Welcome back to Awful Christian Education!
This series is going to cover the flagrant, vicious homophobia of Accelerated Christian Education’s author, Donald Howard. As previously mentioned, each installment in this series is going to cover the increasingly dangerous rhetoric he used in his manifestos to demonize the LGBT+ community. We are going to get through this as concisely as possible; there isn’t a whole lot for me to say, relative to how many Exhibits there are in this series.
If you don’t know what ACE is or why it’s relevant, check out my first course review for context:
In the last post, Donald escalated from equating “homosexuals” with murderers, to promising “documentary proof” that a specific “lesbian” school counselor in the LA district was recruiting “youngsters” into her “homosexual lifestyle.” Of course, there is no such proof, and Donald was just trying to incite violence against the LGBT+ community.
The fact that this type of stochastic terrorism made the children in this school district less safe instead of more so isn’t an oversight on Donald’s part. It’s the whole point.
In this post, we’re picking up Teen Turmoil (1988), Donald Howard’s third manifesto, right where we left off. Here, Donald begins to argue that AIDS is God’s judgement on the homosexual community. However, he naturally does this in the most cowardly way possible.
First, he does what he can to make “homosexual” synonymous with “AIDS,” and argues that contracting AIDS is a moral failing:
Exhibit
AIDS is not just the result of dirty needles or mass social ignorance. It is the consequence of willful, cultural disregard for God and the determined violation of His Word.
It was the initial finding that AIDS was a disease of homosexuals and drug users that reinforced the idea of some that AIDS might be a judgement from GOD on those whose immoral behavior mocked Him.
Teen Turmoil, page 129
Sure, Donald didn’t say AIDS was God’s judgement, but his readers would very naturally conclude that it is…
Make sure you’re seated for this one, because these mental gymnastics play out in real time on paper, and it made me feel dizzy:
Exhibit
Teen Turmoil, page 129
Despite declaring that AIDS isn’t God’s judgement, his readers are certain that it is. It’s just not His fault; rather, it’s the epidemic’s victims’ fault. More troubling is the fact that they’re being told the sin of homosexuality, a ‘choice’ in the minds of these people, is actually killing innocent people as well.
Presumably, these innocents are heterosexuals.
It’s also worth noting that policemen don’t “write the rules,” but rather enforce them through violence and the threat thereof. Correcting this analogy that way makes the comparison almost work.
Now that homosexuals are squarely to blame for the AIDS epidemic, which negatively effects good, innocent Christian heteros, Donald dabbles in stochastic terrorism and makes excuses for the violence and threats faced by LGBT+ youth. This reads like, ‘Sure, violence against children isn’t great, but won’t you consider the feelings of the angry parents in this situation?’:
Exhibit
The hard questions are already being asked: “Who will care for them?” and “What about children with AIDS in schools?”
Communities have already erupted in violence on the latter issue. One Florida family received bomb threats, and later their home was gutted in a suspicious fire. The family left town. Even then, new protests from angry parents were encountered at the new school.
The children now attend class with an escort provided by sheriff’s deputies.
It would be easy to criticize those people who oppose letting AIDS victims attend public schools. However, most are parents and they are not acting out of angry ignorance, but out of concern for their own youngsters.
Teen Turmoil, page 133
Violence and terror are the natural conclusions to all the inflammatory and hyperbolic language used by Donald and those like him. He played a direct role in producing the “angry ignorance” that results in the fire bombing of homes that he just made excuses for.
To reinforce the notion that AIDS is a homosexual problem, a few pages later he implies that 100% of AIDS cases come from homosexuals, and that everyone in the queer community will likely get AIDS at some point in their life:
Exhibit
From a “universe” of 1 to 1.5 million who have been infected with the AIDS virus, the CDC reported for 1988 a cumulative 56,000 cases of AIDS disease, with over half of those (31,000) representing the cumulative death so far.
The “universe” is about half the known homosexual population of 2.5 million, although the CDC estimates another 5-10 million more (bisexuals) will have some homosexual contact, which could put the number of AIDS cases at staggering proportions in less than five years, since homosexuals are the primary carriers and distributors of AIDS.
The disease could conceivably wipe out the entire homosexual population before A.D. 2000. Is this a curse, or just man having his way… and then God having His way?[sic]1 The question as to whether AIDS is a judgement from God on the homosexual community and drug addicts is a moot point.
Teen Turmoil, page 136
If AIDS is God having His way, that’s God’s judgement… Crazy to deliberate about this question for pages on end, only to call it a “moot point.”
For the record, I have no idea why he puts quotations around “universe,” and beyond trying to imply that all homosexuals are threat vectors for AIDS, I don’t know what’s going on with these numbers.
The purpose of this book was to scare parents into withdrawing their kids from public school, and to encourage them to send their children to an ACE school (all of his manifestos end by pivoting into an advertisement for ACE). To really drive home the fear of homosexuals (homophobia, if you will), Donald claims their sin might wipe out all of mankind:
Exhibit
Without God’s intervention and divine protection, AIDS could have the same devastating effect on the civilized world as did the plagues of the Dark Ages and other periods. In 1350, half the population of Europe was killed by bubonic plague, “the Black Death.”
