These clerks and judges who say they’re not granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples because it goes against their “sincerely held religious beliefs”…I have a question. Have you ever…Ever…Even Once….denied a heterosexual couple a license on the basis of your religious beliefs?

Or is is just the gay couples you have religion about?

Yesterday, Friday June the 26th 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in favor of extending marriage rights to gay people. Those saying that the court redefined what marriage is need to read the actual text of the decision. Kennedy wrote a paean to marriage, not a redefinition of it.   And of course, the usual suspects declared that they would go on with the fight, blah, blah, blah and so on and so forth. That was unsurprising.

But then…afterward, something amazing, something that lifted my heart to a place where I will never again doubt the power of love, and the essential goodness of (most of) my fellow Americans happened. The rainbows came out…

Look…just look…at all the expressions of joy and affirmation. Go ahead and sniff that it’s just kowtowing to the militant homosexual agenda…and surely some of this, particularly among the corporate entities, is Hey There’s A Market There Let’s Make It Like Us And Spend Money! But look, just look for a moment, and the breath and depth of the expressions of joy at the decision. The sincerity of it, the massive scope of it, is something you need to grasp, if you can. Even if your prejudices can’t allow you to see the people for the homosexuals, at least try to understand that there are lots of people who aren’t homosexuals, who are absolutely thrilled that now their fellow Americans who are gay have equal rights in marriage.   Look at this carefully, all of you declaring now that you will keep on fighting this, because it’s why you lost, why you will keep loosing this fight.

Everything you think you know about gay people is wrong, and especially, emphatically this: that homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. It’s why you keep miscalculating again and again and again our willingness to go on fighting no matter how much damage you could do to us. But more critically, it’s why you miscalculated, profoundly, what would happen when your lies lost their power over us, and we began to live our lives openly. You thought “normal” people would be disgusted when they saw the reality of our lives. You really thought that. You probably still think that.

They are disgusted. At you.

It’s one thing to keep on inciting prejudice and hate at the people who live on the other side of the tracks, in the ethnic and racial enclaves, at Those People that America, to its shame, still largely keeps segregated. It’s another when it’s your own children, your brother and sister, your neighbors, your co-workers, the people in your everyday lives.

Prejudice lies. It lies about other people. But first, it lies to you. You think you see reality, but you don’t. Others, not succumbing to prejudice, loving life, and willing to live in the world as it really is for better or worse, do. Anything that keeps you from seeing the world as it really is, makes you weak. The denouement came with the Proposition 8 trial. You’d built a multimillion dollar industry propagating one pseudo scientific lie after another about gay people you hoped would win the masses over, or at least enough voters. But be honest with yourselves for at least one thing: it was mostly to convince yourselves you weren’t really just a bunch of bigots after all. And when it came time to defend all of it at trial your prize experts ran away, all but two who nearly conceded our case for us on the witness stand. In the end the rest of the country saw your case against gay equality for the half-assed pile of pretentious crap that it is. The witness stand is a very lonely place to lie said Boies. Lonelier still is the bathroom mirror. Your prejudices lied to you. But you let them do it.

Surely you noticed how quickly everything came apart after that. Whatever doubts existed before Prop 8, they are gone now. Our humanity is understood. We are neighbors. We are family. We are fellow Americans. We have been embraced.

And you? Well…you are what you’ve always been. Still able to look at this torrent of love and support from the rest of America, convinced that most everyone agrees with you, and ultimate victory will be yours. So you dig yourselves deeper into the gutter. It doesn’t have to be. Listen to a gay man who gave a little beauty to this world and was wronged horribly and fatally by prejudice: “We are all in the gutter,” he said, “but some of us are looking at the stars.”

We are not all in the gutter, despite your best efforts to keep us there with you. And if you can’t bear to rise your gaze high enough to look at the stars, at least look at the rainbows. They are rainbows of joy and love…from Americans to Americans. Look at them. There’s the way out.

This came across my Facebook news stream just now…

Catholic School Speech Coach, Who Led Team to Four State Championships, Will Be Fired if He Marries Boyfriend

In December of 2014, Matt and his partner, Elliot Dougherty, made the decision to get engaged. He went to the administration to let them know, and they told him he would not be invited to teach next year. Furthermore, if he told students, he would be fired immediately.

Okay you say…it’s about same-marriage.  No.  No it isn’t…

After months of contemplation,  Mr. Eledge discussed the idea of postponing the wedding so he could come back to Skutt Catholic. He was then informed that he must end his relationship with Elliot.

