Where are all the Bay Area’s anti-Christian bigots?

February 25, 2015 Originally published on SFGate

The Bay Area is losing its edge.

You’d think, when it comes to steaming cauldrons of white-hot blasphemy, when it comes to openly defying the harsh and unforgiving judgment of a fundamentalist, right-wing Christian God, we’d be right up there with Sodom and/or Gomorrah, scoring exceedingly high indeed, like we always have, on the Great Chart o’ Interminable Wickedness.

You would be wrong.

This map should be covered – COVERED – in little flags of debauchery, no?

This map should be covered – COVERED – in little flags of debauchery, no?

You might be disappointed to learn that the American Family Association, that extremist, hyper-Christian, Bush-era relic of raging homophobia, misogyny and general odium, and also one of the Southern Poverty Law Center‘s most notable hate groups in America, the AFA just released its very own “Bigotry Map,” which is sort of like Eater SF’s Heat Map, except minus the cocktails. And the joy.

The AFA saw to it to invert the SPLC’s own map of America’s hate groups, and instead list upwards of 200 organizations nationwide that it deems as “openly bigoted toward the Christian faith” – which is to say, any group that supports those horrible, anti-Christian ideas such as love, choice, independent thinking, equal rights, humanitarianism, religious freedom and, of course, free floggings in the streets.

So, how did we do? How many notable hotspots of raging intolerance does the Bay Area have? A thousand? A million?

Not even close.

Praise!

Praise!

We got six. Six! You’d think we’d be somewhere up in the triple digits, at least. But the AFA, admittedly not the brightest bunch of snails in the garden, could only find an office of the Human Rights Campaign in the Castro and some stoned atheists at UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz. Sort of embarrassing, really.

Of course, the AFA was only counting established groups, not movements, opinions, attitudes, yoga pant advocates, Grindr hookups, Burning Man theme camps, fetish parties, sex toy shops, porn palaces, Buddhist temples, Shakti trance dance parties, spiritual seekers, Wiccans, the guy selling mushroom chocolates in Dolores Park, orgasm workshops or anyplace that sells gourmet $4 toast and isn’t struck dead by God’s angry Wonder Bread wrath.

What’s more, Oregon only scored one. So we got that going for us. Then again, Florida has a whopping 20. What? Florida has more blasphemy than the Bay Area? Shameful. I blame the tech nerds. So embarrassing. I’m sure we can do better. Maybe a petition?

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Mark Morford

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