Hot-tipper Kevin Erickson of Anacortes’ neato Department of Safety writes in with some concerns about next Tuesday’s MxPX show (emphasis mine):

Yesterday, the line out blog posted an item about an MXPX show being rescheduled.

I was wondering if you guys knew about the notoriously homophobic lyrical content of one of the opening bands, Hawk Nelson. On the title track from their album “Letter To A President,” they compare same-sex marriage to murder and date rape.

It seems like this band and Tooth & Nail, the Seattle-based label that releases their music (and that MXPX just re-signed with), deserves a little more critical press scrutiny.

Here are the lyrics Erickson refers to:

Same-sex marriage in a state where they don’t care
Murder is wrong but the jail time’s not fair
Not to mention date rape, felony, and car theft
Break it down and tell me what we’ve got left

Not exactly the most eloquent christian rock lyricists, are they? But they are pretty clearly placing same-sex marriage on a continuum that includes murder, NOT TO MENTION date rape, unspecified felony, and, um, car theft. Later they attack the twin scourges of underfunded schools and drug use with the kind of analysis that makes me suspect they’ve experienced some less-than-stellar education first-hand:

Take a good look at Tommy, he’s a track star
Good role model, had a chance to go real far
Then the school made a budget-cut
Cut out the track team
Now instead Tommy is a crack head

It’s no news that Tooth & Nail is responsible for some truly awful christian crap rock, but this could be a new standard of awful crappiness even for them. The show already had to move from the Showbox to El Corazon—what, Mars Hill was booked that night?—and hopefully that downward slide will continue until these douchetards are back to playing whatever suburban mega-church basement they crawled out of.