It wasn’t enough that they postpone their marriage.  It wasn’t even enough that they stay unwed.  They have to separate or he loses his job.  And they’re probably sorry they can’t burn both of them at the stake the way they used to.

Yesterday I posted a blog entry where I wrote that…

What I have to look back on, is a lifetime of fighting against the hatred that doesn’t just spit in our faces, but which actively and with passion does its level best to destroy any possibility of love and joy the moment two people of the same sex take notice of each other and their hearts skip a beat.  I’ve written elsewhere of how it’s taken chances, so many  chances  away from me.   This is why I am still in the fight, even if the prize is lost forever to me.   I know the damage it’s done to me, I’ll be goddamned if I let it keep on damaging young hearts in love. If you think this is just a struggle over wedding cakes you are sadly mistaken. If you think it is a fight over same-sex weddings you are still not getting it. The same bitter venomous contempt for gay couples about to get married will with gusto act to prevent them from even setting eyes on each other given a chance. Ask me how I know. The hated Other simply cannot be allowed to love and be loved…

If anyone reading this thinks that’s overwrought take another look at the above. They’re pissed off that two gay guys found each other and fell in love and they’re using the only tool their institution has left to them in the  21st century in a civilized country to attempt to split them apart. When pope Ratzinger declared the bonds between same-sex couples to be “weak love” it wasn’t just wishful bigot colored glasses thinking it was bullshit and he knew it. If the love between gay couples was weak they wouldn’t have to work so hard to keep same-sex lovers apart. The dark ages troglodytes  at  Skutt Catholic High School in Omaha, Nebraska could have just shrugged their shoulders, simply told the men not to marry and don’t tell the students, and just waited for their weak love to evaporate since of course it would. But they know better. When you had to burn gay people at the stake once upon a time to kill their love for each other you know better. Their love isn’t weak, and yours is merely rhetorical.

God this takes me back…

Kentucky Argues Gay Marriage Ban Not Biased

Gov. Steve Beshear’s administration is arguing in a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court that Kentucky’s ban on gay marriage isn’t discriminatory because it bars both gay and straight people from same-sex unions.

I haven’t heard this particular sophistry in a long long time. It was a popular back in the 1990s when I was arguing with bigots on the USENET forum alt.politics.homosexuality.   One dimwit in particular, a certain Steven Fordyce, just would not let go of it. Yes, yes…and when the Soviet Union banned Christianity that didn’t discriminate against Christians because atheists had to obey those laws too.   Back in 1894 Anatole France in her novel The Red Lily penned the definitive retort to this kind of argument…

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Then again, for brutal simplicity there is always Orwell…

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

The table is running out of dominos.  South Dakota’s constitutional amendment reserving marriage to heterosexual couples only was struck down the other day by a federal judge…

Federal judge: South Dakota ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional

Judge Karen Schreier ruled in favor of six same-sex couples who challenged the South Dakota ban on gay marriage and put her decision on hold pending appeals.

Well this didn’t sit well with Bob Ellis over at The American Clarion,  owner of media company Dakota Voice, LLC since 2005, 10-year U.S. Air Force veteran, political reporter and commentator and founding member and board member of the Tea Party groups Citizens for Liberty and the South Dakota Tea Party Alliance…

Marital requirements exist for a reason. It takes a man and a woman to form a marriage. Two men or two women sodomizing each other performs  no useful function  whatsoever for society, and there is  no benefit whatsoever  in having government serve as a “friendship registry” for two people who want to sodomize each other on a regular basis.

…a point he really drives home with the following illustration:

Never mind shop class, you start to wonder after a while if the sex education classes in certain parts of the country would actually benefit from a trip to the hardware store.  Because when the dimwit you’re arguing with starts reaching for the nuts and bolts to prove their point about sex it’s a safe bet they’re not much of a do it yourselfer.

Hey look…it screws in the wall…and then another a screw goes into it. Hardware bisexuality!  Or…versatility of you like.  Pissst…Hey Bob…if you think the militant homosexual agenda is a threat to our very existence, you really need to investigate the militant hurricane bolt agenda.  Seriously.  This is probably why they have hurricanes in places that allow this.

You wonder some days if some people even bother listening to themselves…

“In these days, as you embark on a reflection on the beauty of complementarity between man and woman in marriage, I urge you to lift up yet another truth about marriage: that permanent commitment to solidarity, fidelity and fruitful love responds to the deepest longings of the human heart…”  –Pope Francis The Oblivious.

