The last few days have seen an outcry over the BBC's on-line debate over a proposed Ugandan law that calls for the death penalty for gays. 

Now, if you're a Fred Phelps type in need of some media attention, expressing enthusiastic support for laws that call for the execution of gays and a three-year sentence for anyone who knows they're gay and does not report them is sure to make you a hero in certain circles.

I thought of Phelps as I read about Stephen Green's vocal support of Uganda's plan.  It's not surprising that the UK's version of Phelps, a one-man "Christian group" who ironically made a name for himself protesting the BBC's broadcast of Jerry Springer: The Opera*, would offer his thoughts on the death penalty for gays. 

What I found interesting was the spin he put on Christ's famous admonition: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone".  According to Green, this is proof of Christ's support of the death penalty:

[O]ur Lord upheld the death penalty when He called for the accusers of the woman caught in adultery to cast the first stone (John 8:7) – if,that is, they were not implicated in adultery themselves.

By Green's toxic logic Christ is expressing his approval of stoning, so long as those doing the stoning aren't implicated in the crime the one being stoned is accused of. The passage in John is, of course, the furthest thing from an endorsement of the death penalty you're likely to find in the Bible.  It ends with those about to stone the adulteress slinking away in shame, something the Greens and Phelpses of the world obviously know nothing of.
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*Thanks, Henry :)