The LA Times reported recently that some fundamentalist Christian leaders want a "pink purge" to rid Congress and the Republican Party of homosexuals in key positions. They believe that queers who serve as top aides and advisors to conservative congress members are sabotaging their efforts to ban gay marriage and make America a theocracy. They even see some Republican congress members as too sympathetic to the "gay agenda." They've supposedly even compiled a list of all the gay Republican insiders in D.C., and they're ready to out them.

A "pink purge" would be nothing new. LGBT folks have always been the object of Christian witch hunts: Whether it was during the Middle Ages when we were burned at the stake or the McCarthy red scare years when we lost our jobs. Over the last five decades, Christian ministers and politicians have gained great wealth and influence denouncing the "homosexual menace" and the "gay agenda." Even when some of those ministers and politicians were gay themselves.

The latest threat from the gaybashers for Jesus came after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice swore in a gay man, Mark R. Dybul, as head of our country's global AIDS efforts. Dybul's lover, Jason Claire, was not only present but held the bible for his hubby. In a slap in the face to the "family values" crowd, Rice acknowledged Claire's mother as Dybul's "mother-in-law."

Rice's obvious support of the gay couple confirms for fundies what former White House staffer David Kuo alleges in his new book "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction." Kuo, who served as deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, accuses the Bush administration of using fundies to amass support among conservative voters while ridiculing them behind their backs.

Then there's the Mark Foley mess. Charges that Republican leaders knew about Foley's indiscretions with teenage male congressional pages have not endeared this administration to those who are fighting for a homo-free America. The fundies want blood. Thus far, no charges have been filed against the former Florida congress member. Possibly because the teen he wrote those sexy e-mails to had attained the legal age of consent. Or, more likely, because Bush and company don't want any further embarrassment.

While Foley hides in a detox center after laying blame for his e-mails on childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest, the fundies are having a field day attacking the Bushites. It's all good. Let the fundies and the Bush administration fight. Let the holier-than-thou bunch go after the Condoleezza Rice types. Let the "fags go to hell" crowd ask for pink purges or even tattooing all queers. They already have a list of congressional aides who are gay. Let them out the whole hypocritical bunch, especially the ones who work for such luminaries of the ranting right as Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. Hopefully, the schism will disillusion the flock and keep it from going to the polls next month. Which might even cost the GOP its control of Congress.

It couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a radical working-class southern Italian queer performer, writer and activist.