Thank you for so perfectly proving my point.

Somehow, however, I doubt that group includes men who make their living do it.

I will agree that some of these people are not as odious and much less dangerous than others. but ultimately, they all believe the same thing– there is something so wrong with loving someone of your own gender in a way they deem so extremely inappropriate that anything they do– whether fudging statistics to calling for executions– is justified, no matter how immoral it might otherwise be judged.

In other words– and here I go again– it all boils down to how much the very existence of gay people bothers some straight people, as well as some wanna-be-straight-but-ain’ts. It doesn’t matter whether they believe it’s what their god demands, a la Alan chambers, or whether they are refreshingly honest (in a very twisted sort of way) a la the Phelpsters, or even whether they are so frightened of sexuality, a la the RC priesthood, that ANYTHING about sex scares (or entices–take your pick) the bejesus out of them. It especially doesn’t matter if they have a secret so secretly secret that they can’t even tell themselves.

It doesn’t matter, because the result is the same. They make other people LESS THAN, people who have done them no demonstrable harm (other than existing, their easy, common complaint) whom they do not know, and whom they clearly know nothing about, the more so when they claim expertise. And their reasons for doing so? A set of fears, lies, prejudices, distortions, half-truths, history, misinterpretations, wishful thinking, and dirty, shameful secrets. There may be a diamond or two of truth contained in these reasons, but these are a few very small sparklers in a veritable mountain of dung. I would never claim that gay people are perfect, but I would certainly claim that the anti-gay industry has made every effort– and a good livelihood for a number of people– to make our lives as difficult and unpleasant as possible, all the while claiming to love and/or pity and/or help us. In other words, they criticize us for being handicapped and conveniently forget that they knee-capped us at birth.

It doesn’t matter to me if you are as reasonable sounding as David Blankenhorn. That doesn’t make him moral. He’s no better than Phelps. He just wears a better suit and understands PR instead of theater. In that famous column he wrote, he claimed to be a liberal democrat. According to an article on salon.com, it turns out the Mr. Blankenhorn is president of an organization called The Institute for American Values, which according to IRS records, receives a great deal of money from ultra-conservative organizations promoting a conservative social agenda. I find it highly unlikely that these organizations would give millions to a professed “liberal Democrat”. Not only were Blankenhorn’s arguments demonstrably irrelevant, it appears that he is not who he says he is. True morality does not require deception and misrepresentation.
In that article, he claimed Prop. 8 should be supported because marriage is “primarily a license to have children.” and “children have the right to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world.” While we can all agree that children deserve to be loved and cared for, neither reason is true, or relevant to Prop. 8, or enforced upon heterosexuals. Telephone call for Bristol Palin!

But they sure sounded good, didn’t they?

Nowhere in the initiative were found the words mother, father, child, family, child support, or, most tellingly: DIVORCE and ADOPTED. And far too many children are abused, molested, or abandoned by biological parents– married or not– who neither want nor are prepared for them.

BTB calls it The Heterosexual menace. In today’s Chronicle, there are no less than TWO articles dealing with father who repeatedly raped and fathered children upon their own daughters, much like that Biblical exemplar Lot, except that he at least had the excuse that he was drunk. What about the woamn who was married 23 times? What about Octomom, who is really Quaddecan mom? If Blankenhorn refuses to see these obvious bits of reality, then his prejudice is really not functionally all that different from the Phelpsters. He just wears a better suit and has PR mojo.

And the proof? Even assuming this “birthright” exists, Prop. 8 did nothing to further it. But then, Blankenhorn admits his real bias when he says that “Legalized same-sex marriage almost certainly benefits…the children being raised in those homes”. According to the Supreme Court, there are at least 70,000 of them, some biological, some adopted. Do not those children deserve the same protections provided by marriage that are afforded their counterparts in “traditional” families? What about the 3-4% of children who are going to grow up to be gay? Or are only some children and some families important?

The misrepresentations, the illogic, the indicated contradiction– it’s all for the children, just not THOSE children– is all the evidence I need to tell me that Blankenhorn is just a more presentable type of bigot. Compared to the Phelpsters, he looks positively benign. And compared to them, I suspect he is. I’m sure he would personally be horrified at the thought of my being executed for being a Big Fag. He might even speak up against it. I have no way of knowing, so i’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

But what I do know is that he does not wish me and mine well, despite his obvious ignorance on the subject. He does not want me to be treated as an equal by my government. He does not want this senseless prejudice to end, because he shares it.

