Comments on: LA Times Profiles Pro-8 and Anti-8 Activists

By: Mark F.

Mark F. — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 23:48:11 +0000

Those boys are so cute. Best of luck to them.

By: Tom in Lazybrook

Tom in Lazybrook — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:27:09 +0000

FYI, if anyone at Box Turtle Bulletin would like to speak with a former coworker of Abel’s at the mobile home company, please let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

By: Tom in Lazybrook

Tom in Lazybrook — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:25:10 +0000

Apparently, Abel Ferreira was fired from his job with a North San Diego County mobile home sales distributor. How do they make their money?

By: Alex H

Alex H — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 05:06:10 +0000

I like the way the Ferreiras and others prayed for 12 hours for Prop 8 to pass. After they fasted for 40 days (technically 4 hours a day, since the article said that they fasted 12 hours a day and you factor in 8 hours of sleep per night etc., Oh and giving up “Days Of Our Lives.” I’m sure that convinced God)!

Forget about poverty, hunger, disease, and war…just make sure two people of the same-gender can’t marry in California. Is that too much to ask for? *sarcasm*

And the Ferreiras, according to the article, divorced each other before. I thought that was a big no-no for evangelical people? I forgot, they fasted and prayed, so they’re excused…

By: AJD

AJD — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 02:07:44 +0000

LJB,

I almost did, but in the end I figured it would be a waste of keystrokes.

By: L. Junius Brutus

L. Junius Brutus — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 23:29:39 +0000

“Reading about the Ferreiras, on the other hand, made me want to track down one of their email addresses and send them a 10-page, profanity-laced bitchfest of an email.”

LOL! I like your spirit.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:55:35 +0000

I’m personally willing, perhaps out of my ignorance, to give the LA Times a bit of slack. Consider it this way, they chose a gay couple that has had to strive against a lot to live a decent and honorable life. They chose a straight couple that is nothing but an example of hypocrisy. Even though the Times wouldn’t say it out loud, the Times made a point of bringing up the sordid past, the luxurious lifestyle, and the inanity of the heterosexual couple’s lifestyle. I’m guessing the Times could have easily found a respectable straight couple without the hypocritical past to profile and they could have found a gay couple that hasn’t had to fight the injustice of life as much. The Times may not have been explicit, and may purposely tried to appear impartial, but their choice in couples leads me to suspect they wanted the reader to feel sympathetic for the gays.

By: AJD

AJD — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:13:19 +0000

L. Junius Brutus wrote:

“Let’s also not disregard the culpability of the LA Times. I was disgusted by the way they tried to portray those two sympathetically. If this had been the 1960s, surely they would sympathetically portray the “Segregation Now, Segregation Forever” crowd.”

I tend to agree. I think one reason — one of many, of course — why homophobia retains such social and political acceptability is because the news media so often present the public with this type of false balance that they would never present if this were about racism, sexism or anti-Semitism. And I’m saying this as a journalist.

Still, it’s hard to feel any sympathy for the Ferreiras. They worked like dogs to strip loving couples like Christopher and Cody of the right to marry with enthusiastic disregard for the hardship they inflicted in the process, and they’ve vowed to continue working like dogs after Prop 8 has passed. Their concerns are completely frivolous, and on top of that, they’re a rich-ass couple living in a gated community. When I read their profile, my first thought was that their case was as good an example as any of what Hannah Arendt called the “banality of evil.”

Compare that to Christopher and Cody, who’ve endured all kinds of difficulties in their lives and now live like paupers in California, yet also worked like dogs just in the hope of winning equality for themselves, not denying it to others.

I live with my partner of close to two years, and I really identified with Christopher and Cody and admired them for their strength.

Reading about the Ferreiras, on the other hand, made me want to track down one of their email addresses and send them a 10-page, profanity-laced bitchfest of an email.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:18:05 +0000

You’re welcome Timothy.

I learned a while ago to not go around condemning people’s behavior because somewhere in those “forgotten” verses of the Bible, something I’m doing is condemned as well. If only they would learn the lesson as well.

I would love to hear how they excuse away their “marriage” (use of derogatory quotation marks is intentional) that the Bible so explicitly calls an abomination – I have no doubt they would find a way.

By: Regan DuCasse

Regan DuCasse — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 18:53:42 +0000

Christopher and Cody,
They don’t have furniture, and their place is small.
But they have love, and they have each other.
Millions of young couples had days like that. And the comforts of each other could get them through life’s bumps and drags.

For the state, for those who are so miserly to look at this young couple and deny their love isn’t strong, real and affirming to their lives…have not enough love in them at all.

Not even for God, who gave us the remarkable ability to be curious and searching for education and the meaning of the other people we share the planet with.
And why those who deny these two young folks are so cowardly to not want to see this joy, this love and where it will take us all.

I wish Christopher and Cody, all that love can bring to make them strong, whole, more prosperous and healthy.

Love will do everything for us, to deny ANY human being their full capacity for it and for each other…is the epitomy of meaness and unnecessaryy cruelty.

What do I want for Xmas?
I really wish for more couples like Chris and Cody to show them all…