I’m reading these headlines yesterday…

G.O.P.’s Portman, Saying Son Is Gay, Now Backs Same-Sex Marriage

And thinking pretty much what Matthew Yglesias tweeted this morning: “Glad Rob Portman’s for marriage equality, but wish conservatives could muster empathy for problems that don’t directly affect their family.”

On the other hand he didn’t go on a warpath against homosexuality like some conservatives have when they found out they had a gay kid (Hello Phyllis Schlafly…William Knight…Alan Keyes…).  Let me make an educated guess here: Portman thinks love is an integral part of marriage.

How many times have you heard them saying in the kook pews, in the context of arguing against marriage for same-sex couples, that marriage isn’t about love?  How many of those are the sort of people who you would expect to have their eyes opened when a child comes out to them?  At some point you have to conclude that this entire battle has been over the sanctity of love, and nothing else.

All some people seem to be able to see in the trappings of marriage is the authority part.  I now pronounce you… They forget the part about What God has joined… I don’t think you have to be a believer to see the truth in that.  The higher power isn’t in the part played by the clergyman or whoever is officiating at the ceremony.  The ceremony is an act of acknowledgement; a mutual recognition, on the part of everyone concerned, of a fact that has already occurred.  The higher power, the actual presiding authority, has already acted.  Think of the officiator as a conductor for an ancient score.  Public declarations are made, promises sworn between a couple, and between them and their community.  We are here to witness… The higher power is love.  What it has joined, let no one cast asunder.

What sort of person says that love is not the central fact of marriage?  The same sort who throws their gay child out into the streets, that’s who.

[Update...]

Dan Savage this morning…

NYT:

“The die is cast on this issue,” said Steve Schmidt, who advised the presidential campaigns of Senator John McCain and George W. Bush and has for years urged Republicans to accept same-sex marriage. “Why should we sign a suicide pact with the National Organization for Marriage?” Mr. Schmidt asked, saying the party should instead endorse the principles of federalism and let the states decide the matter.

Depending on how you slice and dice the electorate, you can make the case that the gay vote was decisive in this election. So what NOM is asking the GOP to do—double, triple, quadruple down on anti-gay hate—really does amount to signing a political suicide pact.

The homophobic pundits and leaders of the anti-gay industrial complex who are saying now that this election does not represent a sudden shift in people’s attitudes about same-sex marriage are right.  There’s nothing sudden about the build up of pressure along a fault line either, just the release of it.  The trend toward acceptance and equality has been obvious for decades now, and the haters have always known it.  Witness the junk science industry they’ve been busy building since the Stonewall Riots and the removal of homosexuality as a psychiatric diagnosis.  You don’t wage a bitter scorched earth war on the facts if you know the facts are on your side.  The haters have always known that in the end all they had to win on was the passion of their own hate, and that eventually that would not be enough.  And they have always known that marriage was the final threshold, and that it would be crossed when more heterosexuals then not would say to each other, and then at the polls,  Actually, homosexuals do love.

And so it comes to this…

The Colorado Independent reports that officials from the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) have vowed to make Starbucks (along with other companies that support same-sex marriage) pay a “price” in Middle Eastern countries that are hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. The statements were made during a Nov. 8 conference call, scheduled as a discussion of the 2012 elections which saw sweeping marriage equality victories in Maine, Maryland and Minnesota, as well as Starbucks’ home state of Washington.

“So for example, in Qatar, in the Middle East, we’ve begun working to make sure that there’s some price to be paid for this,” Brian Brown says in audio recording of the conference call…

And that price will be paid not merely in lost sales, but in the blood of gay people all throughout the middle east, just as they have done in Africa and wherever else they could.  And Brian Brown and Maggie Gallagher and Robert George will not shed a single tear over it.  Ours was always a struggle for the right to love and be loved, against an immovable need to hate the heart capable of it and all the wonder and joy of life and existence.  The fight isn’t over, the sweat and tears and bloodshed go on, but the Rhine has been crossed.  Actually, homosexuals do love.

Tears of joy.

I fell in love, understood myself to be homosexual, in 1971.  I was seventeen and I didn’t have to be told in that moment that people like me were officially categorized as mentally ill…I got that feedback from every direction in my culture.  It was there in books and magazines, newspapers and TV.  When I was fourteen I sat in a sex ed class taught by our gym teachers, who told us that homosexuals were twisted dangerous psychopaths who often mutilated the genitals of the people they had sex with and then killed them.  At seventeen the mirror my culture held up to me in TV and movies…even in many of the underground comix..was that of a sick, twisted pervert, sometimes dangerous, other times just a pathetic faggot, but always to be treated worse then even murderers, rapists, even communists.

