To be sure, the cvil unrest in Charlotte, N.C. stemmed from yet another police shooting of a man who should not have been killed. After all, Charlotte police would not have even had an opportunity to kill Keith Lamont Scott on Sept. 20 had they not been searching for an unrelated man with an outstanding warrant. Their carelessness with the justice system acted like kerosene being thrown on two already raging fires — one built on intellectual recklessness and ignorance, the other built by anxiety and centuries of systematic abuses toward people of color in the United States.
And while it is common enough to see white people in anglocentric media put their ignorance of the suffering of black Americans on full, patriotic display, one rabid right-winger in Charlotte recently spoke of the city’s unrest in what may actually be the most asinine thing said this week that didn’t come out of Donald Trump’s mouth.
Speaking of the tension in Charlotte to the members of city council, radical right-wing activist Flip Benham took a giant “holy shit” on the meeting and the suffering of the black communities in Charlotte grieving over another life violently ended by an unjust police shooting. Instead of referring to the unrest in Charlotte as such, or even acknowledging that the reason for this unrest is because too many police officers get trigger-happy around black people, Mr. Benham instead blamed the problem on a measure passed earlier in the year to protect the civil rights of the city’s LGBT community.
Mr. Benham was called before the city council, then preceded to use his time to quote scripture and berate them. He used a passage from the Book of Isaiah to contextually refer to the city of Charlotte as a “harlot” (that’s for you, Iron Maiden fans). With the seamlessness of an evangelical con artist, Mr. Benham transitioned directly from the “word of God” into a tirade against the city’s government, complete with accusatory finger-pointing.
“Therefore, the Lord Almighty has spoken to you on July 25th these very words, that if you continue this rebellion against Almighty God, blood is going to course down the corridors of our schools, our workplaces, and our streets. You need to turn back to Him! It is you who unleashed hell in our city when you tried to say that boys and girls are not that… You did it! Now repent, Jennifer Roberts, in the name of Jesus Christ! Because if He doesn’t fix us, there’s no National Guard, no Department of Justice that can fix us! Because there is not an army big enough to keep, to make a man do what is right. But there is a King named Jesus, that if He gets in the heart of that young man, He will set him free. And instead of laying everybody else’s lives down, He will lay his life down for others. That is the truth!”
Mr. Benham then left his taxpayer-funded pulpit and presumably fell to the ground, seizing and speaking in tongues. It is also presumed that Charlotte mayor Jennifer Roberts did not repent.
Many in attendance cheered this man and his Biblical allegation that the Charlotte government had turned the city into a “harlot” in ensuring that people like this scripture-spewing talking snake can’t continue to treat Charlotte’s LGBT citizens like the abomination their favorite fairy tales claim them to be. But like wannabe Fred Phelps, those cheering from taxpayer-funded seats also fail to acknowledge that the civil unrest in Charlotte comes not from “faggotry,” but from the fact that one of their own was the victim of a police shooting. Namely, a police shooting that happened while police were looking for someone else.
But to at least some of the people in Charlotte who place their concept of existence in a 2,000-year-old book written by people who thought burying dead children under the house warded off evil spirits, it’s totally the gay agenda.
And to think there are some of us who believe God’s influence should be stronger in American politics…
Featured image via YouTube.
h/t Right Wing Watch