Here it is again in another form: Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex.  That’s what Francis is saying there if he’s holding that up as a reason why same-sex couples ought not to be allowed equal access to marriage. He’s saying that homosexual relationships can’t, by their very nature, aspire to permanent commitment, solidarity, fidelity, and fruitful love. He’s saying that the deepest longings of the homosexual’s heart are actually quite shallow.  They can’t aspire to marriage because they don’t have what it takes. Because  homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex.

If that’s not what he meant, then why say it in front of an audience that includes some of the worst bigots in the United States.  He’s telling them he shares their belief in the essential emptiness of the homosexual’s soul. Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex…  And if that’s the case, then this man will simply continue his flock’s long jihad on the deepest longings of the human heart after all, reassuring himself as they always do, that the knife isn’t actually cutting hearts capable of bleeding.  And as they always do, he’ll continue to blame the pushback on modernism…

“Do not fall into the trap of being swayed by political notion. Family is an anthropological fact – a socially and culturally related fact.” -Same Guy.

Oh it’s facts now is it?  Here’s one: same-sex couples share the same longings as opposite-sex couples, because they are as human as anyone else.  Gay people have the same human heart, and it is moved by love in the same way.  That is a fact.  You’d see it if you could see the people for the homosexuals: and yet, it moves.

I got this link to a blog post from someone working at Mozilla…

What’s Happening Inside  Mozilla

“At the heart of the gay marriage argument is an untruth: unions of two men or women are not the same as unions of husband and wife. The law cannot make it so, it can only require us to paint pretty pictures to cover up deep truths embedded in human nature.”

-Maggie Gallagher, still trying to paint a pretty picture over the untruth at the heart of the anti-gay agenda, that Homosexuals Don’t Love, They Just Have Sex…

This comes across my Google news stream this morning…

Study Finds Supportive Tilt to Gay Marriage Coverage

News organizations are far more likely to present a supportive view of same-sex marriage than an antagonistic view, according to a content study by the Pew Research Center to be released on Monday.

Yes, yes… I hear they take a pretty positive stance on the theory that the Earth is round too.

We’ll be hearing all about how this proves the news media is biased against Christians from the kook pews for years to come, but what’s happening is that the Proposition 8 trial pretty much destroyed the idea that the case against same-sex marriage has anything to support it other than animus.   Think back to how completely taken by surprise so much of the press seemed to be after that trial was over, that there wasn’t more to the case against letting same sex couples marry.   Those of us who have been in this struggle for decades knew exactly how empty their rhetoric was, how utterly bogus was their junk science.   For decades they’ve been burying the political debate in bullshit and you have to admire how energetically they went about it.   Their think tanks and research institutes produced tons and tons of deceptive, mendacious, carefully crafted bullshit and the fact that there was just so damn much of it coming out of them seemed to convince even tolerant middle of the road types that there was something to it, that homosexuality was if not an abomination, at least a tragic outcome that ought not to be encouraged if possible.   And then came the trial, and they had to put all of that bullshit on the witness stand…

“In a court of law you’ve got to come in and you’ve got to support those opinions, you’ve got to stand up under oath and cross-examination,” Boies said. “And what we saw at trial is that it’s very easy for the people who want to deprive gay and lesbian citizens…to make all sorts of statements and campaign literature, or in debates where they can’t be cross-examined.

“But when they come into court and they have to support those opinions and they have to defend those opinions under oath and cross-examination, those opinions just melt away. And that’s what happened here. There simply wasn’t any evidence, there weren’t any of those studies. There weren’t any empirical studies. That’s just made up. That’s junk science. It’s easy to say that on television. But a witness stand is a lonely place to lie. And when you come into court you can’t do that.

“That’s what we proved: We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost.” -David Boies

There were never any facts.   It was always about prejudice.   It was always about hate.   That’s not trivial.   Hate has motivated the passage and enforcement of laws that persecute homosexuals for generations.   But hate is factual only in the sense that it exists, not that its excuses are themselves factual.

So another way of putting the outcome of that Pew study is that news organizations are likely to give greater weight to the facts than to bullshit, even passionately squawked bullshit.   And that’s because, at least in theory, newspapers are supposed to report the facts.   And there are no facts that support bans on same-sex marriage.   There are only myths, lies and superstitions.   Those are the facts.

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.