Even Mad Magazine was telling me a I was a fair object of universal contempt…

Never mind the asinine poem, look at the people in that illustration. This was what my culture told me I was.  I knew it wasn’t true, but how do you struggle against such a torrent of disgust, contempt and outright hatred?  In the end, it was simply by being brave, and living openly.  I’m not saying all the protests and militancy weren’t necessary, they absolutely were.  The closet was killing us, we had to break down that door and get everyone’s attention or we would never be free.  But once we got that attention, we had to show people that the scarecrow monster that had been made of us simply wasn’t real.  Not everyone would be open to that message…as Oliver Wendell Holmes once aptly said, a bigot’s mind is like an eye: the more light you shine on it the tighter it closes.  But you had to have faith that a nation that could put human footsteps on the moon was not built by bigots. You had to have faith that the evidence of our lives, as they really were, would prevail.

But never forget how hard and bitter that struggle, simply to be able to live our lives openly, was.  I saw the early days of the gay rights movement here in America, the Anita Bryant backlash, the rise of the religious right, and decades of a torrent of venom and hate.  Friends died in the AIDS epidemic.  And month after month, year after year, I saw the news reports of gay people being killed randomly by gay bashers, many of whom escaped prison simply by asserting the homosexual had made a pass at them.

I wish they could have lived to see this day.  All the lost to AIDS, to violence, to despair.  Maryland, Wisconsin, Washington state and Minnesota could not have been won with our votes alone.  I have lived to see us change from dangerous twisted perverts into neighbors.

And now, I can see something else starting to happen…gazing back on so much of a life lived under such absolute and relentless disgust and hatred; those times are fading away, as if unreal, surreal.

I am a neighbor.  How could I have have been not?  Did any of that really happen?

The truth behind Frank Schubert’s deceptive multi-state anti-equality ad

Now playing in four states, virtually identical ads designed at heading off marriage equality at the ballot box. These ads are merely a retread of the template created to defeat marriage equality in the Proposition 8 ballot referendum of 2008 in California.

They are all produced by the kingpin of anti-gay politics: Frank Schubert. They are all premised on the foundation of one basic lie: that a state implementing marriage equality will compel the state to teach children in public schools all about gay marriage.

It won’t

But…no.  That is not the foundational lie.  The bedrock here is Homosexuals Will Rape Your Children…

If it was just about teaching school kids that some couples are same-sex then where could the venomous hysteria possibly be coming from, the bottomless rage?  These people are spending millions all over the country, the couple in this ad appearing in one state after another, just to darkly warn that Dick and Jane might learn about Adam and Steve…?

No…just…no.  First of all, these people don’t even believe that homosexuals are capable of forming stable long lasting relationships. The possibility that same-sex couples might get married and form households, and that school children might learn that this happens in human societies does not concern them and that is not the warning they are broadcasting in these ads.  The sly implication in all of them is the schools are now going to teach children how to have gay sex.  And, to the degree same-sex marriage normalizes homosexuality, that the entire motivation for it is to leave children open to the idea of having sex with homosexual adults, thereby recruiting them into homosexuality.  This is what the homosexuals want.  Not to be married, but to have access to your children.

That is what’s being said, between the lines but well heard all the same, in every single one of those ads.

There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to anti-gay propaganda. Ever since Anita Bryant it’s been predatory homosexuals want to recruit your children because that’s the only way homosexuals can reproduce. The packaging of the lie changes, but it’s always the same lie.

Here in Maryland this election year, my heterosexual neighbors will be deciding whether or not their gay neighbors can get married. Oh, gay Marylanders can vote on it too…all possibly two to ten percent of us depending on who you ask are the percentage of homosexuals in a given human population.  On the one hand homosexuals are a small minority whose needs can be easily and casually erased by the heterosexual majority with a simple flick of a voting booth button.  On the other hand we are a terrifying threat to civilization itself.

One of our local numbskulls…no not Don Dwyer…state delegate Emmitt Burns (note: a Democrat), threatened Baltimore Ravens players for speaking out in favor of same-sex marriage.  This prompted another NFL player, Chris Kluwe, to pen a scorching hot missive back at Burns, wondering in part…

Why do you hate the fact that other people want a chance to live their lives and be happy, even though they may believe in something different from what you believe, or act differently from you? How does gay marriage affect your life in any way, shape, or form? Are you worried that if gay marriage became legal, all of a sudden you’d start thinking about penis? (“Oh shit. Gay marriage just passed. Gotta get me some of that hot dong action!”) Will all your friends suddenly turn gay and refuse to come to your Sunday Ticket grill-outs? (Unlikely. Gay people enjoy watching football, too.)