There is absolutely no question that AIDS will have a monumental effect on the entire civilized world and will forever alter the course of human history.
If, that is, enough humans survive.
Teen Turmoil, page 142
That is some crazy shit.
There are a few other one-off comments made in Teen Turmoil that we’ll address in the next post. Now I want to wade into Teen Turmoil’s sister manifesto, World Awakening, which was also published in 1988.
After declaring in Teen Turmoil that AIDS wasn’t God’s judgement, and that the very question is a moot point, he declares in World Awakening that AIDS illustrates a Biblical principle:
Exhibit
It is almost as if AIDS is the embodiment of evil, exposing its evil source and resources — primarily to the guilty of the “Sex Revolution”.
AIDS is truly a plague of the millennium; and it simply illustrates the great Biblical principle:
“The wages of sin is death.”
World Awakening, page 50
Fun fact: Donald was caught cheating on his wife prior to writing Teen Turmoil and World Awakening. Donald was among “the guilty of the “Sex Revolution.”” Naturally, this energy does not extend to his own sexual indiscretions,2 nor to those of his friends, many of whom were convicted and/or credibly accused of sex crimes.
It’s just the gays that are problematic.
But what about the heteros who contract AIDS?
Donald reuses his Department of Transportation bit to explain that heteros are the collateral damage of homosexual sin, and not victims of God’s judgement:
Exhibit
People express that it may be understandable and appropriate justice for the guilty to acquire AIDS, but why do the innocent suffer if the AIDS plague is God’s judgement for sex sin?
The young and the innocent have always suffered whenever a generation who is responsible commits sin. When a drunk drives his pick-up the wrong way on an expressway and hits a bus filled with church youth and kills 27— or when another drunk runs a light and smashes another car, innocent people are often maimed and killed. To say God is responsible for AIDS is like saying the U.S. Department of Transportation is responsible for the 50,000 highway deaths every year.
No! The government writes the law, but the drivers break the rules.
World Awakening, page 50, 51
Why are the “56,000 cases of AIDS disease” (mentioned in Teen Turmoil) an act of God’s judgement, but 50,000 highway deaths aren’t? What makes you so sure that God isn’t demanding everyone cease driving immediately? This is just so dumb, and it’s so lame that this dude wrote a whole education curriculum.
We live in a very dumb reality.
And sorry, but this bothers me. You actually can blame the Department of Transportation for every death that occurs on the roads (excepting suicide). Their job is to create as safe of a transportation system as possible. It seems that they, much like God, are at least 50,000 lives per year short of that goal.
So AIDS represents “the wages of sin,” but it’s totally not a judgement from God, because that would mean He’s punishing heteros and Christians along with the gays.
But here me out. What if AIDS is God’s judgement on homosexuals?
Here he declares that the incubation period of AIDS is God’s way of arriving “right on time”:
Exhibit
AIDS has an incubation period of perhaps ten years or more… This plague is the greatest evidence that God is intervening, for it is a work of righteousness that only God could perform.
The sexual idolaters experienced judgement on sins they had committed earlier; the judgement was there even before AIDS was discovered. God is right on time.
World Awakening, page 51, 52
Do you think Donald would describe AIDS this way if it disproportionately targeted promiscuous pastors? Would God still be “right on time” if He struck Donald with a brutal, incurable disease?
Doubt it. Notice how different the tone becomes when discussing Christian sexual idolatry:
Exhibit
The events of the past few years show that more than a few evangelical and fundamentalist leaders have been caught up in the sexual idolatry of the world. Some were more widely publicized by the media than others, but they all reflect the reality of the problem:
—One of the leaders of a great ministry in America was brought down after he was discovered using pornographic films at the ministry headquarters and being sexually involved with several staff women.
—The son of a famous preacher, himself a young pastor with a great Midwestern church, had sexual affairs concurrently with three women from his congregation… He was later caught, and his career and family ruined.
—The leader of a nationwide TV ministry was nearly destroyed when the public learned of his sexual sin with a church secretary.
—Less than a year later, another great TV preacher was humbled when he was discovered with a prostitute…
At least 23 prominent leaders have fallen in the last 24 months.
World Awakening, page 52, 53
“Evangelical and fundamentalist leaders” get “caught up” in the world’s sexual idolatry. Christian’s merely get “humbled,” “fired,” “brought down,” or resign because of their sin, but they’re never struck down by God. None of them contract AIDS.
The wages of pastoral sin isn’t death.
The next post, 2.3, is the final one in this series, and it’s going to cover some more stochastic terrorism, and the suggestion that we systemically euthanize the queer community. It’s a fucking trip.
Thank you for reading about this Awful Christian Education!
But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
Matthew 18:6
Donald put those ellipsis in for dramatic effect, indicating that the answer is obviously ‘yes.’
Reporter Times, Nov 15, 1984