#3038: Danny Holliday

  

Danny Holliday is pastor of Victory Baptist Church, Alton, Illinois, member of the National Coalition of Black Pastors and Christian Leaders, fundie bigot and deluded self-declared victim of anti-Christian government oppression. Particularly grievous with regard to the government’s oppression of Holliday is the fact that government and courts recognize same-sex marriage: Holliday doesn’t like same-sex marriage, and the fact that others are allowed to do things that don’t align with his beliefs and approvals, is rank oppression of him. So it goes.

 

In fact, Holliday thinks marriage equality for gays and lesbians violates the separation of church and state. As Holliday sees it, the separation of church and state means that the government has “no right to disregard what God says” about marriage or other issues: “The issue is God defined marriage and since our Constitution, our Declaration of Independence and the oath of office in the state of Illinois recognize almighty God, then we have no right to disregard what God says about the institution of marriage. They don’t have a right to step beyond the veil, that separation of church and state, because it is God who gives us religious freedom and not the state”. In response, Rick Green – not generally known for reason or sensitivity to reality, and who otherwise does not believe in the separation of church and state – compared Holliday’s campaigns against marriage equality in Illinois to “John Adams at the Continental Congress the guy behind the scenes that was working day and night to make sure we got the Declaration of Independence.”

 

When the Supreme Court ruling came down back in the days, Holliday was unhappy: “Just as the Supreme was all wrong on slavery, which resulted in the Civil War, it is all wrong on legalizing same-sex marriage” (there’s some handwaving involved in that ‘just as’). But the ruling was of course just part of a more general anti-Christian trend that has (entirely in Holliday’s mind) led to crosses being “illegal on Government property” and “the words Merry Christmas have become taboo”.

 

Diagnosis: Yes, he is a delusionally paranoid fundie, and as delusionally paranoid fundies are wont to do, his bigotry is presented as victimhood. And at least at a local level, some people seem to be listening to him.