Fox contributor Erick Erickson is a devout Christian who had his nice, white Christian panties in a knot about that nasty Newsweek article which had the audacity to point out how devout Christians cherry pick the Bible for their right wing ideology. In whining about this blasphemy on Fox & Friends, seminary student Erickson asserted that this article "lashed out" at Christians. But in yet another example of the type of Christian right hypocrisy described in the article, Erickson lashed out at the LGBT community which, he believes, are just as bad as those who perpetrated the Paris massacre. True story.
Backstory - Atlanta Mayor, Kasim Reed recently fired Kelvin Cochran, a chief in the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department, after a month long suspension over homophobic comments contained in a book written by Cochran and given to some members of the Fire Department. While the Christian right is outraged about how Reed was fired, according to Fox's Todd Starnes, for his Christian faith, Reed says this action was not about Cochran's Christianity but about the possibility that the city would be exposed to possible litigation involving claims of discrimination and a hostile work environment. Not unexpectedly, Cochran disputes Reed's version of events and says that the comments in the book, one of which compared homosexuality to pedophilia, weren't "intended to be hurtful."
Enter, stage right, Erickson who is blaming the mayor's action on gay "terrorists." On his radio show, Erickson set up his attack:
“We’ve got to talk about the terrorism situation. The terrorists were offended by a publication, that mocked them, that heaped scorn on them, that offended them and pointed out the fallacies of their religion, and so they had to seek revenge, they had to destroy the people who did it.”
He then moved in for the kill when he said that LGBT activists “did the only thing they could do, the only thing they knew to do, they went to the mayor of Atlanta and demanded he fire the chief of the fire department for daring to mock them.” He added that “We gotta talk about what happened in France; but I think it is worth pointing out that one group destroys the livelihoods of those who dare to mock or dissent, and the other took their lives, but both are doing it to drive debate from the public sphere, to shut them up, to shut them down."
In an accompanying blog post he continued the twisted analogy:
"So when a publisher published something that mocked and offended a group prone to offense at such things, something had to happen.The terrorists did what had to be done to publicly destroy and ruin the offender. So they demanded the Mayor of Atlanta fire the Chief of the Fire Department for daring to write that his first duty was to 'glory God' and that any sex outside of heterosexual marriage was a sin. And the terrorists won in Atlanta."
If, as is claimed on Fox News, Christians get no respect, here's why they don't!
Anyway, the audio is on Think Progress.