All in good fun…right?  Burns backed off a tad, allowing that even football players can speak their mind from time to time.  But of course the kook pews couldn’t let the matter rest there.  It was starting to look like the most manly of sports was open to the idea of gay people being something other then human garbage.  So out comes another Ravens player, Matt Birk just to prove that football hasn’t entirely succumbed…

I think it is important to set the record straight about what the marriage debate is and is not about, and to clarify that not all NFL players think redefining marriage is a good thing.

The union of a man and a woman is privileged and recognized by society as “marriage” for a reason, and it’s not because the government has a vested interest in celebrating the love between two people. With good reason, government recognizes marriages and gives them certain legal benefits so they can provide a stable, nurturing environment for the next generation of citizens: our kids.

Children have a right to a mom and a dad, and I realize that this doesn’t always happen. Through the work my wife and I do at pregnancy resource centers and underprivileged schools, we have witnessed firsthand the many heroic efforts of single mothers and fathers — many of whom work very hard to provide what’s best for their kids.

But recognizing the efforts of these parents and the resiliency of some (not all, unfortunately) of these kids, does not then give society the right to dismiss the potential long-term effects on a child of not knowing or being loved by his or her mother or father. Each plays a vital role in the raising of a child.

Marriage is in trouble right now — admittedly, for many reasons that have little to do with same-sex unions. In the last few years, political forces and a culture of relativism have replaced “I am my brother’s keeper” and “love your neighbor as yourself” with “live and let live” and “if it feels good, go ahead and do it.”

The effects of no-fault divorce, adultery, and the nonchalant attitude toward marriage by some have done great harm to this sacred institution. How much longer do we put the desires of adults before the needs of kids? Why are we not doing more to lift up and strengthen the institution of marriage?

Same-sex unions may not affect my marriage specifically, but it will affect my children — the next generation. Ideas have consequences, and laws shape culture. Marriage redefinition will affect the broader well-being of children and the welfare of society. As a Christian and a citizen, I am compelled to care about both.

I am speaking out on this issue because it is far too important to remain silent. People who are simply acknowledging the basic reality of marriage between one man and one woman are being labeled as “bigots” and “homophobic.” Aren’t we past that as a society?

Don’t we all have family members and friends whom we love who have same-sex attraction? Attempting to silence those who may disagree with you is always un-American, but especially when it is through name-calling, it has no place in respectful conversation.

A defense of marriage is not meant as an offense to any person or group. All people should be afforded their inalienable American freedoms. There is no opposition between providing basic human rights to everyone and preserving marriage as the sacred union of one man and one woman.

I hope that in voicing my beliefs I encourage people on both sides to use reason and charity as they enter this debate.

You can almost hear him pleading with his readers to pay attention to all that I Am Not A Bigot hand waving at the end and not the fact that an editorial against same-sex marriage ending with a call for reason and charity had absolutely none of either of those things to offer.

How much longer do we put the desires of adults before the needs of kids?

Chris Kluwe shot a response back that pretty well sums it up:

The only impact same-sex marriage will have on your children is if one of them turns out to be gay and cannot get married. What will you do (and I ask this honestly) if one or more of your kids ends up being gay? Will you love them any less? What will your actions speak to them, 15 years from now, when they ask you why they can’t enjoy the same relationship that you and your wife have now? And if your response is “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it”, well, for a lot of people that bridge is here right now. They’re trying to cross it, but the way is barred…

But pay attention to how reliably that Save Our Children rhetoric pops out of their mouths.  When you see this, it’s a red flag, because as Kluwe says, some kids are gay.  What you’re seeing there isn’t about kids at all, it’s about the old slander that homosexuals are child molesters.  Birk isn’t thinking about the welfare of gay kids when he argues that same-sex marriage is a threat to children because there aren’t any gay kids.  Nobody is born gay, they’re recruited into it.  It’s knowledge so deeply ingrained within him it colors everything he says throughout the editorial.  There are no gay kids so I don’t have to worry about my kids being gay.  I worry that they’ll be recruited into the lifestyle. I worry that homosexuality will be normalized.

That’s the problem he has with same-sex marriage.  But don’t call him a bigot because…you know…he has Reasons.  Just don’t ask him for any.

Marriage is in trouble right now — admittedly, for many reasons that have little to do with same-sex unions.

Er…Matt…  In this entire editorial you don’t give Any reasons that have to do with same-sex unions.  It’s marriages is about the welfare of children and if we let same-sex couples marry that will destroy marriage which would be a very bad thing for children.  But don’t ask me why letting homosexuals get married will destroy marriage when we let heterosexual couples incapable of having children get married all the time because then I’ll have to say something like because….homosexuals!  And then you’d call me a bigot and I’m not so stop trying to silence me!

