Originally <a href='/showthread.php?p=16669732'>posted</a> on 11/06/2012:

It's basic sociology, really. Religions have to keep people actively engaged or risk losing them to apathy and boredom. The easiest way to combat that is to give people a cause to fight for, which is why Holy Wars have always been justified by religious hierarchies.

Christian conservatives are just participating in the Holy War du jour when they organize to impose their religious beliefs on others, and most of them do this completely unwittingly. It's easier just to do what a person in authority tells you to do than to think for yourself, and that's a phenomenon that's been holding humanity back since prehistory. The vast majority of people are weak, and they want to feel powerful, so they attach themselves to people who project authority or promise to make them more powerful.

We see it on SBR, we see it in politics, we see it in our own families. As a gay man I've learned not to take it too personal, most of them are good people who just gave up on themselves and can't admit it. We all have the ability to be powerful, to command our own destiny, but it's exhausting to think for yourself and constantly argue against the most popularly held beliefs people hold, which are almost always in error. It's even harder for them as the social sciences progress so rapidly and give amazingly useful discoveries about human nature to those who have the most to gain from manipulating it.