The L.A. Times knocks down a few…

The campaign promoting Proposition 8, which proposes to amend the state Constitution to ban same-sex marriages, has masterfully misdirected its audience, California voters. Look at the first-graders in San Francisco, attending their lesbian teacher’s wedding! Look at Catholic Charities, halting its adoption services in Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage is legal! Look at the church that lost its tax exemption over gay marriage! Look at anything except what Proposition 8 is actually about: a group of people who are trying to impose on the state their belief that homosexuality is immoral and that gays and lesbians are not entitled to be treated equally under the law.

That truth would never sell in tolerant, live-and-let-live California, and so it has been hidden behind a series of misleading half-truths. Once the sleight of hand is revealed, though, the campaign’s illusions fall away.

Take the story of Catholic Charities. The service arm of the Roman Catholic Church closed its adoption program in Massachusetts not because of the state’s gay marriage law but because of a gay anti-discrimination law passed many years earlier. In fact, the charity had voluntarily placed older foster children in gay and lesbian households — among those most willing to take hard-to-place children — until the church hierarchy was alerted and demanded that adoptions conform to the church’s religious teaching, which was in conflict with state law. The Proposition 8 campaign, funded in large part by Mormons who were urged to do so by their church, does not mention that the Mormon church’s adoption arm in Massachusetts is still operating, even though it does not place children in gay and lesbian households.

How can this be? It’s a matter of public accountability, not infringement on religion. Catholic Charities acted as a state contractor, receiving state and federal money to find homes for special-needs children who were wards of the state, and it faced the loss of public funding if it did not comply with the anti-discrimination law. In contrast, LDS (for Latter-day Saints) Family Services runs a private adoption service without public funding. Its work, and its ability to follow its religious teachings, have not been altered.

That San Francisco field trip? The children who attended the wedding had their parents’ signed permission, as law requires. A year ago, with the same permission, they could have traveled to their teacher’s domestic-partnership ceremony. Proposition 8 does not change the rules about what children are exposed to in school. The state Education Code does not allow schools to teach comprehensive sex education — which includes instruction about marriage — to children whose parents object.

Another "Yes on 8" canard is that the continuation of same-sex marriage will force churches and other religious groups to perform such marriages or face losing their tax-exempt status. Proponents point to a case in New Jersey, where a Methodist-based nonprofit owned seaside land that included a boardwalk pavilion. It obtained an exemption from state property tax for the land on the grounds that it was open for public use and access. Events such as weddings — of any religion — could be held in the pavilion by reservation. But when a lesbian couple sought to book the pavilion for a commitment ceremony, the nonprofit balked, saying this went against its religious beliefs.

The court ruled against the nonprofit, not because gay rights trump religious rights but because public land has to be open to everyone or it’s not public. The ruling does not affect churches’ religious tax exemptions or their freedom to marry whom they please on their private property, just as Catholic priests do not have to perform marriages for divorced people and Orthodox synagogues can refuse to provide space for the weddings of interfaith couples. And Proposition 8 has no bearing on the issue; note that the New Jersey case wasn’t about a wedding ceremony.

Emphasis mine.  Go read the rest of it.  This is how the game has always been played against your gay and lesbian neighbors.  Lie.  Then lie some more.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  But look closer at the tax cases.  The people pushing anti-gay legislation are saying basically that their animus toward homosexuals gives them the right to demand government funding without having to follow the rules that come with those taxpayer dollars.  They have the right to tax breaks without having to meet the same requirements other people do in order to get those same tax breaks. 

Here’s what’s missing from this: gay people pay taxes too.  Nobody is saying that gay haters can’t avail themselves of state funded programs because of their prejudices.  Any homophobe who wanted to could have gone to that Catholic adoption agency, or married in that Methodist pavilion.  And I’m sure a lot did.  But with tax dollars comes this one important thing: equal access.  Because everyone is paying for it out of their taxes, then everyone must have equal access to it.  In Massachusetts adoption by same-sex couples is legal.  If you operate with taxpayer dollars, then you must treat all citizens equally.  How hard is that to understand?

But there’s that word the haters keep choking on: Equal.   As the pig said in Animal Farm, Some animals are more equal then others.  Understand this if you understand nothing else about the mindset of the hater.  They don’t so much think gay people are less then equal, as they think they themselves are more equal.  So, naturally, they have the right to dictate terms nobody else does. They are the superior beings here…the Elect…the chosen ones…  The bitter irony here is that they accuse gay people of wanting Special Rights.

Special Rights??  Like…the right to feed at the government trough and then pick and choose who you will serve?  Like…the right to get tax breaks for property in exchange for opening it up to the public, and then decide for yourself who can and who cannot use it?  Those kinds of special rights?

What’s changing now is that these liars, these cheats, have grown more and more powerful and now the rest of America is getting a good look at how they operate.  Like Lincoln said, you can fool some of the people some of the time…