I am not a bigot.  I respect everyone.  Even the folks whose ring fingers I want to cut off and whose lives I don’t have clue one about…

Children have a right to a mom and a dad, and I realize that this doesn’t always happen. Through the work my wife and I do at pregnancy resource centers and underprivileged schools, we have witnessed firsthand the many heroic efforts of single mothers and fathers — many of whom work very hard to provide what’s best for their kids.

Seems you never worked with any same-sex parents Matt.  But you have an opinion about the fitness of their families.  Why is that Matt?  Where did that opinion come from if it wasn’t first hand experience knowing and being a part of the lives of gay couples and their families.

Ah…I think I know…

NFL Player Matt Birk Makes Anti-Gay Ad for Catholic Church and Equality Advocate Chris Kluwe Responds: VIDEO

In a video for the Minnesota Catholic Conference, Baltimore Raven center Matt Birk doubles down on the anti-gay sentiment he expressed in an op-ed for the Star Tribune this week in support of Minnesota’s upcoming ballot measure that would constitutionally ban same-sex marriage.

First comes the editorial, then the video, and this was a spontaneous display of support for the heterosexual prerogative like all those Mormons coming together spontaneously to work for Proposition 8 was.

This is the Catholic church talking through a willing football player.  But again…take notice of all that I Am Not A Bigot And Calling Me One Amounts To Censorship hand waving at the end.  His critics aren’t trying to silence him, he’s trying to silence his critics.  This is How Dare You Take Issue With My Sincerely Held Religious Beliefs You Bigot! It’s the only song they have left now apparently. The only reason people support the right of gay couples to marry is because they hate Jesus.

I encourage all Americans to stand up to preserve and promote a healthy, authentic promarriage culture in this upcoming election.

Same-sex marriage is not healthy.  Same-sex marriages are not authentic.  And charity is you treat me better then I am willing to treat my homosexual neighbor.  And don’t be calling me a bigot simply because the only reasons I have for denying gay couples the right to marry are my religious beliefs and a knee jerk reflex that homosexuals somehow threaten my children.

This started coming across the wire the other day and I just have to repost it here.  Alas, I’m suspecting many of my fellow Americans won’t even get it…

Yes, yes…I can hear it already.  King Henry didn’t redefine marriage, it was still one man and one women.  And the next woman.  And the next.  And the next.  And the next.  And the next.

I can appreciate that some people have deeply held religious beliefs. What I don’t appreciate is some people turning my hopes and dreams of love into their stepping stones to heaven. I can appreciate that some people have had a hard life. But only a runt uses that as an excuse to inflict pain on others. I can appreciate how it is to feel your peace and security threatened by forces you don’t understand. That has never once made me want to become that force against others. I have always wished you peace. You will need to let me have mine too though, because that’s just the way peace works.

The headline I was expecting…came as expected.

NC voters approve amendment on gay marriage

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina voters approved a constitutional amendment on Tuesday defining marriage solely as a union between a man and a woman, making it the 30th state to adopt such a ban.

Thirty states.  Thirty states.  Oh…and it’s more then simply a ban on same-sex marriage. That amendment was an all out attack on same-sex couples having any legal rights that heterosexuals are bound to respect.

I have reflected often on the fact that the only reason I feel free to explore my country, take the long cross-country drives I love, is that I am single.  The saving grace of it is that the side of my family that approves of constitutionally kicking their gay neighbors in the teeth all live in states I couldn’t visit anyway were I happily coupled. Should that day ever come, it will save me a lot of excuse making. Tell you what…you come visit us. We’d love to have you over!  And your marriages are valid here so don’t worry.

[Cross posted over at Truth Wins Out...]

This post is going to repeat a lot of verbiage from a post I made here nearly two years ago, but it’s about a recurring theme I see in our struggle. That theme raised it’s head and laughed at me this morning, while reading a post over at Box Turtle Bulletin. There, poster Rob Tisinai writes about an email he got from Maggie Gallagher…

I got a fundraising email from Maggie Gallagher the other day. It’s unbelievably long (as in, I can’t believe she expects people to read this whole thing). One sentence jumped out at me before I gave up on the piece.

Are two men pledged in a sexual union really a marriage?

Personally I’d answer, No.

Which would be the correct answer from Gallagher’s point of view. Tisinai goes on to rephrase the question in terms that acknowledge same-sex couples might actually be in love, and avers that this is something she knows she cannot admit because it undercuts her entire argument against same-sex marriage.

I don’t think her argument is about same-sex marriage. I don’t think any of them really give a good goddamn about marriage. What they’re adamant about is that homosexuals aren’t really human…that Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. It isn’t about marriage at all. What marriage represents to the homophobes is the final barrier to admitting that homosexuals are fully human and capable of experiencing all the higher emotions of love and devotion and commitment that heterosexuals do…that we are not, as Dr. Laura once famously put it, biological errors, or as you can hear thumped from pulpits all over the bible belt, demon possessed hell bound abominations in the eyes of god.

