TNH Speaks Truth

Teresa Nielsen Hayden says something of sheer truth. [Update: I originally attributed this to Patrick, due to a misreading of my RSS reader.] She discusses that class of Christians whose faith is so fragile that exposure to any glimpse of anything outside their core is problematic. She talks about Gerald Allen, of the group trying to ban literature that mentions homosexuality “in a positive light”:

That man is dumber than two bags of hammers on a slow Thursday night. If a lifetime of constant exposure to positive depictions of heterosexuality doesn’t turn children straight, how is it that an occasional depiction of homosexuality is going to turn them gay?

You know what he’s really saying, don’t you? He’s saying that gay sex has straight sex beat all hollow, that’s what. It’s stronger, sharper, more pervasive and overwhelming. Sexier. Instantly attractive. Transcendently hot. All it takes is one hint that homosexuality is survivable, that it’s something engaged in by humans rather than demons, and right away kids are going to be abandoning the straight and missionary for a life as a queer.

It must make Gerald Allen feel kind of small and humble and inadequate to know that gay sex is so powerful, when he’s just a feeble little straight boy. No wonder he has to get out there and puff himself up by preaching the glory of homosexuality.

She goes on to discuss something I never understood, which was the Christian hunt for cryptic evil. Backward masking, obscure Satanic messages, highly hidden (to the point of perhaps not even really being there) drug references and the sort were the rage to hunt for when I was a kid. How exactly can these things corrupt a strong religious person when you can’t even find them without a map?

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Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father. Member of the Podcast Hall of Fame class of 2022.

2 thoughts on “TNH Speaks Truth”

  1. Hey Dave, haven’t checked your blog in a while, busy yadda yadda …

    This reminds me of the bit that Bill Cosby used to do (or perhaps wrote about), where he observed since a man is considered “black” if one sixteenth of his heritage was black, then he must be 16 times as important as a white man. Therefore, if he walks into a party with 15 white people already there, he gets to change the music on the stereo!

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