Tag Archives: marriage

Redefining Bakery

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Have you ever heard of a Christian bakery?

I’ve been to many bakeries in my life. French bakeries, Italian bakeries, European bakeries, Mexican bakeries, but never a Christian bakery. The term just popped up because a so-called “Christian bakery,” Sweet Cakes by Melissa closed over a controversy. The owners refused to bake a cake for a client’s wedding because they thought the “act” of baking the cake violated their religious liberty. In Yiddish, we’d say the act was treif, but treif refers to products, not acts, and that’s where the people who orchestrated this controversy run into trouble.

The Oregon Family Policy Council, sister to our Virginia [some] Families Foundation placed a sign in the closed bakery reading:

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS UNDER ATTACK IN GRESHAM

The late Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministries Manhattan Declaration posted an article on its Facebook page that lead to this exchange: Continue reading →

A sci-fi version of “tolerance”

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Crossposted at Equality Loudoun.

With the recent Supreme Court ruling, the gay marriage issue becomes moot. The Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution will, sooner or later, give legal force in every state to any marriage contract recognized by any other state.

Now it will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute.

The above is science fiction writer and anti-gay fanatic Orson Scott Card (humorously, he once referred to marriage between two people of the same gender as itself “an act of intolerance,” openly advocated the criminalization of “homosexual behavior,” and more recently threatened to “act to destroy [the] government and bring it down” if marriage equality became a reality). Card is upset because some people who might otherwise be his fans have publicized his long history of inflammatory statements targeting LGBT people, and suggested that our money could be better be spent elsewhere. Among normal people, making such informed choices is known as “the free market.” For Card, though, “tolerance” demands our silence regarding his behavior.

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Equal Justice Under the Law – Unless You’re Gay

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Our Governor is not the worst homophobe in America but he is a contender.

Our Commonwealth is not the worst in its intolerance of gays but it’s got nothing to be proud of either.

In Loudoun County, we have a Board of Supervisors indifferent to the fact that one of its members, Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio, is a gay bashing demagogue.

I wrote each member of the Board of Supervisors to ask them to disavow this bigotry.  Our Board has no shame in its silence. As that old 60s tune went, “Hello Darkness my old friend.”  Janet Clarke wrote she felt no obligation to respond at all.  And she didn’t.  By their silence, may we know them. Continue reading →

Today

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Today, realistic Republicans are secretly praying that the Supreme Court will respond to the arguments presented in the Prop 8 and DOMA cases before it with a broad ruling finding a constitutional right for all Americans to marry the person they love.

That is the only way of avoiding a foreseeable future in which Republicans will be forced to either repeatedly alienate the rapidly growing supermajority of Americans who support equality, or repeatedly betray their own aging base, that angry 36% demanding the “right” to forcibly shove society into still the coat which fitted him when a boy.

If the Court announces a sweeping ruling in June that makes marriage for all the law of the land, GOP strategists can breathe a sigh of relief – they will then be able to deflect the rage of their base toward those nine rogue “unelected judges.”

The alternative future will be a punishing series of state battles over the next four, eight, twelve years and beyond, in which they will not have the luxury of avoiding the issue, however much they might wish they could do so.

In either case, marriage equality is inevitable.

If you want your party to live, pray hard.

Worst argument ever

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Marriage should be limited to unions of a man and a woman because they alone can “produce unplanned and unintended offspring,” opponents of gay marriage have told the Supreme Court.

By contrast, when same-sex couples decide to have children, “substantial advance planning is required,” said Paul D. Clement, a lawyer for House Republicans.

In their opening briefs, this was the reasoning offered by both Clement in defense of Section 3 of the “Defense of Marriage” Act and Charles Cooper in defense of Prop 8: Because opposite sex couples are burdened with the “unique social difficulty” of frequently producing children by accident, and same sex couples “don’t present a threat of irresponsible procreation,” same sex couples and their children should be excluded from the security and benefits of marriage. This is what anti-equality American taxpayers are getting for $3 million in public funds?

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Gov McDonnell’s “Strengthening Families Initiative” funds the revolutionary church

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[Promoted by Epluribusunum, because this story has become even more disturbing. Apparently, this so-called “pro-family” initiative is diverting funds from programs serving the victims of domestic violence. According to a more recent Pilot article, some victim advocates were told by state officials “that shelters weren’t ‘a good fit’.” In other words, the ideology driving McDonnell says that marriage counseling is more important than saving lives.]

AAHMI 2010 conference banner

The Virginia Pilot reports on Virginia’s latest social engineering initiative; “Governor’s plan aims to solidify families, cut poverty“, but let’s call it what it is, a rather large allocation of taxpayer dollars to infuse right-wing think tanks and faith-based organizations with cash to help them build their revolutionary base.  Revolutionary is not my term.  I attended the DoingTheRightThingEvent on Saturday September, 24 and Chuck Colson explained that “we are living in revolutionary times“.  He also said that government can’t solve the problems of culture.  “Family” and “church” have to do that.

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