Georgia will deal with creeping sharia and marching socialism and also its unemployment rate—among the highest in the nation—just as soon as it passes this bill defending righteous, traditional Americans' freedom to hate gays. And how can anyone resist such a bill when proponents defend it as eloquently as this?

State legislators are set to vote this spring on a bill affirming "religious pluralism" under which faith-minded "business owners would be able to deny gay people services and employees could potentially discriminate in the workplace," according to the Atlanta-based alt-weekly Creative Loafing.

The bill slipped through the Georgia Senate's judiciary committee on Monday after the panel's lone present Democrat took a bathroom break, and his conservative colleagues passed the legislation before he got back from the loo.

Fans of the bill held a rally earlier this week to articulate their views to the public, and their cavalcade of public reason was headlined by a preacher calling himself Bishop Wellington Boone (author of Holy Ghost Is My Friend and other thoughtful crowd-pleasers). Boone's case for permitting discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people, excerpted in the video above by the group Better Georgia, was succinct, if ungrammatical and... assertively stupid:

I know that the LBGT [sic] is putting pressure on our representatives... How can they put pressure on you when they don't even know what gender they are?

The Georgia Voice reported a similar extended version of Boone's comments, which were followed by some applause and vocal approval:

I know that LGBT is [sic] putting pressure on you. I know that their lobbyists are out there. Lobbyists?! They are politicians! How can they put pressure on you when they don't even know what gender they are?! You gays won't stand before God—how can we let you stand before us? You say that you have a civil rights struggle—that you are denied your rights. You say you go through the same thing as blacks? You've got another thing coming!

Boone made his bones with this shtick years ago, telling the audience at 2006's Value Voters Summit that "I want gays mad at me." According to Think Progress, he continued thus:

Back in the days when I was a kid, and we see guys that don't stand strong on principle, we call them "faggots." … [People] that don't stand up for what's right, we say, "You're sissified out!" "You're a sissy!" That means you don't stand up for principles.

And what greater principle can there be, really, than using the message of Christ's humanity-loving, world-redeeming sacrifice to call out "faggots"? You do you, Georgia. Metaphorically, of course, since self-love is kinda gay, too.

Contact the author at adam@gawker.com.
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