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06/05/2015
Their rhetoric has turned macabre and concerning
For the past ten years, I've wondered what the opposition would sound like once the marriage equality fight, which has long been the marquee fight of the so-called "culture war," reached its inevitable conclusion on the right side of fairness and history. The answer, as we approach a Supreme Court ruling that is likely to bring the freedom to marry to all fifty states, is becoming clear. And morbid:
"The number in the Black Robe Regiment is about 70,000 now," [Glenn] Beck said [to Jim Garlow]. "The number that I think will walk through a wall of fire, you know, and possible death, is anywhere between 17,000 and 10,000. That is an extraordinary number of people that are willing to lay it all down on the table and willing to go to jail or go to death because they serve God and not man."
Beck: We Have 10,000 Pastors Who Are Willing To Die Resisting Anti-Christian Persecution In America [RWW]
Jim Garlow, the man behind this so-called "Black Robe Regiment" is known first and foremost for his strong anti-gay activism. That is the central issue off which he has made himself an national name. Any discussion he has about willing to die in order to serve God over man is intrinsically linked to gay rights.
And this conversation is far from an anomaly. In addition to blaming our growing freedoms on satan and other forces of "evil," a concerning many anti-equality activists are tossing around predictions of mass Christian casualties with an alarming ease. When you couple it with near-daily calls for civil disobedience in the face of marriage equality, you have to at least wonder what some of these folks are cooking up in the days to come. I mean, the vast majority of it is surely bluster from a crowd that has always traded more on its bark than its bite. But still, when I hear the same activists who despised our equality enough to try to alter the United States Constitution so that it became a weapon against our rights and protections go on to suggest that some sort of deadly warfare is in our near-future, I'm not going to completely ignore it. Being on the powerless side of this fight is new territory for the "pro-family" activists and their groups. And we all know that a scared bully can be the harshest bully.