We noted in December that Highlights, the magazine for kids, was going to start including gay couples in their pages. But because they weren’t planning on denouncing, demonizing, or discrediting their relationships, conservative Christian groups were furious: How dare a magazine reflect a reality that we try to avoid?

Groups like the badly misnamed One Million Moms (which has 3,591 Twitter followers) and the American Family Association launched a petition and called on their supporters to call the magazine’s headquarters to whine about the change.

But that’s nothing compared to what anti-gay Pastor Kevin Swanson said on his “Generations” radio show this week. He compared the folks at Highlights to ISIS. Because they’re both promoting sin.

“So now, here’s Highlights magazine, an American kids’ magazine promoting homosexuality amongst kids,” Swanson fumed, “and now ISIS is teaching kids how to kill people. Now, I got to thinking: Which sin is worse? Homosexuality or murder? Which is worse? Are we really that much better than ISIS?”

Swanson, like other conservative Christians, wrongly equates not ignoring the existence of gay couples with “promoting” homosexuality… as if you can magically turn kids gay by showing them pictures of gay people.

But sides that, consider what he’s saying: Highlights will feature gay couples who are presumably in loving relationships. ISIS kills people. There’s no comparison.

Suggesting otherwise is the kind of propaganda that Hitler would admire. Is Swanson really that much better than Hitler?

Or would he be angry at that comparison since it’s obviously unfair?

This isn’t Swanson’s first time saying awful things. He once said he wouldn’t buy Girl Scout cookies because he didn’t want to “support lesbianism,” he compared gay people to Nazis and cannibals, said the victims at Pulse nightclub died because God had given up on them, and said the “sin of homosexuality” is “worthy of death.”

That’s what “loving the sinner” looks like in practice.

(via Right Wing Watch)



