There’s a classic religious joke along the same vein:
“Jews don’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah, Protestants don’t recognize the authority of the Pope, and Baptists don’t recognize each other at the liquor store.”
Probably applies to Mormons, as well. 
I heard some conservative comic tell some variant of that joke (it wasn’t Mormons but some other Christian sect) as an example of a universal joke, and as a non-Christian from urban California, I didn’t get the joke at all. It had to be explained to me; it’s so far outside my experience I never would have gotten it. So much for the universality of the joke…
Oh, I thought he made that point pretty well. E.g. framing the ice cream store, the classic indicator of innocent Americana, as being “gay.”
Doubly so, when everyone else acts like it’s true.
a common variant in east texas is==
“how can you tell the difference between a baptist and a methodist?
a methodist will say hello to you when you’re both in a liquor store.”
it went better when he was talking to the city council person because the comparison was ice cream and gay ice cream which pushes the conservative framing and makes it completely absurd.
it went less well with the pastor imo because he framed the question in exactly the way the pastor himself would have. it’s something that conservatives actually try to distinguish between
the humour there was not in the question per se, it was because it appeared* the pastor had no answer. they generally do though and usually have whole sermons on topics like that.
at any rate, that one bit didn’t do it for me
( * part of me always wonders what the unedited footage of his interviews looks like. )
That was the whole idea; Klepper played along with the idiotic premise in order to give the bigoted pastor a chance to come up with even a single example of the imaginary threat he was talking about—thus making the pastor look even more foolish when he couldn’t.
yup. i agree that was the intent.
I think it worked because he starts off with the pastor, completely giving the pastor all the room he needs to answer the question, using his own framing, however he wants - yet even he can’t; his baffled silence answers for him instead. He basically demolishes his own claim. (Whether or not he eventually had some bullshit answer, that he was clearly struggling to support his assertion, and even seemed confused by it, said it all.) Following it up with “ice cream = teh gey” just reinforced the idiocy of the assertion.
As the parent of a recently out trans teenager, this makes me sad and angry. I can’t even watch it knowing what is likely being said. I wish they had transcripts of these so I didn’t have to waste my time listening to these people. The idea of institutionalized hate makes me fear for my kid’s safety. Going through this process is hard enough. The religious bigots just make it all that much more difficult.
i don’t think it’s necessary at all to watch it. mostly though - if the one bigot they did interview said much of anything, they edited it all out. it left him looking clueless
the big positive thing was that this town ( with the dude’s fifty foot? white jesus statue ) in very red arkansas passed an anti discrimination ordinance on a wide margin
( apparently this all happened a while back )
( eta: another link i found said 71% of voters supported it, which given the general lean of arkansas is pretty cool )
I watched it all, it was edited to make the bigot look like an idiot.
Came here to mention this. Thank you.
I’m detecting a bit of he “doth protest too much* , methinks.”
There’s the persecution. Or, rather, a source of their existential crisis.
I don’t think that was just the editing.
There’s a reason so many of them end up getting caught with their rent boys or in the Larry Craig Memorial Bathroom; the worse bigots are the self-hating ones. They actively resent anyone who’s open and happy about that source of self-loathing because they can’t get past whatever is keeping them from reaching it. Maybe it’s just a fear of the change coming out would bring to their lives, or of the rejection they’d face (and yeah, they would get rejection, that’s true), or of having to admit the truth to all those lies that have built up over the years.
I’d honestly feel sorry for them over it, except they’re such horrible people who actively hurt others.
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