In Face of Defeat, Religious Right Keeps Fighting Marriage Equality

An anti-gay activist posted a YouTube video on Easter that shows an unidentified child protesting outside a North Carolina church, which recently said that it would not host any wedding ceremonies until same-sex couples can legally marry, the Raw Story reports.

Last month Kelly Carpenter, the senior pastor of Green Street United Methodist Church in Winston-Salem, N.C., announced that he will not conduct any kind of wedding ceremony until gay marriage is legalized. Carpenter added that members of his congregation agree with him. But not everyone is pleased with the pastor's decision: Anti-gay activist Brian Cranford posted a YouTube video on Sunday that approvingly showed the ranting child.

"You have your chance to repent, to stop your sinning, to quit affirming the gay people!" the child yells. "The Bible talks about the homosexuals, they're worthy of death! And you people approve of that! And that's why you're going to hell! You can turn from your sin. You can turn to Jesus or go to hell!"

’Ex-Gay’ Activist v. Starbucks

Though a number of religious right groups and activists have become resigned to the reality of marriage equality, many are still putting up a fight with demonstrations and threats of boycotts against certain businesses (among many) that they have targeted as particularly supportive of marriage equality.

Right-wing religious organizations are especially up in arms against Starbucks after its officials announced its support for a gay marriage law in its home state of Washington. Not only that, but the coffee chain's CEO told a shareholder that if he didn't like the policy, he shouldn't invest in the company.

Right Wing Watch has posted 'ex-gay' activist and preacher Robert Breaud warning Starbucks to prepare for a "divine reckoning." In an interview with the Christian News Network, Breaud said that Schultz has taken a "Christ-hating position" and is "helping to destroy young people's lives."

"God will not bless your business in the long run if you consistently thumb your nose at Him and support things He calls sinful," Breaud, best known for his song "It's Not OK to Be Gay," told the website. According to Christian News Network, Breaud had lived a "homosexual lifestyle until his 30s, but has served Christ now for nearly 20 years."

"I basically got my fill of the emptiness of sin," he said. "I was never happy, never filled, never satisfied with male-to-male relationships." He added that if he had the chance to talk with Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, he would urge him to run his business with God in mind.

"You're promoting sin. You're helping to destroy young people's lives," he said. "God will not bless your business in the long run if you consistently thumb your nose at Him and support things He calls sinful. Who do you love more, Christ or your coffee?"

God’s Judgment on America!

If there ever was a place and time when the phrase "Hail Mary pass" would fit, it would have to be with those on the Religious Right who, in a last-ditch effort to derail marriage equality, are invoking God's wrath.

In a April 2 broadcast of his radio show, Bryan Fischer called homosexuality "immoral, sinful behavior." And how does Bryan know this? "Because we have God's perspective, we have God's counsel, we have God's wisdom and that trumps man's wisdom."

Alan Keyes, who had the distinction of losing to Barack Obama in a landslide for U.S. Senate from Illinois and being an also-ran in every other political contest he has entered, appeared on yet another such Internet "broadcast." In this one, Keyes told Stan Solomon that marriage equality is "the archetype of all crimes against humanity."

For his part, Solomon said he "can't stand the thought, the idea, the concept of homosexuality. I don't think I'm showing love for anyone if I encourage them or enable them or stand silently while they do something that's going to kill them."

To round out this trifecta of hate, Dain Gainor, spokesperson for the ironically named Media Research Center, repeated the latest salvo in the war against marriage equality: that gay rights activists have succeeded in making Christians the real suppressed group.

Blasting the "full-blown fascist propaganda" tactics of the godless media to promote gay marriage, Gainor went on to explain to Christian Broadcasting Network host Efrem Graham how these modern-day Neros were throwing contemporary Christian martyrs to the metaphorical (for now!) lions.

"Now it's Christians who stand up to traditional marriage who are actually the ones being discriminated against," Graham said.

"That's absolutely true," Gainor responded. "This is just the beginning. The left wants a no-holds barred, nothing-is-wrong morality that is going to undermine our entire country and everything that made us free."

Watch the kid with the bull lungs protesting in front of the LGBT-friendly church: