What’s more confounding is how they don’t realize the opposite, that gay people getting married doesn’t hurt or affect them in the slightest.
The excuse is always “But I’ll have to explain to my children that it’s wrong even though the government says it’s okay” Well, welcome to being like every other faith group in America, who’s faith-based restrictions on clothes, diet, sex, work, etc. aren’t government enforced either. There’s a difference between God’s Laws and Man’s Laws, you’re going to have to explain that at some point anyway over sex, drinking, gambling, swearing, just add “Gay” to your bullet points and get over yourself already!

I doubt they will see it as God’s way of telling them they have other priorities too.

Good times = God’s blessing and a sign that he’s pleased with your efforts, keep them up.

Bad times = trials to test our faith, keep up the efforts to prove your conviction.

Serves them right if they operated at a major loss. I doubt they will see it as God’s way of telling them they have other priorities too.

The Bound4LIFE (anti-abortion contingent) were out in force, praying to expel the “demons that make people seek abortions” around downtown/Midtown, and marking the places they’d been with orange stickers that said “LIFE.”

But otherwise, it was a big bust. It was smaller than most of the big-issue rallies (state worker furloughs, anti-Prop 8, teabaggers).

Nowhere near either the 50,000 they claimed they were expecting or the 30,000 they were actually prepared for. Most of the attendees I spoke with were from the south state or from out-of-state; and the “usual suspects” from the Slavic evangelical community were nowhere in sight.

What has been overlooked by the mainstream media and mostly ignored by glbt media is the fact the rally of TheCall – Sacramento and 2 upcoming rallies in DC are indeed political rallies wrapped in religious cloth.

When one visits TheCall’s webpage one is asked to view AND sign the recently released Manhattan Declaration (www.manhattandeclaration.org) co-authored by Watergate felon Chuck Colson. It was originally signed by most of the country’s evangelical leaders AND 15 cardinals and bishops of the Roman Catholic Church. It now has over 400,000 signatures.

The Manhattan Declaration has 3 points:

1. No Abortions – No Exceptions – this means a woman MUST carry her rapist’s child to term.

2. Marriage only for a man and a woman.

3. Religious Liberty – Ah, aren’t we all in favor of that? Of course they mean religious liberty as defined by them. Under their definition of religious liberty they would roll back ANY civil rights law that conflicts with their religious beliefs especially those that grant “special rights’ to GLBT persons.

People who sign the Manhattan Declaration pledge not to vote for candidates who do not support the three points.

TheCall rallies are also a part of Prayer and Act which is co-chaired by Rev. James Garlow of San Diego who was a leader who gathered evangelical church support for Prop 8. The other co-chair is none other than NEWT GINGRICH!

It looks as though Jim Garlow is emerging as the new Ted Haggard. Let’s hope he falls the same way.

Most of the founding leaders of the Radical Religious Right like Jerry Falwell and James Kennedy have died and gone to their reward, such as it may be. Others like Pat Robertson, Don Wildmon and Tim and Beverly are getting too old and out of touch to be effective. So the younger leaders are looking for the mantle to fall on them.

It really doesn’t matter how many pallets of water or unused portapottys there were this event accomplished what it set out to do and that is get the faithful to stirred up and to set up Chuck Colson and Newt Gingrich as kingmakers for the GOP.

I think too that since so many of us have no idea where I next paycheck is coming from, if we’ve even had paychecks in a while…I think it’s a matter of people’s real priorities.

When it’s all said and done, maybe a kind of thoughtfulness prevailed. Gay folks don’t cost the public more money, aren’t excluded from the same tax responsibility and there isn’t anything gay people have or want at the expense of anyone else.
No one who has had a quiet moment of reflection could honestly say it’s true.
People had to think about their children’s school clothes and books and tuition.
Their mortgages and health insurance.
When it’s all said and done, gay folks do too.
There isn’t a whole lot of appeal for some, to take all afternoon for a bitch about teh gayz fest. The NOM speaker’s league aren’t very charismatic, or appealing. I’m thinking more of the same is true of The Call.

They are strictly fogeyville. If anyone in this crowd has a gay relative, they are probably long estranged from them or want to be and avoid really knowing any gay people where it matters.
So what’s left?
An abstract idea of what gay people are actually doing that changes anything in any of these people’s lives.
Much is left to their imaginations, and I suspect their imaginations aren’t all that interesting or vivid.
Which is probably another reason why all this preaching and Biblical stories appeal to them.

I don’t care to be kind about the folks of The Call and who they are trying to appeal to.

The holiday was about the American worker. Who, our nation has and continues to show, the back of it’s hand to.
Maybe some of these people will realize that gay and straight are in the same boat. No one benefits directly FROM the Call.
Nor from NOM.
After they ask for money and donations and time, someone with more revelatory opportunity might think: well now what do I get out of this? Oh, just so gay folks don’t get married.
And that is supposed to help ME how?

That should be the prevailing thought. Because The Call isn’t going to help anyone with their paychecks, or health coverage, retirement or lack of knowing what to do about their children’s futures with a nation in debt well past their great great great great grandchildren.

The Call?
More like…call waiting.

I suspect that Pomo is right and the vast majority were from the huge (and growing), rabidly anti-gay, Russian and eastern European community of Sacramento.

I’ve always wanted to be able to make negative donations to these groups. Looks like I got my wish.