It’s the kind of hate we are so used to hearing about but still can’t quite understand where it’s coming from, mostly because you have to be an irrational nut case to comprehend it. Now, it’s not just hate against homosexuals. It’s hate on top of hate. It’s hate for not being hateful. It’s hate against anyone who doesn’t hate gays.

Matt Trewhella, founder of Missionaries to the Preborn, used his bully pulpit on a show called “In Focus,” broadcast on the Voice of Christian Youth America networks, to blast not only homosexuals for their “filthy” existence, but parents who don’t hate homosexuals for not teaching their kids to hate them.

Trewhella says in the show that allowing gay marriage will ‘totally change the culture’ of America. Then he goes on to a strange rant about how Americans are an ‘Atomistic society’ that is too busy being selfish to have kids anymore, as if Americans are just aborting fetuses left and right rather than have a child disrupt their lives. But for those who do actually, somehow, manage to resist that urge to abort every pregnancy and somehow get over their vanity to actually give birth to a child, Trewhella has some choice words:

“Your children would be getting perverted in their minds by these filthy people. I have no respect for people who are parents, who actually have children, and have no problem with homosexuality or homosexual marriage. They are the most base people on the planet to have totally abandoned every God-given vestige to protect your child from the filth of homosexuality, to blatantly go along with it is disgusting.”

Here’s the video:

Trewhella is, as you may have guessed, no stranger to stupidity. He is a convicted arsonist. He has been investigated by the FBI in connection with the murder of a doctor. He signed the “Justifiable Homicide” petition defending the murder of two doctors. His organization, Missionaries to the Preborn (whatever “preborn” means) is militant. He has openly called for arming children, saying:

“This Christmas I want you to do the most loving thing, and I want you to buy each of your children an SKS rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition.”

This is, apparently, the Voice of Christian Youth in America. I’d give my opinion of this so-called pastor, but you probably wouldn’t want to hear from such a “base” person as myself since I have taught my five girls to be decent human beings. Besides, I was raised to never speak ill of the mentally challenged.

But I do want to say this: All too often, Christian fundamentalists argue that the rhetoric against marriage equality is not about hate or intolerance. That’s simply not true. We are human. We hate what we fear. We fear what we don’t know. We don’t know what will come from change. But that’s what makes change so exciting. We don’t know what will come from it. We can make predictions, we can assume, but we will never actually know until that change happens. It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to be unsure. It’s not okay to take that fear and uncertainty and translate it into a language of hate and intolerance. As long as you keep trying to convince me that somehow a 2,000-year-old book and an invisible angry deity will send me to some unknown fiery inferno for not denouncing homosexuality, I will keep pointing out that, according to the same Bible you keep telling me is all or nothing, the tattoo of the Bible scripture on your shoulder is a sin, too.