I suggest, Emily, you lose the chip you have on your shoulder over Christianity’s history with Judaism.

I know, right? It’s like, only been going on for the past 2,000 years, pervading every part of Western culture, right down to casual expressions (“Pharisaic,” “Shylock”). So it heavily contributed to the cause of 6,000,000 deaths. I wasn’t one of them, so I should just GET OVER IT already. So they had Passion Plays that incited hatred against Jewish people for killing Jesus in the Middle Ages, so what? It’s not like anybody makes Passion Plays today, at least not as big budget movies, here in America. What do I have to be concerned about? We live in post-religious America; nobody here reads the Gospel of John like it’s literal truth. Just like now that Barack is President, we live in post-racial America and Blacks have nothing to complain about.

**

I don’t expect to convince anybody anything, honestly, I don’t. You’ll have your opinion and I’ll have mine.

Woah now. Sorry Jim, we can see where your heading and all in thinking about who support Exodus(Lively) versus those who do not(Phelps), but you’re way off base with these thoughts because ultimately it doesn’t matter if it’s Phelps we deal with or Lively. …” etc.

… I’m confused. I think that was the point I was trying to make in the second-to-last paragraph.

As to the “Good men doing nothing line,” I understand that many here are offended by the implication that Chambers might be a good man. I’ll not spend any ink defending him against those who disagree. Instead, I’m only recognizing that Chambers considers himself a good man, and that this is a favorite line that I’ve heard him repeat in multiple venues. My goal is simply to remind him exactly what happens when good men — and by corollary, not so good men — do nothing.

Luther’s antisemitism doesn’t refute his interpretation of the ten commandments, nor does it refute my position.

It does mean that Luther did not fully, perhaps even partially, live by his own theology.

Your empty dismissal accomplishes nothing. Jesus also said that to even look at someone with lust was to commit adultery. The clear point is that these negative behaviors do not have to be concrete in form – murder doesn’t have to be physically expressed, nor lust or hate, to be wrong.

David wrote,

Luther wrote in his large catechism that ‘Thou Shalt not Kill’ includes not only overt action that inflicts harm, but the knowing failure to prevent harm. Likewise, hate includes not only the death threats, but the act of standing aside and allowing those death threats to continue unrebuked.

David is free to agree with Luther’s point on the commandment and then extend it to the issue of death threats without having to worry about Luther’s hypocritical religious hatred of Jews.

To agree that someone has made a good point is not to endorse everything that someone ever said or wrote. And to have been manifestly evil in some respect does not preclude one from having been right about something else.

I suggest, Emily, you lose the chip you have on your shoulder over Christianity’s history with Judaism.

“Woah now. Sorry Jim, we can see where your heading and all in thinking about who support Exodus(Lively) versus those who do not(Phelps), but you’re way off base with these thoughts because ultimately it doesn’t matter if it’s Phelps we deal with or Lively. …” etc.

When politicking and an extremist, it is always helpful to have someone holding an even more extreme position you can point to. Even if you have to help create them.

There is a reason FoF et al mention Phelps et al — and it isn’t because they fundamentally disagree about us. They don’t. What they disagree about are the tactics. (Has one forgotten that it was FoF, and NOT Phelps, who actually put an anti-gay brief before SCOTUS in Lawrence v Texas?)

Ok… now… what is Exodus doing in Uganda with Lively EXCEPT but helping to create and extend him? And I’m expected to think that Exodus may somehow CONDEMN him???

Woah now. Sorry Jim, you’re way off base with these thoughts. Too generous, but way off base: this isn’t the first time Exodus has shared a bed with a Watchman on the Wall as you’ve helped document over the years.

Good men DO NOT take two weeks to make up excuses for evil people. Exodus were caught red-handed while playing out their game. Scott Lively is no accident.

If I remember correctly, he once said that single men would become criminals unless they married or became military officers or priests.

Doesn’t sound very reasonable to me.