BIBLE BEATOFFS.

Fundie wingnuts have a new HobbyLobbyhorse:

Could California Ban The Bible?

California Lawmakers Consider A Bill That Would Ban The Bible 

California Pro-Homosexual Bill Will Ban the Bible

This is, as you will have guessed, bullshit. The bill before the California lege would ban (or, rather, sharpen an existing ban on) the gay-straightening racket by specifying as illegal "any practices that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation. This includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex."  

It certainly wouldn't make the Holy Bible itself illegal, as fact-checkers like PolitiFact and Snopes (with the weary tone I suppose they can't avoid, the times being what they are) patiently explain -- to which the wingnut response has been to cry, as has become their habit, that fact-checking sites are liberal black magic. About the best example is at (natch) The Federalist, by Robert Gagnon, entitled (and it helps to look at Gagnon's picture and imagine him reading it out loud) "Snopes Is a Sneaky Liar About California’s Bill To Ban Christian LGBT Talk."

His opening is a masterpiece of wingnut logic and I feel I must share:

If you haven’t already lost significant respect for Snopes as an impartial fact-checker, its analysis of a bill that bans all transactions involved in stating Christian beliefs about homosexual behavior should. That bill passed 50-18 on April 19 and is being considered in the state senate. Snopes’ insistence that California Assembly Bill 2943 would not result in the Bible being banned in California is akin to Snopes calling “demonstrably and clearly false” the claim that Joseph Stalin killed everyone around him.

I know, guys, but stay with it:

True, Stalin did not kill “all” around him. Indeed, so far as we know he never personally killed anyone. But he did have a great many people killed (estimates indicate that he was responsible for the deaths of 20 to 25 million people), sent many others to the Gulag, and generally terrorized both his own country and Eastern Europe for decades.

Sure, it is virtually impossible that California will immediately attempt to ban the sale of the Bible itself. Not even the hard Left in California has that kind of chutzpah. But citations of Bible verses in the context of declaring homosexual practice and transgenderism to be morally debased could indeed get one into serious trouble with the law if it comes in the context of selling or advertising a product or service. Here are the problems with Snopes’s case.

So it's "virtually impossible" (that is to say, impossible) that the law would lead to any Bible-banning, but in Gagnon's view that's just nit-picking -- like saying Stalin didn't kill everybody which is just what you liberals would say because you love Stalin. In reality, something close enough to it would happen, says Gagnon -- "you would be violating the law if you advertise that Christ can empower people not to engage in homosexual practice... or if you offer to engage or actually engage in efforts to persuade people of Christ’s power to transform in this area..." I guess Gagnon wants to give the impression that, should nice Mr. Christian innocently say "God bless you" when a sodomite sneezed, the Liberal Fascist Storm-Troopers would take it as conversion therapy and do a Cardinal Mindszenty on his head.

I think the brethren should switch tactics and instead insist that, if the law passes, showings of A Different Story will be considered a hate crime. At least that would have the happy side effect of reviving interest in the career of Meg Foster.