They are fighting an anti-gay and anti marriage intiaive without showing and gay people, our families, or anything. they are unionterested in meeting the public. there is apparently no speaker’s bureau at no on 8.

If we lose on 8, it will be very much like tienanmen square in China. Our pitiful “liberal philosophy” of “play nicely” cannot stand up to the tank of hate. It hasn’t worked before, and it is not working now.

Couples wed on their own schedule, and they invite their family and friends and students. People live their lives in real-time and do what they think is right. Their decisions might not always make political strategists happy, but that’s not their job. If they didn’t do that (live their lives with integrity), there would be no grass-roots political movement for the political strategists to advance in the first place.

Meanwhile, most of the rhetoric coming from groups like HRC consists of simplistic talking points, but hardly anyone has ventured to point out in a way likely to be heard by the voting masses what is obvious: None of the arguments in favor of these amendments has any merit whatsoever.

Instead, all I hear are calls for fairness and equality. Those certainly have their place, but from my experience, they often fall on deaf ears because most of the people supporting these amendments don’t even think they’re doing anything discriminatory, and they don’t see the cognitive dissonance inherent in saying “I think homosexuality is immoral” and following that with “I’m not homophobic.”

Like I said, I was being semi-facetious when I suggested things like building a biology school named for Richard Dawkins and eliminating the opt-out provision (note the “semi-,” meaning I wouldn’t necessarily be against doing that).

However, this is as good a time as any to talk about reinforcing church-state separation and pushing the religious right people back into their caves. Just think about it: Every single one of these amendments has been based on lies and irrationality, yet almost every one has passed, despite our best efforts and our impassioned calls for fairness and equality and compassion. Any culture in which a document that is supposed to secure and exemplify democracy can be used for exclusion has some serious problems.

The idea of turning the other cheek has always struck me as an invitation to predation. As long as we countenance these people’s coded hate speech and treat them as if they actually have a legitimate cause, they will continue to bully us. There’s nothing wrong with condescension and calling people stupid when they really are stupid.

(And thanks for a great idea for a Halloween costume!)

Waging a Culture Peace isn’t the same as being passive. I think LGBTs have been so successful at gaining rights precisely because we’ve waged a Culture of Peace since the late 50′s on through the 60s, 70s, and so on.

Peace is always preferable to war in the psyche of the human race. Love is more powerful than hate, long term. Ghandi and MLK Jr. and yes, even Christ, won with love, not hate. That’s how they appealed to people.

Of course, you can’t ignore the political angle either. But in terms of the evolutionary advantage peace and love have over hate and oppression, it’s clear which side we need to be on.

That’s why, when presenting a challenge to the anti-gay “culture warriors”, we need to present an alternative that promises greater things than simply “winning” a culture war that is, for all intents and purposes, one-sided.

Part of our dialogue in this very forum is a great example of waging a Culture Peace and thanks to Jim, Daniel, and Timothy for providing it.

And “culture peace” hasn’t gotten us anywhere. All we have to show for it are a country that still has no nationwide protection against discrimination and hate crimes against gay people and nearly 30 states in which recognition of a same-sex marriage is equal to banning a newspaper.

People like MLK and Gandhi didn’t get anywhere by waging “culture peace.” They used sit-ins, boycotts and subversion.

I really think the whole reason why we keep losing is because we’re such an easy target. The bullies of the religious right know that if they pass an anti-gay-marriage amendment or thwart yet another attempt to add sexual orientation to the Civil Rights Act, the most we’ll do is grumble about it and yell “Discrimination is wrong!” and call for love and understanding. They know they can get away with treating us like garbage because we won’t hit back. We’re like a hive of stingless bees.

It really amazes me how the far right, that claims to be the “moral” party can let lies just go unchecked.

Don’t fight fire with fire, cause it won’t work.

Our response to their “culture war” is not to fight them head on as “culture warriors”, but to replace their “war” with a Culture Peace.

We should wage a Culture Peace and that should be the aim of our movement.