Southern Decadence

The French Quarter of New Orleans at night is not the kind of place one would take children. It is party central all the time, with lots of jazz, alcohol, and sex. Hawkers invite you into explicit shops and pictures of people having sex are placed in the windows to attract the crowd in to live sex shows. Mardi Gras in the spring is one of the biggest parties thrown world-wide. Overwhelmingly these events are geared toward heterosexuals except for one weekend a year.

Labor Day weekend thousands of gays gather in New Orleans for Southern Decadence. This year a group of so-called Christians decided to protest the gays coming to town. Reverend Grant Storms gathered some conservatives to carry signs with hate messages to make sure that gays knew they weren’t welcome. Their signs encouraged the idea that God hates gays and has brought AIDS as a punishment. It is the same old lie that has been told for years now. The problem is some people believe this bigoted Christian nonsense.

One man believed it to the point that he took matters into his own hands. Tod Martinek decided to go to Southern Decadence in order to hurt or kill someone at the festival, according to what he told police. He stabbed a 53 year old man from behind and the attacker may be charged with a hate crime. I believe there is a direct connection between the hate mongers like Storms, Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, and many others, and violence against gays. They are responsible for people thinking that they should perform their godly duty and attack homosexuals. It is the next logical step in their message of hatred toward people they know little if anything about.

The interesting thing about the Southern Decadence protestors is that they aren’t there the remainder of the year when it is far more wild. They choose not to protest partying, but to protest gay people partying, and in the process promote violence and hate. In the Bible, Jesus called that kind of thing hypocrisy. Christ never corrected partygoers. He partied with them. He never condemned those everyone else thought were sinners, but he had harsh words only for religious hypocrites. Matthew records that Jesus said to those who condemned others, "You brood of vipers and snakes, How will you escape being condemned to Hell?" (Matthew 23:33)

Jesus would likely be saying the same thing to those who protest and harass gays simply because we are different. There is no room in the genuine Gospel message for hate of any kind, and should be no room to exclude anyone from equal participation in Christianity. There is definitely a double standard in the thinking of hypocrites who promote hate and violence for some, while claiming to love and be merciful. I think they missed Christ’s point.