooting 50 gays. Those of you who have made that false equivalency, I hope you are satisfied. You've made your point at the expense of distracting everyone from the real enemies.

Now, I know you're ignoring me, because you're a petulant intellectual coward too invested in your philosophical nothings to countenance consistent challenges to them, but I also won't allow you to sit there and pretend that your religion plays no part in the culture of violence and dehumanization the LGBTQ community is forced to live in. I'm not going to stand by, in essence, and allow you to make this about bigoted bakers, and shovel the rest of the veritable shit mountain your religion is based on under the rug:

Christian pastor says gay people are worthy of death.

Christian pastor suggest homoseuals either remain celibate or "be put to death."

Pastor Anderson, who spent a lot of yesterday gloating over this, called the Orlando massacre "good news," because 50 gay people were dead.

Christian pastor equates homosexuality with serial killings.

I could keep going, but I'd be here a while, and I think I've made my point. Misrepresentations are part of your stock in trade, Wooters, but this isn't about bakers and florists refusing services, it's also about the horrendous rhetoric spouted by figures in your religion with their own followings, which you and yours seem content to ignore and remain silent over. It's about the tenets of your religion, amplified and promulgated by whole segments of your religion, that serve to Other the gay community and turn them into monsters in the eyes of fanatics within your ranks that will either take it seriously and act upon it, or not do that, but when your best argument is "yeah, but people don't take those guys seriously," then your problem isn't one where you can just say this rhetoric doesn't exist, or that people in your in-group don't sell it. The Orlando shooter wasn't some random immigrant, he'd spent some time in the US, to my knowledge. This is the culture he baked in, Muslim or no, where your side of the aisle has spent incalculable man-hours doing their darnedest to make it socially acceptable to demean and harm gay people, and in America they speak far louder than ISIS does. People are complex comminglings of ideas and motivations, and to attempt to make this all about ISIS, as some others have attempted to do here too, is simplistic and inaccurate at best, and dangerously naive and dishonest at worst.