Patrick Wooden Warns that Gay Men Shove Cellphones, Baseball Bats and Animals up their Anuses, Die in Diapers

North Carolina activist Patrick Wooden has become a favorite of groups like the National Organization for Marriage, the Family Research Council and the American Family Association, and most recently joined Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality at a rally denouncing the Southern Poverty Law Center. On a recent appearance on LaBarbera’s radio show, Wooden called homosexuality a “wicked, deviant, immoral, self-destructive, anti-human sexual behavior” and should make people “literally gag.” Wooden added that gay men have “to wear a diaper or a butt plug just to be able to contain their bowels” by their “40s or 50s” as a result of “what happens to the male anus.”

When you hear them yap, yap, yapping about the sanctity of marriage, what they’re saying is homosexuals are some sort of sub-human…things…that copulate with just about anything handy whether it’s a person or a horse or a cell phone. To lift what homosexuals do to the level of heterosexual love and commitment then, is a profane act of defilement. Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. Be it with each other or…cell phones.

Which is to say, we do not love. Love is something fully human individuals experience. The homosexual experiences no such thing. That is an article of belief more central to the faith of modern fundamentalists then the resurrection.

Back in April of 2010, I read this by then newly out Christian musician Jennifer Knapp back in an interview in Christianity Today…

Q: So why come out of the closet, so to speak?

Knapp: I’m in no way capable of leading a charge for some kind of activist movement. I’m just a normal human being who’s dealing with normal everyday life scenarios. As a Christian, I’m doing that as best as I can. The heartbreaking thing to me is that we’re all hopelessly deceived if we don’t think that there are people within our churches, within our communities, who want to hold on to the person they love, whatever sex that may be, and hold on to their faith. It’s a hard notion. It will be a struggle for those who are in a spot that they have to choose between one or the other. The struggle I’ve been through—and I don’t know if I will ever be fully out of it—is feeling like I have to justify my faith or the decisions that I’ve made to choose to love who I choose to love.

[Emphasis mine...] The problem after all isn’t sex, it’s love. But asking people to acknowledge that same-sex couples love is precisely the problem. Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex… People sitting in the pews side-by-side with their gay neighbors aren’t asking them to choose between their love and their faith. When they look at same-sex couples they don’t see love at all…merely sex. They are “struggling with homosexuality”. The bedrock prejudice insists, absolutely insists, that is all there is to same-sex couples. Empty, barren, transient lust.

As NOM board member Orson Scott Card once said, gay couples are just playing dress-up…

“However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be, what they are doing is not marriage. Nor does society benefit in any way from treating it as if it were…”

“They steal from me what I treasure most, and gain for themselves nothing at all. They won’t be married. They’ll just be playing dress-up in their parents’ clothes…”

-Orson Scott Card, Homosexual “Marriage” and Civilization

However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be… There’s the problem. Look at it if you have the nerve. This isn’t about sex. That empty barren, perverted lust is not what makes them angry. What makes them angry is any suggestion that homosexuals do, in fact, experience love the same way heterosexuals do. And it makes them absolutely livid.

It’s often argued that gay couples cannot rise to the level of marriage because they don’t produce children, and marriage is mostly about family life. But this argument is a sham. And it mirrors another sham argument often heard in conservative religious communities, that being homosexual is not a sin, only engaging in homosexual acts is. If only the homosexuals just didn’t have sex, they could be welcomed into the kingdom of Heaven too…just like the rest of us. But heterosexual couples, medically incapable of having sex, are as welcome to marriage as they are the Kingdom and nobody in either group is saying that same-sex couples can marry as long as they don’t have sex.

The heterosexual couple who stick together even if they are denied a sex life are seen as vindicating the power of love. That is why sterility among heterosexuals is no barrier to marriage. But same-sex couples somehow defile the institute of marriage with their very presence, whether they bring children into it (via adoption) or not, whether they can have sex or not. And that is because homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex.

It’s not about children. It’s not about family life. It’s not even about heterosexuality. What homosexuals steal from people like Orson Scott Card is the idea that only heterosexuals love. All arguments to the contrary, what this fight is about, Exactly, is love, and who can be allowed to love and be loved, and who cannot. Marriage is love’s sanctuary, a sacred place where lovers can find shelter, protection, support. Letting homosexuals, who are incapable of love, into it defiles that sanctuary, turning it from a sacred place into a brothel.

