One of the most dangerous things Democrats do is trying to suck up to the Rick Warrens. They won't get any votes from the Christianists unless they abandon choice and equality for ALL Americans -- and if the Democrats do that, they cease to be Democrats.

Oh, and one other thing: I wish the Christianists would stop this crap about how they "love" gays and lesbians. Whatever you call people you think belong in hell and shouldn't have any rights on earth, it most certainly isn't love.

I find it interesting to hear these people claim they have 'gay' friends since typically this means they are friends with 'ex'-gays which is a very different kettle of fish and its interesting to note that even after they've done their 'therapy' these ex-gays are still considered gays by their evangelical associates.

when I lived in Orange County, I used to drive right by this douchebag's megachurch every day on my way to work.

Ugh.

If divorce is more threatening to the institution of marriage then gay marriage (and surely it is; one can actually document how attitudes towards marriage have changed since the advent of no-fault divorce), then where are the ballot propositions and constitutional amendments to ban divorce?

memo to Rick Warren:

"some of my best friends are (blank)" ceased to be an acceptable cover for bigotry, about 30 years or more ago.

Well, I do think they have "gay" friends, and relatives too. It just doesn't mean anything to them--anymore than saying that you have "pets" means that you think other people's pets should be treated well, or that other people should have the right to pets. There is an inability to recognize the equivalency between human lives and gay lives going on in these homophobic communities. A case in point is the bizarre story published today of the sobbing homophobic woman who gave 100 dollars to the "yes on 8" campaign even though her business had a largely gay clientele and many gay workers. In the rather sympathetic retelling of her story we are informed that its terribly cruel of gay people to stop paying money to eat at her restaurant--its cruel not to financially support mrs. sobbing mormon woman. But it isn't, somehow, cruel for mrs. sobbing mormon woman to actually pay 100 dollars to tear up the marriage lisences of the patrons and workers at her restaurant. How are these things not equally problematic?

Imagine a gay campaign in which gays and straight supporters paid 100 dollars per person to forcibly divorce Rick Warren from his wife, and to render their children illegitimate? Imagine the outcry. And yet Rick Warren advocates just that, at the top of his lungs, and that is supposed to be merely some kind of personal opinion and not a flat out assault on people's lives?

aimai

aimai, I'd love a link to that story which you referenced.

renato:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez14-2008dec14,0,5995847.column

r (?) nato,
I beg your pardon for being so lazy and not putting a link to the article in my original ranting comment. Here it is:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez14-2008dec14,0,5995847.column

It was published yesterday, I think, and it is titled "A life thrown into turmoil by 100 dollar donation to prop 8" which is what originally really got my goat. A *lot* of lives were "thrown into turmoil by a 100 dollar donation." A lot of *gay lives* and *children's lives* and straight lives were "thrown into turmoil" by prop 8 but we aren't seeing any sympathetic coverage of them.

I live in MA, and I'm a straight married woman myself, but I have friends who are gay and I know the agony their children endured before equal marriage gave those children the sense of safety and security they deserved. I'm outraged by the cavalier dismissal of the lives of those gay californians who are *already married * and the lives of their family members that is inherent in the treatment the press has accorded their legal limbo.

aimai

Rick Warren and his sheep think they are motivated by lofty religious ideals, but don't care about the real world implications of their actions. It's kind of hard to fathom.

A case in point is the bizarre story published today of the sobbing homophobic woman who gave 100 dollars to the "yes on 8" campaign even though her business had a largely gay clientele and many gay workers.

It reminds me of the (possibly apocryphal) story about DW Griffith, director of "The Birth of a Nation." After the film came out, his housekeeper came to him and said that he had always been a good employer and she had admired him, to the point of naming her son after him. But after seeing the film, she was quitting the job immediately and changing her son's name.

Griffith never quite understood why his black housekeeper (or anyone) would be offended by a film that shows the KKK as heroic defenders of society. He tried to reverse the message with "Intolerance," but it was pretty half-assed.

It's sad that this woman in Los Angeles lost her friends because of her bigoted views, but what did she expect? That her gay friends didn't really want those civil rights, so it was no big deal if she helped finance the campaign against them?

Seriously, it would be as though an owner of Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles donated money to David Duke and then was upset that his customers boycotted the restaurant.

I support gay marriage, but at some point I do think that gay marriage advocates need to either stop getting offended when somebody makes the plural marriage analogy, or explain exactly why it is discrimination to prohibit people from marrying within their own gender but it is A-OK to prohibit marrying more than one person.

The story of Margie Christofferson and the boycott of El Coyote is complicated and more than a little sad, whether I agree with the woman or not. If the ultimate effect is to close down a thriving business with a gay and lesbian clientele as well as losing much of the gay and lesbian staff... count me among those who's not sure what we gained. As for Rick Warren, I have no use for him, his church, or his opinion. And not only do I think way too much energy is spent "courting" him, but also too much energy is thrown into opposing and berating him. Whether he has gay friends or not, and what sort of friends they might be is of no use to me; I need to know about the people whose minds can be changed, who can be reached. He's not one of them. Next question.

weboy,
we didn't "gain" anything--its just a natural reaction to her natural action. Its not a strategic move, its just a natural consequence. Perhaps the "ultimate effect" is to close down her thriving business but that business just goes somewhere else, as do those workers, somewhere where they can be sure that the boss isn't spitting in their soup as well as trying to rip up their marriage lisences.

