At a book signing this week, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee once again spoke truth to power and rejected two lies spread by the gay liberal media: 1) that the gay movement is a civil rights movement and 2) that violence against "homosexuals" is a big deal. Huckabee then shed light on the issue that nobody else will touch with a 10-foot pole: the gay violence perpetrated against Christians. It turns out that far from being the victims of hate crimes, the gays are the real haters and the true criminals.

Hucakabee explained, "there is a difference between the civil rights movement of African-Americans who were essentially hosed down in the streets by Bull Connor in Birmingham and beaten with their skulls crashed in on the bridges of Selma for being black, not for their behavior, not for anything other than their race."

Duh! Good point. Are gays really that persecuted? Show me a gay who had his skull cracked. Name one! 21-year-old Matthew Shepard was robbed, pistol-whipped, tortured, tied to a fence in a remote area, and left to die, which he did. He had brain damage and a fractured skull, but it wasn't cracked. Besides, Shepard was in Wyoming, and nowhere near Selma, so it's so not comparable. And Shepard, like the other homosexuals he represents, aren't attacked for their race, they are attacked for their behavior. So, if they don't want to get attacked, they can just choose to be straight.

But it gets worse. Not only are the attacks against gay people not that big a deal, but it turns out the gays are the ones attacking Christians, the real victims. We all know that the persecution of Christians in the United States is at an all time high, rivaled only by the pre-Constantine Roman Empire. As if Christians aren't already disenfranchised in this country, they also are violently assaulted by homosexual christophobes. Again, Huckabee is dead on: "And so do the Christians [get violently attacked]. It was in Michigan that people barged into a church and were rather violent.... Well, it was certainly disruptive." The disruptions suffered by Christians really puts things like the fatal shooting of 15-year-old Lawrence King by his 14-year-old classmate into perspective, doesn't it? The Christian persecution is not an isolated incident, but endemic. Huckabee points yet another example:

In California, when some peaceful protesters, including a 79-year-old lady by the name of Phyllis, was out holding a cross, it was violently taken from her and stomped." When people stomp on a Christian's cross, they are basically nailing them to a cross, like Jesus. My heart goes out to Phyllis Burgess and all the people like Phyllis who have rallied against gay rights, screamed and elbowed their way through crowds, pushed over disabled people, and had their styrofoam crosses taken and stomped. Though they are no longer with us, they will certainly be missed. And their legacy lives on every time someone uses religion to attack gay people.

The other victims of hate crimes, who are ignored the media, are straight men. We must remember that even Matthew Shepard's killers were victims. In fact, the defendants tried to claim a "gay panic" defense, since they had acted under "temporary insanity," caused by Shepard hitting on them. It turns out, according to the killers' girlfriends, Shepard did not, in fact, come on to them. But I will have to write another piece to explore this particular hate crime: heterophobic attacks on homosexuals.