Infidel makes no apologies for devoting this quarter’s excursion into the nuttier side of life to one man, his mission and his website.
You see, this magazine’s editor is quaking in his unbelieving boots. He has been threatened with legal action for daring to wish to quote from a heartwarming, loving and liberating article by one Stephen Bennett, a Connecticut-based singer and recording artist, who claims to have been “cured” of his homosexuality by embracing Jesus.
Mr Bennett is a remarkable man, because he knows what is happening in God’s nostrils. He says as much in an article he wrote for the American Family Association (AFA) website, which is to be recommended to anyone in need of a little cheering up. Have a strong G&T at the ready.
The purpose of Mr Bennett’s pleasant little penned homily is to denounce gay marriage. And he informs us that God does not recognise “these so called ‘gay’ marriages”. He then goes on to inform us, “They are an abomination to Him and a putrid stench in His nostrils.” (Note the capital letters on the pronouns – not even the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer do that.)
One finds it extraordinary how those who often preach of the ineffability of God seem to know what is happening in bits of the Almighty’s anatomy.
A visit to Mr Bennett’s own website is also highly recommended, but have the Kleenex ready – not because you will be crying, but because there will be tears of laughter cascading down your cheeks. Spend a while browsing, marvel as word after word is underlined or “quoted and underlined” or occasionally “quoted and underlined and in bold and in italics”. Oh, and you get the occasional word CAPITALISED, too.
Under Mr Bennett’s pious name it says, “Our Simple, Uncompromising Message: No One is Born ‘Gay’ And Complete Change is Completely Possible!” Ah, yes: there are exclamation marks there as well, and the fact that the whole thing is rendered in title case.
Reading like something from a bad trailer for a bad film, another page tells us that Mr Bennett “lived the life of a homosexual” until he reached 28 and was involved in a loving relationship. But he succumbed to a God-botherer who knocked on his door “with a Bible in her hand”. Mr Bennett, the website informs us, “would never be the same again”.
Cue eerie, mysterious music. FX of wisp of smoke disappearing into a huge hairy nostril in the sky. Fade to ...
However, if you are truly “struggling” with your homosexuality – “also known as ‘same-sex attraction’”, we are helpfully informed – you “need to understand no one is born ‘gay’”, and “there is hope – real hope”.
On yet another page of this interminable drivel is the headline, “We Are Here For You”, which tells us that one of the hardest things a person has to “go through” is finding out someone you love “is ‘gay’”. The news, we are told, “can be devastating”.
Mr Bennett or his writers completely – and conveniently – forget, of course, that such a revelation is “devastating” only because the person making the discovery (“a child, a spouse, a parent or even a very close friend”) is conditioned to hate homosexuals by the likes of Mr Bloody Bennett and his cohort of nutters.
But we are perhaps getting a little emotive. Let us continue our journey.
When G&LH’s editor, Andy Armitage, wrote a cheery e-mail to Mr Bennett’s people saying how much he enjoyed the AFA article, and said he would be using some of it, back came an e-mail bearing the bizarre salutation “Dearest Andy”, and then threatening him with attorneys because the material was copyright. But Mr A informed them he was aware of fair dealing (for review and criticism purposes), and, after all, the website and the article were in the public domain, and that he would not be doing anything to defame dearest Mr Bennett.
Let us leave you with Mr Bennett’s devout and sincere wish: “Let’s join together today with a new resolve: to turn this nation upside down with a renewed commitment to evangelize the lost – especially the homosexual man and woman – changing our world one repentant heart at a time.”
Just the italic and bold that time.