However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be… In 1983, Sharon Kowalski suffered severe brain injuries in a motorcycle accident leaving her unable to care for herself. Her lover, Karen Thompson, with whom she had exchanged wedding bands and shared a house, had to fight a long and bitter legal battle with Kowalski’s parents, who refused to allow Thompson any contact at all with their daughter. When Sharon, with difficulty, typed her wishes to go back home with Karen on a keyboard provided by a doctor, her parents took the keyboard away. At one point, Donald Kowalski, Sharon’s father, asked a reporter in exasperated frustration “What does that woman want with my daughter…she’s in diapers!” For almost nine years Thompson fought it out in court with Kowalski’s parents, refusing to let the woman she loved be condemned to life in a nursing home where she would be kept isolated from the world outside and denied any therapy that would have allowed her to communicate her wishes to be taken back home to Karen. When she finally won, Donald Kowalski called her an animal.

What does that woman want with my daughter… A same-sex couple who cannot have sex would be, if unrepentant nonetheless, ineligible for the Kingdom, let alone marriage. It’s not about the Act, if not engaging in the Act makes no difference. Their crime is that they love, and love is not permitted to homosexuals.

We cannot be human beings, we must be animals.

Pastor Ken Hutcherson Compares Marriage Equality to Horse-Fucking

Antioch Bible Church pastor Ken Hutcherson didn’t sit in the same room as two gay people to debate marriage equality. But he did call into the Seattle Channel studio where gay people were present for a debate on same-sex marriage.

And of course, Pastor Hutcherson went there: “If this law is passed, what is going to happen? Now ask your guests in the studio. Do they believe that if they change the definition of marriage being between one man and one woman, what is going to stop two men one woman, two women one man, one man against a horse, one many with a boy, one man with anything?“

We must be animals. Not sinners in need of salvation, but animals. Why? So we can be their scapegoats. The right wing politician who goes hiking the Appalachian trail with his mistress while his wife and children wonder where the hell he went. The religious right preacher who gets caught visiting prostitutes. The conservative moralizer who gets caught gambling. The problem isn’t that we are moral cheats, the problem is acceptance of homosexuality. Homosexuality is destroying the family and society, not our own failures of moral character. Probably it is also responsible for earthquakes and hurricanes.

Jennifer Knapp didn’t choose love over faith, but love over fame because there was no other way. Karen Thompson fought for nine years to free her beloved because their was no other way. The gay civil rights struggle is not a fight over scripture. It has nothing to do with faith. It is not about sex. It is a fight over the right, the essential human need, to love and be loved. Because love can overcome any obstacle, endure any hardship, hold on to any hope no matter how distant and faint. Because love can move mountains. Because the one thing you never want the scapegoat to do is move mountains.

A few days ago Martin O’Malley, the governor of Maryland, submitted a bill to the legislature to legalize same-sex marriage. Hate groups like NOM have been preparing for this day. So, in our own way I suppose, have my fellow gay and gay supportive Marylanders.

I do not look forward to the brutal, bitter, torrent of hate mongering that is to come. I sure don’t look forward to having to know, as the signs start popping up on front lawns and the bumper stickers appear, which of the neighbors on my block want to cut my ring finger off. My neighbors are generally a good sort of folk I’ve found in the years I’ve lived at Casa del Garrett. Generous and neighborly…at least to my face. But just because someone takes a somewhat liberal stance on a range of issues, does not mean they can see the people for the homosexuals. Take for example the president of our state senate, Mike Miller…

The Democratic President of the Senate in Maryland is urging “Evangelicals, Catholics, African Americans” to oppose an upcoming gay marriage bill, and to vote against one if it ever came to a public referendum. Senator Mike Miller on a radio program said that while he didn’t want to sound like Republican presidential hopefuls, “I’m a father married for 50 years, I got 5 children, I got 13 grandchildren, I’m a traditionalist.” Miller said he wouldn’t stand in the way of a vote, and if there is a vote, as expected, in the Senate, it would again pass. But Miller’s suggestion to minorities and the religious right to oppose an equal rights measure is patently offensive and divisive, and smacks of a Maggie Gallagher move.

Miller, in explaining his opposition, however, did sound like a Republican presidential candidate, saying, “I’m a historian and I look at civilizations, I study civilizations, I read history every night. And I see it’s an attack on the family, I think it’s an attack on traditional families. That’s the way I see it.”

Dig it. He doesn’t want to sound like a republican, but just so you know, homosexuals are a threat to families and to civilization. This is what we’re in for, for the next year or so if this bill becomes law and NOM fires up its mighty Wurlitzer to insure that Marylanders fear, loath and hate their gay and lesbian neighbors enough to deny them equal rights in marriage. But I have a question: has any nation or civilization ever collapsed because its people loved each other too much?

