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.

Sullivan links to the following…

Walter Russell Mead looks ahead:

Hollande now has a delicate few weeks. French legislative elections are scheduled in June, and Hollande must steer between twin dangers. On the one hand, if it turns out that all his talk about reform and growth was just so much election verbiage and once he’s in office he plans to continue French policy more or less as before, then disillusioned voters could turn on him next month. On the other hand, if he pushes against Germany and the financial markets too forcefully, a crisis of confidence in France and in Europe could develop in the markets.

Note the turn of phrase we’ve been hearing a lot lately.   A Crisis In Confidence…

I’m a little fuzzy… They talking about loosing confidence in the ability of working people to deliver goods and services, or are they talking about loosing confidence in the ability of financiers to keep squeezing working people dry?

Yeah, yeah…rhetorical question. I’m just full of them.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach would like gay people to know that we’re making reconciliation very hard for people like him…

I am saddened that Richard Grennell, Mitt Romney’s foreign policy spokesman, resigned over what the press is saying was pressure from the far right because he is openly gay. Who cares? He had a distinguished career as a spokesman for four United Nations Ambassadors and was widely respected. It is particularly disconcerting to learn that religious groups criticized Romney for appointing him due to his homosexuality.

As an Orthodox rabbi with a gay Orthodox Jewish brother, I have endeavored mightily to reconcile the dictates of my faith with the most human, loving and respectful approach to homosexuality. I have counseled hundreds of gay men and women of faith who seek to find their place in G-d’s love amid a gay lifestyle.

But such efforts at reconciliation are undone by the gratuitous hate-filled bigotry of people like Dan Savage…

Okay…stop right there. Never mind what you’re calling Savage’s bigotry others would say was simply a case of looking into a cesspool and calling the stink out for what it is.   Never mind that what you’re calling his hate anyone without an ax to grind would agree is more a case of eminently justifiable anger toward a class of people who simply cannot seem to rest so long as gay people have any rights at all, let alone the right to marry.   Never mind all of that.   Reconciliation is unlikely to occur so long as people posturing as bridge builders insist on this kind of transparently self-serving false equivalency. Comparing Savage’s behavior, however insulting it may have seemed to anyone in his audience the day those Christianist kids walked out, to what their gay peers have to endure on a daily basis, usually from the likes of the same kids who walked out, is sickening.

Or as Christian author John Shore, said, “Theirs was not an act born of suffering. It was a proud show of disdain.”

Reconciliation.   In just a few days righteous upstanding North Carolina citizens will be voting on whether or not to cut their homosexual neighbor’s ring fingers off.   And from the pulpit right on cue comes this sort of thing:

“So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, “Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,” you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed.

Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok?

So I suppose if I call that man a gutter crawling maggot for telling parents they have a duty to break their gay kid’s wrists and punch them out I’m making reconciliation very difficult. You may want to keep in mind the words of Malcolm X: If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress. Progress is healing the wound… Proudly walking out of a talk because the speaker challenged your right to throw the Leviticus death threat into the faces of your gay classmates isn’t even pulling the knife out a little. Let alone thumping your pulpit that others might punch bruises into gay kids hearts that they will carry for life.

[Slightly different from what I posted in response at Huffington Post, because my words have a little more room to breath here then there]

Once again, via Joe. My God…

According to poll workers and a freelance journalist who was present, the wife of the author of North Carolina’s Amendment One says that her husband wrote the bill to “protect Caucasians.”

Chad Nance, a Winston-Salem freelance journalist who is currently active in electoral campaigning, says poll workers outside the early voting site at the Forsyth County Government Center in downtown Winston-Salem reported to him that the wife of NC Sen. Peter Brunstetter remarked today that her husband sponsored legislation to put the marriage amendment on the primary ballot “to protect the Caucasian race.”

When I read that headline I assumed it would be some crackpot bullshit about the birth rate.   But no.   The article goes on to quote her saying that…somehow…protecting the Caucasians from same-sex marriage involves protecting their state constitution from activist judges.

If you’re not sure how opposing same-sex marriage protects Caucasians don’t worry…it doesn’t have to make sense to you.   To the bigot everything is about the war against the hated other, whether it’s gays, people of color, other religions, people who speak funny languages…whomever.   They have a lot of racism down there and I’m sure somehow this makes sense to all of them.   Opposing same-sex marriage is about protecting the white race.   Probably opposing daylight savings time is too.

Via Joe. My. God…

Sean Harris, pastor of Berean Baptist Church on Glensford Drive, said he does not advocate hitting children and wishes he could take back a remark encouraging fathers to punch boys who act effeminately…

…and let’s just forget completely about that part about cracking their wrists…

…But he defended his belief in the need to reinforce traditional gender roles in children. “If I had to say it again, I would say it differently, no doubt,” Harris said Tuesday. “Those weren’t planned words, but what I do stand by is that the word of God makes it clear that effeminate behavior is ungodly.”

Preaching at parents that they need to break the bones of their gay kids however being the epitome of godliness.   So long as you say it differently.   As the twig is bent so grows the tree…so parents I give you special dispensation to crack those dear little twigs back into Straightness when you see them going limp…

Coming Soon To A fundamentalist Church Near You! Pat downs for recording devices, and petitions to make taping anti-gay child abusive rants in church a class one felony punishable by stoning…

This via Jeremy Hooper who tweets: “I was once a scared gay boy in the south. This is the climate that made that so.”

Video: Amendment 1 pastor gives parents ‘special dispensation’ to use violence against LGBT kids!!!

TRANSCRIPT: “So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, “Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,” you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed.
Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male. And when your daughter starts acting to Butch you reign her in. And you say, “Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.”

You say, “Can I take charge like that as a parent?”

Yeah, you can. You are authorized. I just gave you a special dispensation this morning to do that.”

[Emphasis mine…] So here is a man behind the pulpit, pastor (sic) Sean Harris Senior Pastor of the Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, telling fathers to break the bones and beat up their gay sons, and “reign in” (like the way this guy suggested perhaps?) their gay daughters as a way of making them heterosexual. Loving the sinner. It doesn’t get more authoritative then that. The way you deal with homosexuals is you beat the crap out of them, especially if they’re your own flesh and blood. The guy behind the pulpit says so and he speaks for God.

This is how gay people get killed. This is why gay kids kill themselves, why so many end up homeless and on the streets. Harris, that wasn’t a born again experience you had way back when, it was your soul withering away to nothing shortly after you took your conscience around behind the barn and shot it.

Maggie…here’s what your war on loving same-sex couples has once again wrought. Picture a gay kid in that church, sitting in those pews, hearing this. Picture the fear it puts into them. Yes…I know…you’re fine with that.