Some people don't like preachy coffee cups

Dear World: Could we please declare a moratorium on using the phrase "being open to new ideas" only meaning "not being open to any new ideas except those that involve gay sex"? It's getting old. Thanks.

So I recently came across the story about the Starbucks at Baylor that pulled a coffee cup from its shelves that has a quote on it that reads:

My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short.

This post is typical of the reaction in the blogosphere, throwing around the word "hate" when Christians express their opinions about homosexuality and, my favorite, decrying the cup censorship as an example of Christians not being open to new ideas. Reread the quote but replace the word "gay" with "Christian" and the word "someone" with "Jesus" and think about how the news coverage might be different if Berkeley had decided not to stock this cup. Oh, wait, there wouldn't be any news coverage. And any bloggers who got wind of it would certainly not accuse Berkeley of being closed to new ideas or call it a hateful campus.

If you're a gay man you can make fun of Christians publicly, call them ignorant and stupid, ridicule Jesus and deem Christian beliefs dangerous and wrong, but if a Christian says that he thinks a homosexual lifestyle is inappropriate it's hate speech.

Two of the couples that my husband and I count among our dearest friends are gay and the officiant for my wedding was gay, so obviously I don't have a big issue with homosexuality (although I don't think that two dudes getting married is the exact same thing as a man and a woman getting married). But as a person who is actually open to new ideas, I don't have an issue with my Christian friends who think that homosexuality is inappropriate. And, frankly, watching them get raked over the coals every time they simply express their opinions makes me increasingly sick of the hypocrisy and self-centeredness of the gay community.

I suppose to pacify the trolls I need to actually type out the obvious statement that gay-bashing is wrong and any sort of physical or mental abuse based on one's sexual orientation is wrong. But, just as nobody makes the case that simply saying that Christians are stupid is a dangerously slippery slope that could lead to Christian-bashing, nobody should make the ridiculous case that Christians not wanting to read preachy gay propaganda while sipping their lattes is a half-step away from gay-bashing. Maybe they're not open to new ideas, but neither is the gay community.