...as someone who has actually read the Gospels several times, and who really did teach Sunday school, I seem to remember Jesus saying a whole lot more about loving your neighbor and having charity (of both heart and wallet) than about killing fags. I remember the story of the Good Samaritan, the Loaves and Fishes, and the Widow's Mite, but I don't actually remember the story of The Good Rich Polluter Who Destroyed the Unions and Prevented Universal Healthcare. And I remember that the one person in the Bible to whom Jesus promised paradise was not a king, not a president, and not an attorney general or a Supreme Court Justice, but a man who was about to receive the death penalty.
The "traditional" religious nuts are lost in an orgy of greed and self-righteousness and public piety — all things Jesus preached against — and calling the rest of us bad Christians. Yes, it offends me.
The most serious problem I have with the concept of God is its continual use as a weapon of mass destruction. In this regard, the White House and the Vatican are no different from Al Qaeda.
As we've proved so recently in the United States, the politicization of religion guarantees that irrationality will serve as the basis for armed conflict and public health policy. This overextension beyond the spiritual into the political realm is the point at which faith becomes offensive — in the military sense of the word.
