Oh Lord, this is going to be harder than I thought.

A month or so after CPAC, I thought I could handle Vision America's "The War on Christians and the Values Voter in 2006" conference this week in Washington, DC. As a Christian myself, I've never felt as thought war is being waged against me and my religion (although I can think of a few religions Christians have been attacking recently…) so curiosity got the best of me--I agreed to undercover blog again for Campus Progress.

I just got out of the winningly titled panel on homosexuality and Christianity: "The Gay Agenda: America Won't Be Happy." Ominous but ambiguous, no? A perfect gimmick to get people in.

The panel, led by Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council, was enlightening beyond my expectations. I learned, for instance, about the three worst examples of homosexual activity. The Top Three, as told by Peter Labarbera from the Illinois Family Institute:

1. extreme promiscuity--apparently when homosexuals talk about monogamy, "it's not real monogamy."
2. gross and unnatural behavior--including any sexual activity between members of the same sex, of course.
3. the "totalitarian impulse" of the gay movement--I can't even find words to describe this one, and apparently neither can Labarbera because I have no idea where he got his one.

So in order to reclaim the homosexuality discussion, Christians need to "remind the public that homosexual behavior is always wrong and explain why," said Labarbera, offering no further explanation. When talking about same-sex couples, we need to stop using the word marriage without quotation marks--the gay agenda apparently has control over our punctuation use and we're not going to take it any more.

Other panelists like Brian Camenker used fear to mobilize members of the crowd (who were for the most part rabid with anger before anyone spoke) against gay rights activists: "Ladies and gentlemen, these people are serious! They're coming after you!" Camenker also compared proponents of his hateful movement to the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the first wave of soldiers on D-Day, which makes no sense and is pretty much disrespectful of everything for which those men fought.

When the panel was opened for questions, the audience largely focused on how to reframe the public discourse to give an advantage to anti-gay activism. A few pointers from the esteemed panelists: use the phrase "natural marriage" instead of "traditional marriage" to refute anyone who cites science that finds homosexuality to be the result of genetics and hormones. And of course, use "sodomite" instead of the too-permissive "homosexual"-- let that nice gay guy down the street know how you really feel about his sin.

The panel got a standing ovation from attendees and I quickly escaped from the room to avoid puking on anyone or yelling something about God's unconditional love. Heaven forbid we talk about that instead of all this hating of sinners and sins.