Warning: What you are about to read may not actually seem real. But, unfortunately, it is.

There is a religious group in San Diego that feels it’s far better for a homeless drug addict to serve a child peanuts and candy at a snack bar than for that same child to sit in a 45,000-seat baseball stadium along with the San Diego County District Attorney, who happens to be a lesbian.

Let me explain.

Some weeks ago, you might have read my column about the gay softball league coordinating a group of Padres fans to attend a Dodger’s game at Petco Park. It was the league’s third year coordinating the event successfully as a fund-raiser, and it took place without incident.

But now there’s a different gay group organizing a night out at Petco, and it’s caused quite a stir from a Christian-based rehab center called Set Free Ministries.

Here are the basics:

The Padres allow non-profit organizations to sell group tickets and retain a portion of the profits. This benefits both the Padres, who can use the help filling 45,000 seats for 81 home games, and hundreds of not-for-profit organizations.

On Sunday, July 8, San Diego Pride is, for the first time, taking advantage of this fund-raising opportunity, and will be taking a group “Out at Petco Park” when the Padres host the Atlanta Braves.

The game coincides with a number of other special events. ESPN will be broadcasting the game nationally, and the Padres will be giving away free floppy hats to children 14 and under.

Set Free Ministries has a problem with a group of gays and lesbians coming to the game on the same day the Padres are actively encouraging children to attend.

Pastor J.D. Loveland, Set Free’s development director, explained his rationale in an interview with San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Jeanette Steele last week.

“We’re concerned about Christian parents and other parents who do not want to have to answer at a ballgame why ‘Adam and Steve’ are doing what they are doing,” Loveland said.

Clearly Loveland, who, perhaps not surprisingly, didn’t return my calls, is concerned about inappropriate homosexual behavior in the stands. What that could be is anybody’s guess. Maybe he thinks we’re going to be practicing sodomy between innings, or showing up to the park dressed in ass-less leather chaps and redefining the seventh-inning stretch. Or (gasp) maybe he thinks Junior might see us holding hands and being normal!

Obviously, he feels that we, as gay people, are incapable of controlling our sinful nature for nine innings of baseball.

Now here’s where it gets even crazier.

In addition to their public-private partnership with the group ticket sales program, the Padres also have a similar deal with their concession stands.

Non-profit organizations can supply volunteer workers (after some training) and, in exchange for their hard work, the organization receives back some of the money generated by the sales at the stands they staff.

Set Free Ministries enlists the help of its clients to staff these concession stands. On July 8, it is scheduled to staff 42 concession stand jobs. However, Loveland said his crew, in protest, would not come to work that day. According to the Union Tribune, that could cost them as much as $1,680 in lost income.

Instead, the organization is going to hand out flyers to people entering Petco Park decrying the decision to allow a gay group sales event on the same day as kids get a fishing hat.

On its Web site, Set Free Ministries describes itself as “a 25-year-old ministry dedicated to reaching out to the homeless, the addicted, the afflicted, the lost and the hopeless.” In great detail at www.setfreesd.org, you can read about Christian-based 12-step groups for drugs and alcohol, family restoration programs and even a prison ministry.

In this columnist’s opinion, it appears Set Free does outstanding work to an often disenfranchised and forgotten population.

Why it would choose to use its clients as chess pieces to make a judgmental and ignorant statement is a question I would have liked to have asked Loveland himself, if for no other reason than to allow him to clarify his comments. He didn’t take advantage of that opportunity.

Ron deHarte did return my call. He is the executive director of San Diego Pride, and was also quoted in the Union Tribune piece.

I asked him what he thought about Set Free choosing to protest Pride’s presence at the ballgame during floppy hat day and what he thought about the ministry’s subsequent decision to pass out leaflets to other attendees at the game complaining about it.

“Their issue is about gays and lesbians,” deHarte said. “It’s not an issue about kids. It’s an issue about discrimination and hate, and this is their platform.”

Asked why Set Free chose to complain about Pride and none of the other gay and lesbian groups that have attended in recent years, deHarte offered an opinion.

“They are riding on the coat-tails of San Diego Pride because we are a visible organization, and they can get some mileage out of this,” he said.

As strange as the ministry’s rancor is, it’s not surprising to deHarte, who said that in his experience, anti-gay organizations “come out of the woodwork” before Pride weekend.

“It just goes to show that after 33 years of a contemporary LGBT civil rights movement, we still have some ways to go,” deHarte said.

For this column, I exchanged e-mails with George Stieren, whom I also quoted in my piece about the gay softball league’s night at the park. Stieren is the Padre’s director of business public relations and special events.

I asked him very plainly: Have there ever been any complaints about the behavior of GLBT fans at any Padres game?

His response, basically, was no. To his knowledge, there had never been any complaints about gays and lesbians at a Padres game.

Not surprised? Me neither.

Maybe deHarte is right. Maybe Set Free is seizing an opportunity to exploit us to get some ink. I mean, it did manage to make the front page of the Union Tribune, to say nothing of pissing me off enough to use this space to talk about it. Or maybe it’s genuine in its indignation and feels strongly that we’re all predators, and innocent children shouldn’t be exposed to such deviant behavior as homosexual fans wearing Padres jerseys and cheering on their local team.

I honestly don’t know which option to hope is right.

I do know that I am getting tired of people using Christ’s name to ignorantly protest gay people.

If you want to go to the game, go to www.sdpride.org and click on the link on the homepage. If you can’t do it on the site as of this reading, go to www.padres.com and buy a ticket for section 303. You’ll probably see someone you know.

I’m going. And I hope to see you there. I’ll be the bearish guy wearing my Padres jersey.

P.S. A special thank you to Chris Veldkamp and his boyfriend for filling in for me while my real job took me out of town for a few weeks. And if you’re one of my 10 regular readers, don’t worry, next week I’ll get back to actually talking about sports. Political commentary isn’t really my gig.