Via Twitter, I see that BuzzFeed has 60 Awesome Portraits Of Gay Couples Just Married In New York State posted just now…

See and share the joy in their faces…and then look more closely at the stunning diversity of us. Remember it next time you hear someone speak of a gay lifestyle or a gay agenda.

[Posted on Truth Wins Out, May 23 2011...]

So somebody who just didn’t know that Bradlee Dean thinks homosexuals are responsible for the Holocaust, will molest 117 people before they’re caught, and that if American does not begin enforcing biblical law against homosexuality God will rise of a foreign enemy to do it, invited him to give the opening prayer for the Minnesota House of Delegates on the day republican speaker of the house Sam Zellers was ready to bring a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage to the floor…

The decision to allow anti-gay preacher Bradlee Dean to give the opening prayer before the Minnesota House on Friday sent shockwaves through the Legislature, and the reverberations from that decision continued over the weekend. Democrats filed a complaint on Sunday after House Speaker Kurt Zellers moved to strike Dean’s name from the official record…

They were shocked, shocked, that Dean would stoop to questioning President Obama’s Christianity…

Zellers, R- Maple Grove, restarted the House session and brought in a chaplain to redo the prayer. He also condemned Dean’s prayer in a floor statement.“Members, I can only ask for your forgiveness. That type of person will never ever be allowed on this House floor again as long as I have the honor of serving as speaker,” Zellers said.

Oh…but it was an honest mistake…

Rep. Ernie Leidiger, R-Mayer, confirmed that he invited Dean to give the House prayer. He said it was “an honest mistake” that Dean was invited on the same day that the constitutional amendment to ban same marriage could have been debated.

Honest mistakes…

He [Dean] said it wasn’t right to call him “anti-gay,” but he spoke admiringly of the time when homosexuality was illegal.

“We don’t enforce those laws anymore, and we wonder why we are going backwards,” Dean said. “If you were to ask me my position as far as enforcing the laws of sodomy in the state of Minnesota, I would say absolutely yes. Yeah. Yeah.”

Honest Mistakes…

I’ve told this story before, but those of you who’ve heard it will just have to bear up. In the 1992 election when I was making volunteer calls for Clinton, Mary Matalin made a major gaffe she had to apologize for quite publicly. (Doesn’t matter what it was.) I was riding down in the elevator with a high level political consultant (who didn’t know me from Adam, of course) and I smugly mentioned that Matalin had really stepped in it. He looked at me like I was a moron and said, “she got it out there, didn’t she?”

-Digby

Zellers brought up the anti-gay constitutional amendment the following day. It passed. And that type of person will never be allowed on the floor again, until the next time an honest mistake needs to be made.

Joe Jervis over at Joe.My.God posts what looks like the cover of NOM’s current mailer…

So it looks like NOM is doubling-down on their The Homosexuals Are After Your Children card that worked for them so well in California.  How…unsurprising…

When you have reduced your neighbor to the status of a scarecrow that drives voters to the polls, or a scapegoat for every failure of moral character you would rather not be held accountable for, when you cannot see the people for the homosexuals, then threats to their lives become meaningless abstractions. They’re not your neighbors, they’re not people, they’re things…and the safety of things isn’t something that often crosses the mind. It’s not hate exactly…it’s what hate does to the heart eventually.  That may look like a photo of a cute little boy with his daddy’s glasses on, reading a book about two kings who fall in love, but look closer. That is a photo of human souls in free fall.  To win elections, to prevent loving same-sex couples from having access to marriage, NOM is belly flopping into the gutter, and they know it, and they don’t care.  Not honor, not morality, not any shred of basic human decency left within them matters to them any more.  All that matters is striking out at the Homosexual Menace.  This is what hate does to the heart, eventually.

The Homosexuals Are After Your Children!!! It’s a message that gets attention and, for now, wins elections. The trump card you can play when it looks like too many voters are starting to view the homosexual as their neighbor. It also gets people killed. But for that to weigh on your conscience, you have to see gays as people, not things.  You have to be able to see the people for the homosexuals.  Bigots can’t.

Apparently Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown believe that gay people have to die so that marriage can be sacred.

Joe Jervis over at Joe.My.God has a post up containing a video of Brian Brown speaking at Sen. Ruben Diaz hate rally in the Bronx this afternoon. It’s worth a look to get a feel for the heated atmosphere Diaz, Brown and company feel is appropriate for addressing the place of their gay neighbors in society. At the 2:55 mark, Brown shouts the following out at the crowd:

“It changes what is taught in the schools. Kids as young as kindergarten are taught in Massachusetts that their parents are bigots because they believe marriage is the union of a man and a woman.”

