Creep of the Week: Bob Peters

I wish I could say I was shocked about the recent shooting of 17 people in Binghamton, New York. But I live in America, where gun laws are lax and gun ownership is considered a sacred right. Granted, Americans don't want shooting rampages to happen, but priorities clearly indicate it's a risk we're willing to take.
This attitude is echoed by Morality in Media President Bob Peters. "Having lived in New York City for more than 30 years, I am all too aware of the harm that firearms in the hands of criminals can cause," read an April 9 statement. "Having grown up in a small town in Illinois, where citizens owned guns without misusing them, I am also aware that guns aren't the underlying problem. I am not an opponent of gun regulation; I am an opponent of making guns the scapegoat for mass murder."
Indeed, many right-wing conservatives have this same attitude.
"Don't blame guns," they holler every time another disturbed man mows down a crowd. "Blame pornography or video games or violent cartoons or the fact kids don't pray in school." Blame anything but easily obtainable weapons (like the .45-caliber handgun and 9-millimeter Beretta used to kill 13 people in the New York shooting) designed for one purpose: to kill people.
Obviously it can't have anything to do with that.
Besides, as Peters points out, things like this don't happen in small towns (never mind that the sites of many of this nation's school shootings – like Bethel, Alaska; Jonesboro, Arkansas; Littleton, Colorado; Blacksburg, Virginia – are certainly "small towns" relative to New York City). So Peters blames the next logical thing: gay marriage.
After seeing adjacent front-page articles in the New York Times about the New York shooting and the legalization of marriage for same sex couples in Iowa, Peters saw the light: Gays are to blame for this nation's gun violence.
"The underlying problem is that increasingly we live in a 'post-Christian' society, where Judeo-Christian faith and values have less and less influence," Peters says. "This secular value system is also reflected in the 'sexual revolution,' which is the driving force behind the push for 'gay marriage;' and the Iowa Supreme Court decision is another indication that despite all the damage this revolution has caused to children, adults, family life and society (think: abortion, divorce, pornography, rape, sexual abuse of children, sexually transmitted diseases, trafficking in women and children, unwed teen mothers and more), it continues to advance relentlessly."
It is certainly strange that Peters sees marriage for gays as being driven by the "sexual revolution." Granted, I don't know what revolution he's even talking about, but marriage doesn't seem like the end game for sexual revolutionaries. And I don't see the connection between gays marrying things like rape and human trafficking. But hey, it's his sick fantasy world, not mine.
Lest we misunderstand Peters, let's allow him to clarify. "It most certainly is not my intention to blame the epidemic of mass murders on the gay rights movement!" he says. "(I)t is the decline of morality (and the faith that so often under girds it) that is the underlying cause of our modern day epidemic of mass murders."
Never mind that "decline of morality" is code for homosexuality. He's not blaming gays! He just said so. He's just saying that if you've got a nation full of homos, then God's going to set psychos with hand guns loose.
Something tells me that Peters and Fred Phelps would really hit it off.