Pride celebrations in Charlotte, North Carolina are scheduled for this weekend, July 25.

As an added treat for everyone, Pentecostal preachers Lou Engle and Michael Brown have announced plans to “surround” the Pride events with a hoped-for thousand flock members in order to “reach out to gays and lesbians with the compassion of Jesus.”

After all, there are many churches that genuinely do reach out to the LGBT community in love and equality. If I were a member of such I church, I would be pretty sick to death by now of the loonbats who have turned “Christian tolerance” into something you have to put quotation marks around half the time.

(Maybe we could use another phrase for the loonbat churches? Christian toolery? No, you’d still need quotation marks around “Christian.” )

Engle and Brown say they will not “harass or intimidate” anyone – unless you count the part where they plan to surround the entire park with people in T-shirts reading “God Has a Better Way.”

They also say that the rally is not “mean-spirited.” Except, of course, for the part where it is.

A thorough story by the Box Turtle Bulletin reports that the last time Brown and his friends showed up at Charlotte Pride, many participants felt intimidated.

And while Brown and Engle claim their group will simply be praying and singing, last time the praying happened through a powerful sound system.

Brown and Engle are openly hoping that the Charlotte Pride protest will have “a ripple effect around the nation” and begin the process of turning back gay rights.

A quick hunt around the Web probably won’t get you any more eager to invite Brown over to Sunday dinner. His open invitation to participants on the God Has a Better Way website features a video full of that creepy rhetorical technique in which the so-very-moral speaker has to smile and even laugh while ticking off the things that have outraged him to show you just how crazy the world has gotten.

Brown is also a big fan of the “gays are taking away our right to discriminate against them” talking points. And, really, I have to give credit to whoever came up with those, if only for the mental hoops one has to leap through to get there. Way to rationalize.

Brown and Engle insist that – in spite of some occasionally violent “spiritual warrior” rhetoric – their whole mission is about compassion. Because, you see, they would like for their churches to be a safe place for people to come and wrestle with unwanted homosexual feelings.

(Any wrestlers you’re thinking of in particular, fellas?)

Brown and Engle are of course within their rights to protest. I just wish they’d be less disingenuous about their reasons for doing so.

Personal to Michael Brown and Lou Engle:
C’mon, fellas – you don’t really think you’re going to win anybody at Pride over to your scary brand of Hellfire religion. Just admit that.

I’m sure your histrionics might draw a few frightened new followers from elsewhere – people who need harsh black-and-white rules of punishment and reward in order to feel like the world is safe and makes sense.

And you’ll win a few more people who are in such a miserable and low place that they need to pick some group of people they can feel superior to. It’s the same place bigots always come from.

But you’re not actually going to win over anyone from the LGBT community and you know it. If you don’t know it, you are the dumbest missionaries on the face of the earth. You don’t win people over to your cause by being nasty and scary and telling them how awful they are.

Haven’t you ever dealt with anyone who’s really trying to convert you to something? The first rule is to be super, super nice. Some even err on the side of creepy-nice.

If you really wanted to win people over to Jesus at Pride, you’d bring actual compassion, and willing ears. Not to mention a few cold drinks. You’d maybe learn a little something about the people you’re trying to preach to, do your best to understand their hopes, fears, and needs, and get to know them as real, individual people.

But that could really wreck your afternoon of one-size-fits-all bigotry and fear, so you won’t.

Please, just admit that you hope to make yourselves feel better by making some Pride participants feel bad. Just admit that you’re doing this because you think you might get an intimidating enough group together to make people think twice about holding a Charlotte Pride again next year.

Come to think of it, I am suddenly very interested in hitting Charlotte pride next year. I hope your little show will inspire a few thousand other people to feel the same way.