It just isn’t possible by now, that Brown and Gallagher don’t know their claim that the curriculum of kindergarten in Massachusetts has anything to do with same-sex marriage is false. But the smear that The Homosexuals Are After Your Children has a long history, even before Anita Bryant embodied it with her Save Our Children campaign, which was not so much about saving children (certainly not any gay ones at least) then it was making sure gay citizens could loose their jobs simply for being gay. But if it’s not possible that Brown and Gallagher don’t know that Massachusetts isn’t teaching kindergarteners about same-sex marriages, it’s also not possible that they don’t know how useful it is to say that it is.

So here is Brown doubling-down on it. Not only is Massachusetts teaching kindergarteners about same-sex marriage, but their teachers are telling them that their parents are bigots. And he’s doing it in a community that’s already had some pretty spectacular anti-gay violence recently…

Bronx gang accused of torturing gay man and 3 others make first court appearance

Eight gay-hating Bronx gangbangers accused of one of the city’s most savage crimes in years appeared in court Sunday to face charges in what Mayor Bloomberg called an act of “pure evil.”

They stand accused of torturing and terrorizing a gay man, his older brother and two teenagers over the course of many hours Oct. 3 in Morris Heights.

“Is it true you’re a fag?” ringleader Idelfonso (Cheto) Mendez allegedly demanded of his bound victims before punching them in the face.

Prosecutors said he repeated the query and the punch over and over again.

Straight Teen Killed in Queens Gay-Bash Attack

Anti-gay bias attacks don’t always target gays. Sometimes violent perpetrators screaming anti-gay epithets target straight men instead. Such may have been the case in the March 12 beating death in Queens, New York, of 18-year-old Anthony Collao, a heterosexual recent high school graduate, reported the New York Daily News on March 15.

Several young men who reportedly broke windows, scrawled on the walls with red markers, and made hand gestures associated with gangs invaded a party hosted by two gay men. The men also reportedly attacked and beat Collao while hurling anti-gay epithets, the article said.

The news account said that Collao tried to avoid violence by leaving the party once the four intruders entered. The gang chased him down, the article said, threw him up against a car, and pummeled him mercilessly. Collao was reportedly was reportedly punched, kicked, and stomped. One assailant was said to be carrying a pipe.

Four suspects were later placed under arrest. One of the young men was wearing Collao’s baseball cap, and the other three were “covered in blood.”

Do you really think that Ruben Diaz doesn’t know about any of this? Or Brian Brown?

“Kids as young as kindergarten are taught in Massachusetts that their parents are bigots because they believe marriage is the union of a man and a woman…”

The homosexuals are coming for your children!!! This is the kind of thing that gets people gay bashed and killed. And NOM’s utter indifference to the climate of violence this sort of rhetoric can enable speaks volumes. Perhaps it’s true that Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown do not hate gay people. Perhaps. Clearly they regard hate as a useful tool. It gets people to the voting booth. It gets their checkbooks opened up.

A few months ago Maggie, you asked, rhetorically, “Do I have blood on my hands?” And you know, I’ve been wondering why you didn’t bother wearing your wedding ring to the DOMA hearings a few weeks ago. They say the wedding ring embodies the continuous flow of love, a never-ending circle symbolizing eternity, where there is no beginning or end, the gold symbolizing purity…gold being one of the noble elements that are said to be incorruptible. But the spilling of innocent blood corrupts everything it touches. That simple, elegant and beautiful symbol of eternal love…you’re turning it into a thing of shame Maggie. I don’t think very many couples want their wedding vows sealed with a ring of blood.

Le Dance Pathetique…as choreographed by Uptown Sports Management…

Un…

Very sad to read Sean Avery’s misguided support of same-gender ‘marriage…

Deux…

Legal or not, it will always be wrong…

Trois…

To clarify. This is not hatred or bigotry towards gays…

Quatre…

It is not intolerance in any way shape or form…

Cinq…

I believe we are all equal…

Six…

But I believe the sanctity of marriage is between one man and one woman…

Sept…

This is my personal viewpoint…

Huit…

I do not hate anyone.

Le Curtian…Applaus a vous…

Le Update Encore un Père skunk de pew…

“It’s sad. I mean, my personal position is that I do not support gay marriage, and I think it’s wrong, as well. It’s not politically correct to, I guess, give your opinion about a thing like that. It’s politically correct on the other side, for people to say, ‘sure, I support gay marriage.’ But the majority, I think, of Canadians would say that they don’t agree with gay marriage – that man and woman were created to be married, not man and man or man and horse, you know?” -Don Reynolds, father of Todd Reynolds, original tweeter and vice-president of Uptown Sports Management, as quoted in The National Post

Le Yikes! Le kittee quel terrible odeur!! Scram a vous!!!