Via Pam’s House Blend…  The Massachusetts bigots would like the process of taking the right to marry away from us to be a dignified one…

MFI and VoteOnMarriage.org – the ballot question committee seeking to advance the Massachusetts marriage amendment – has endeavored to advance a campaign that refrains from name calling and does not denigrate individuals. However, as many political pundits predict, the same sex marriage debate, much like the abortion debate, will be with us for decades and MFI sees a need and an opportunity to work with leaders on all sides to promote justice in the way we discuss our differences.

"The tone and rhetoric around this public policy issue has escalated to a frenzied level, too often with shouting that does nothing promote understanding. Denouncing individuals as bigots does not bring people with honest differences together. We would like to work with our opponents to raise the quality of the dialogue," said Kris Mineau, president, Massachusetts Family Institute and spokesman, VoteOnMarriage.org

…Even as this initiative beings to take shape, MFI and VoteOnMarriage.org will continue to urge supporters of the marriage amendment to be respectful of human differences and always maintain a dialogue that affirms the dignity of every person.

You know how this works…right?  We stop calling them bigots, and they get to keep calling us AIDS spreading child molesting family destroying abominations in the eyes of God. 

Honest differences?  There is nothing honest about these people.  Nothing.  And especially nothing honest about their calls for mutual respect and civility.  Every time you hear something like this coming out of an anti-gay hate machine, you know they’re talking to the heterosexual majority, not the gay people they’re busy bashing.  They didn’t place that press release in the local gay papers.  This call for mutual respect wasn’t addressed to the gay people they’re trying to take the right to marry away from. This is window dressing for the big vote in a couple years.  They need to convince just enough voters that voting to take away their neighbor’s right to marry doesn’t mean they’re jumping in bed with bigots.  That’s what this is about.  Nothing else. 

Picture a bunch of white racists pleading with black Americans for mutual respect while arguing for segregated schools and neighborhoods.  Picture a bunch of antisemites insisting they want a dialog about the Nuremberg laws that affirms the dignity of every person.  It’s to laugh.