This kind of discrimination does not even exist on Tatooine!

I have to say that of all of the possible ways he could have approached this, aside from saying certain passages in the bible should be ignored and that homosexuality is ok, he did a pretty good job. He criticized churches for focusing on one or two sins (abortion?) and questioned whether god considers one sin worse than another.

I think it's a stretch to criticize this guy for inciting, causing, or even creating a climate that allows gay-bashing. He's a preacher who never says anything negative. I do question his motives and sincerity; one doesn't win a tv audience and their money based on preaching negativity. But the guy is about as positive as a conservative Christian can be.

There will always be people who shove logic and rationality aside in order to "believe" in god and the bible. Of those, a number are going to believe a literal or classic interpretation of the bible. The best we can expect of those people is to embrace Joel's approach.

The bible was written by men, rewritten by men and will be rewritten by men again. Since people have shown that they are willing to believe in every form, version, edition, rewrite, translation and reprinting of that ancient piece of prose, I see no reason why they will quit any time soon. So isn't better if someone with 8 million viewers tells his flock to stop picking on gay people alone and treat gay folk the same as folks who eat shrimp, married people who divorce and people who speak poorly of their parents. That is, that all people have sin, some sins may be worse than others, but don't fixate on one sin in someone else while ignoring 900 other sins of your own.