The main thing here is that few people really understand the "business" of religion.
When you work for "God Inc." you take an oath to do whatever is necessary to fill the coffers of ultra wealthy corporations masquerading as churches.
What few bother to do when it comes to these individuals is to look at the lifestyles these "Ultra Wealthy" CEO level people lead. Private jets, home compounds with more security than Camp David, Offices with furniture and fixtures costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, investment portfolios and diversification of investments that equal those of major corporate CEO's, and the list goes on endlessly.
The "Religious Right" did not come in to protect family values. These corporate entities function as any corporation marketing a product. The product they market is "send us money and be saved". Examination of their business dealings is proof positive of this corporate structure and diversification.
Throughout history, the way to get people to do what you want is to create an "enemy" from which you will protect the common man. If you are a pharmaceutical giant, the enemy is some condition or disease. If we have a medication on which we have spent a billion dollars by mistake, we then, in order to save profit margins, "create" a medical condition for which this product is useful. Illness equals profit, there is zero profit in curing anything. In Religion, we need an enemy from which "we" the "Extremists" can protect you.
Just as a major corporation manufacturing a product may use any means at it's disposal to market their product over the same product of the competitor, "God Inc." looks at homosexuality as first something it can demonize and use as a profit making issue, and even more, it is treated like any business competitor. An example would be to seek ways in which it "God Inc." can remove any form of funding so that business competitor can survive. The assault on benefits for gay and lesbian individuals and the rights of these individuals is nothing more or less than corporate strategy. Remove the power from the competitor and you in essence remove the competition of that competitor for any dollar you could lay claim to. It is all over money.
If you are a government, and, you want people to go to war and fight, you first have to "dehumanize" the "enemy". In the year following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the venom created against the Japanese people refering to them in sub-human terms was reprehensible. Today, there are elements who ignore the actual teachings of the Koran and these elements paint all people sharing the Muslim faith as "enemies". The Koran strictly forbids many of the things that the extremists do. The Muslim extremists justify their behavior just as the Christian Extremists justify theirs. An "Extremist" in anything is not a representation of anything other than "Extremism".
Before the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the "Cold War", the main thing the Religious Extremists concentrated on were the Communists. They were not being altruistic here either. They concentrated heavily with their verbal assaults because the governments in these countries would not allow them "market penetration" and would not allow their populations to be brought in as an additional income source for those making profit from Religion. In the most simple of explanations, the governments of these countries that did not allow religious freedom became a business competitor to "God Inc." In business, to earn a market share, one has to expand their marketing and overcome competition. When the "Cold War" ended and this market was opened up to "God Inc." like any other Corporation, "God Inc." had to go out and find new ways to mine more money. "God Inc." has still not had great market inroads in Communist controlled China, North Korea and Viet Nam. The "God Inc." group has had some success in Cuba, but that success has been very minimal in that the small Catholic Parishes that are there have very little political power. This means that that there is no profit to "God Inc." from this market. It is a poor country and this one has not been the largest focal point because mining huge profits is unlikely at best at this time. Religious Corporations like others spend incredible sums of money with legislators worldwide in attempts to "buy" their way in. They spend donation dollars which instead of feeding the poor and helping people on a grass roots level go on to fund in essence what is "corporate expansion".
Just for the sake of argument let's assume that "God Inc." as a group was successful in eradicating homosexuality and that all of their "half-baked" plans worked. If they were successful they would be in trouble and they know that. If there were any chance of their "camps for reorientation" or other such nonsense working they would in fact be in trouble financially. Their continued success is based on the fact that their ideas will not work. They have learned to make incredible profits from creating suffering and re-introducing concepts that they themselves know to be both flawed and complete failures. In so doing, those corporations under the "God Inc." banner thrive in fact on creating suffering which is not a benevolent thing, it is in fact by their own doctrine working for "the biggest competitor" that being "forces of evil". Yet, because their is great financial gain and profit in working in this manner it persists.
The problem is not the neighborhood church working for the betterment of mankind. It is not the charitable groups who discuss the Bible while hundreds of volunteers provide meals to those who are sick and hungry or shelter to those who have lost everything. These are not the problem. The problem is "God Inc." who only seems to want more and more power. "God Inc." does photo ops in Africa. "God Inc." talks of brining satellite television to Africa so that they can spread the "word". "God Inc." functions under the rules of corporate expansionism.
Robertson, Fischer, Swaggart, Falwell, Murray, Hinn, Kennedy, Phelps, and all the rest alive or dead are men who have aspired not to serve God but instead their inspiration has been a wee bit eschewed. We praise "the almighty". They do the same thing, but they make one slight addition. They praise "the almighty dollar" and what it can buy them.
This is a battle that they must righteously fight forever, if they give up they lose, if they win they lose. Either way homosexuality is a big profit maker for them and this is why they go on and on with it. The sad part is that people suffer greatly for them and as the "pharisees" of the new century they will continue their hypocrisy until the bitter end. People do not matter to these individuals, lives, violence, hurt, and all are not important. These people chase ONLY the dollar that their behavior can bring.
