Audio: Richard Land equates serving a gay couple with serving a KKK induction ceremony

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06/05/2014

by Jeremy Hooper

Prominent evangelical Richard Land, past president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Liberty Commission and current head of the Southern Evangelical Seminary, is sitting in for Tony Perkins on the Family Research Council president's daily radio show. On yesterday's edition, Land ably continued Perkins' tradition of unwittingly fostering LGBT rights when he directly compared a baker's need to bake a wedding cake for customers who happen to be gay to an African American baker's being forced to serve the KKK:

SOURCE: Tony Perkins' Washington Watch [FRC]

Land actually made this claim twice. He repeated it just a few minutes later (at the 10:20 mark, if you care).

This gives us great insight into how oppositional voices like Land really see us. He does, in fact, think that my marriage, my family, and my "lifestyle" is as much of a threat to him as the KKK is to Black Americans. Never mind that I don't have even the beginning of a desire to deny his due rights, deserved freedoms, general welfare, family dynamic, or overall peace of mind in any way, shape, or form. Most people can't even fathom the idea that a gay couple's request for pastry could be anywhere near the same ballpark as a KKK induction ceremony. People like Richard Land, however, have so fully bought into the years and years of attack lines that his movement has created in order to dehumanize LGBT people that many of them really do see us as an insidious threat. It's not all just bluster—some of them really hold these ideas in their minds. The anti-gay movement's purposely pervasive condemnations have pervaded their views in a way that strips us of all humanity and strip them of any potential compassion toward our lives and loves.

Like I said, it actually helps us when these unwitting allies talk in this disgusting way. It sure doesn't help the American psyche, though. And of course it actively hurts millions of LGBT people who live under the guardianship of people who follow the advice of people like Richard Land.

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