Why The Stranger Accepted the Ad on Page 15 of This Week's Paper

In April, Pastor Ken Hutcherson threw a shit fit after the Snoqualmie Valley Record refused to run an ad similar to this one.

This month, The Stranger received our own ad submission from Hutcherson, and we figured: We’ll run it, take his money, and donate all of it—$2,115—to his archenemies at the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. If you’d like to honor Hutch’s idiocy with your own donation, you can do so here.

As for the “facts” in his Stranger ad:

They are false. Obviously.

Fighting against homophobia does not cause you or anyone you know to become a homosexual (though it will cause you to become a better person). Being a homosexual does not cause HIV/AIDS any more than, say, being born with the body of an NFL linebacker causes a person to grow up to play for the Seahawks and then, later in life, become an evangelical pastor who exhibits symptoms of football-induced chronic traumatic brain injury.

Yes, gay men in the United States contract HIV at higher rates than any other group. But in South Africa, where HIV is believed to be more prevalent than in any other country in the world, HIV is more common among women than men—and no one is arguing that being female causes HIV. What causes HIV is being exposed to HIV. Protect yourself and your partners.

Yes, homosexuals are at higher risk of suicide. (Because of persecution by people like Hutcherson, among other reasons.) Yes, male homosexuals are prohibited from giving blood. (Because certain politicians listen to people like Hutcherson.) Yes, one million people are living with HIV in America, and that number seems to be increasing. (For black women, this increase is occurring at nearly 15 times the rate of white women—because, among other reasons, people like Hutcherson encourage black gay men to stay in the closet, thus fostering the “down low” sex habits that leave many unsuspecting women HIV-positive.) No, the median age of death for gay men and lesbians is not 42 and 45, respectively. (These “death facts,” and the count of sex partners had by “practicing homosexuals,” come not from the CDC, as Hutcherson claims, but from a long-discredited 1978 screed. What part of “Thou shalt not bear false witness” does Hutch not understand?)

As for the following statement in Hutcherson's ad:

Rainbows are caused when sunlight passes through water droplets in the earth’s atmosphere. That sunlight gets refracted and reflected by the water droplets in a complicated way, producing a beautiful progression of colors that can be apprehended by the human eye. God doesn’t poop rainbows, and neither does this lobster.

Happy Pride!