The Homophobic Street Preacher as a Silly Little Guy

19 Aug, 2026

As walked back from lunch, my friends and I encountered an itinerant preacher. He was a bit more bellicose than is usual, which is saying something. He had a megaphone, and he was using it to proclaim that queer people deserve to be tortured for eternity. Everyone apparently knew this was just, because God's law was written on our hearts.¹ He was holding a large banner. One side displayed the ten commandments. The other had a pride flag, with something like "REPENT, FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND!" scrawled on it in red ink.²

I am a woke bisexual Christian. One would expect me to be angry or annoyed in this circumstance. He was saying that my friends will be tortured forever -- that I will be tortured forever. When I talk to other woke Christians, they're often quite peeved about these people -- say they're twisting our religion to oppress queer people and terrify queer children. And, eventually, I do have that reaction. After a couple seconds, I come to think these people are dipshits. Dipshits who made me hate myself for many years. But this isn't my first reaction. On a gut level, I find these people funny. They seem like Silly Little Guys. They're passionate about something that's profoundly unpopular, and they're completely earnest and sincere about it. This is funny and slightly endearing. For lack of a better way to put it, it's how I feel about furries. Furries are earnest about something which is morally neutral and unpopular. Homophobic street preachers are actively making the world a worse place, and thus they are justly unpopular. But, still, I find them funny in exactly the same way.