In the aftermath of the Orlando massacre at a gay nightclub, both Gov. Bill Haslam and House Speaker Beth Harwell tweeted to followers encouraging them to pray for Orlando.
The gall, the unmitigated gall, of these people who have worked to allow therapists to refuse gay people access to needed counseling, who are suing to undo gay marriage, who made it illegal for Nashville and other Tennessee cities to protect LGBT people from employment discrimination, and who want to police whether people are gender-conforming enough to pee in public, praying for dead gay people and encouraging others to pray for these poor dead gay people.
Can you stand to dwell, for just a minute, on how prayer has been weaponized against gay people in this country for decades? How many people have had to listen to their parents praying to God they’d turn back from their “sinful” natures? How many children we stuffed into “Pray Away The Gay” camps? How often gay people have to hear that God doesn’t and couldn’t possibly want them in His house, to share in His blessing, to partake in His sacraments? That God hates fags?
And now that they’re dead you’re going to extend to them the loving kind of prayer?`
If what happened in Orlando happened in Tennessee and Haslam and Harwell and their cronies had their way, the men who hid from the shooter in the women’s restroom would have been breaking the law*; people looking for their loved ones risk being turned away from hospitals because those loved ones couldn’t be their spouses; people distraught over watching people be murdered in front of them could be turned away by the counselors they turn to for help; and, if someone’s employer sees their name among the injured, that employer could fire that injured person for being gay.
That’s the kind of state you want and you’re going to pray for these poor dead gay people?
State Rep. Andy Holt, who’s giving away the same gun the shooter used because it’s the same gun the shooter used (two of them, in fact), ranted on Facebook: (continue reading at NashvilleScene)