by Sarah J. McCarthy

About the author: Sarah J. McCarthy is a freelance writer.

Religious conservatives are angry at widespread accusations that their holy wars against gays and abortion doctors have created a climate that encourages violence. "The constant degrading of homosexuals is exacting a toll in blood," says Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter—an assertion that conservative columnist Don Feder denounces as "bizarre." Does Alter actually think, asks Feder, that, if some "yahoo in the hinterlands" believes the religious institutions that declare homosexuality a disorder, he'll have "to go out and bash a queer"? Well, not exactly, Mr. Feder.

Those yahoos in the hinterlands who robbed, killed, and tied Matthew Shepard to a fence post may have been just as influenced by class envy, aimed at rich kids whose parents send them to prestigious schools—as...