Leader in Southern Baptist Convention Ramps Up Anti-Gay Rhetoric

Anti-gay myths die hard. Or maybe they never die at all. Over the weekend, a leading figure in the Southern Baptist Convention recycled a number of the most egregious lies about LGBT people to reach the conclusion that they’re working to bring about the “outright sexual paganization of society.” Whatever that is.

Yesterday, Right Wing Watch noted that Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), hosted Rena Lindevaldsen, an associate professor of law at Liberty University, on his radio show, "Richard Land Live!" over the weekend. The two discussed Lindevaldsen's new book about ex-gay Lisa Miller, who allegedly kidnapped the daughter she was raising with her lesbian former partner. Land took the opportunity launch a volley of time-worn anti-gay insults.

Land has made anti-gay statements in the past. In 2008, for example, he claimed that the radical homosexual agenda is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In 2010, he called for a filibuster in Congress to stop the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which he said would "essentially destroy" the American military. Over the weekend, however, he seems to have really opened the floodgates, dragging out old anti-gay standards, including the old "homosexuals are a danger to children" falsehood and claiming that LGBT people are "recruiting down in the grade school levels. They're recruiting for homosexual clubs and it's really child abuse is what it is." He also accused "gay rights activists" of trying to "reduce [Christians] to the level of the Ku Klux Klan."

In another statement that can be traced to the work of thoroughly discredited psychologist Paul Cameron, Land said that "male homosexuals die much earlier than heterosexual males" because of the "dangerous stuff" they do. Lindevaldsen agreed. According to Land, homosexuals ultimately are set on destroying marriage, marginalizing people of faith, and legitimizing polyamory and pedophilia. "If this dam breaks," he warned, "the tidal wave will be just an outright sexual paganization of society."

The SBC's ERLC has been fretting about “the homosexual agenda” for several years.

In 2002, for example, Barrett Duke, director of the Research Institute at the ERLC, claimed on ERLC’s website that "pro-homosexuals" were "trying to indoctrinate" children in schools.

Regarding hate crime legislation, Duke wrote in 2007 that such laws would lead to the persecution of Christians and their prosecution for "thought-crimes." Then in 2009, Duke sounded a warning about the "radical homosexual agenda" silencing and marginalizing people of faith while "indoctrinating" children." Our faith and the radical homosexual agenda," Duke wrote, "are on track for a cataclysmic conflict."