And as for jeebus's point that "gay marriage advocates" need "either stop getting offendded...or...." that has to be the most moronic point of all time. I haven't really seen gay activists getting at all "offended" by the "plural marriage analogy--though people are certainly offended by likening consenual adult sexual relations to incest, pedophilia, necrophilia, and bestiality. The plural marriage issue is simply a bit of sand thrown up by the right wing as one of those debate points. A) plural marriage is, of course, legal throughout much of the world and in the future may cause problems for an immigrant population that practices it. It would be legitimate and even inevitable for the current US ban on plural marriage to be revisited at some future time but its not going to come about because of equal marriage but because of immigrant agitation to protect the rights (such as they are) of women and children in pre-existing plural marriages. And the first people on the "me too gravy train" will be the mormons. B) its not incumbent upon any group to explain why the world won't come to an end when they get the same civil rights as everyone else. It is incumbent on the people barring the schoolhouse or the church door to explain why their own explanations are at once so vicious and so lame that they can't be defended without resorting to lies, slander, and fearmongering.

aimai

Pastors haven't been prosecuted for participating in cross-burnings, much less for statements in sermons given during a religious service ! Mere criticism of his views does not make it a "free speech" issue !

So, save it for the cross-burning, Pastor Adolf !

I support plural marriage.

Warren makes one of the most common anti-gay-marriage arguments: if we allow gays to get married, why not let three people get married to each other? Why not let brothers and sisters get married? Why not let people marry their dogs?

Do gay marriage advocates have an "obligation" to address this argument? I don't know. I think it is usually wise to make counterarguments. But most advocates of gay rights avoid this argument like the plague. (E.g.)

Maybe it's "its not incumbent upon any group to explain why the world won't come to an end when they get the same civil rights as everyone else." But imagine if during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, opponents had made an argument like: well, if we give blacks equal rights, we'll have to give equal rights to Hispanics, too! And then imagine if Martin Luther King had responded: No, no, we're not saying you have to give equal rights to Hispanics. We can talk about Hispanics later. Right now, we just want equal rights for blacks. Hispanics can fight for their own rights. Would his message have been as powerful?

The basic idea behind gay rights isn't that gay people, per se, should have equal rights. It is that everyone, regardless of who they are attracted to, should have equal rights. Some people want to make their lives with one person of the same gender, others want to make their lives with multiple people. Of course some people have attractions that we can abide because they do harm - pedophiles, etc.

I think Rick left out the part where he's sucked a gay cock or two...

What an outrageous statement, Mr Blifil.

I'm sure Rick only sucks straight cock.

Your greatest trick is to convince the sheeple that there’s nothing to fear, “move along folks,” when in reality gay rights extremists/arsonists and the Jewist media are collaborating with other forces to drive religion not only out of public life but right out of the country completely. If you have your way, it will soon be impossible to be a Christian or Muslim in the US, except underground like in China or the good old USSR. If you think you can succeed, you’ve got another thing coming, that’s for sure.

There is one question I do have about gay marriage And divorce. Can gays get divorced? I always hear about gay narriage, but never about gay divorce. Is that not allowed, or do all gay people remain paired permanently.
While I can support gay marriage, I'm not sure I can support gay divorce. How will gay couples fight over custody and visitation? An Irish setter is not a son.

The notion that anyone gives a rat's ass what you believe, Jack, is only plausible through the prism of your own self-absorption.

You'll be able to worship whatever or whomever you like in the US until you die.

If you're looking for a government controlled by religious dictators, I suggest Iran or Saudi Arabia, depending on whether you're Sunni or Shia.

Hey Warren and all of your followers. Fuck you!

If the gummint would stop handing out goodies based on marital status I think we would see much less interest on who gets married to whom. As long as "marriage" continues to be the vehicle used to dole out goodies to favored constituents, we will have people who (rightly so) want their piece of the pie. I say make marriage a name thing only and treat people for the purposes of state largesse as single persons. Then nobody will give a damn who gets married to whom.

Regards.

All these conservative punks are harping against the '"redefinition" of marriage', and it's never sat well with me. What the hell kind of argument is that, anyway? And then I realized that they're all still mad that the word 'gay' was redefined. No one now can say that he's feeling 'gay' as in 'happy' because of teh gays.

To them, I say - Move over bacon!

jeebus wrote, I support plural marriage.

That's because you don't understand why polygamy is a bad thing, at least in a modern setting.

It's not a bad thing because it's icky; it's not even necessarily going to lead to oppression of women.

The problem with polygamy is that, for every guy out there who has more than one wife, there's a guy with no wife.

That can lead to some pretty nasty outcomes.

It doesn't mean that polygamy is "unnatural" or "wrong"---indeed, some people claim that it's much more natural than monogamy (based on examining tribal groups).

But it does mean one should think twice after a shallow analysis based on the fact that polygamy is a victimless crime.

Jeebus wrote, But most advocates of gay rights avoid this argument like the plague. (E.g.) [Emphasis added]

It's telling that you'd link to an a$$hat like William Saletan.

I have always thought the main problem with the gay marriage issue is the word "marriage". To me it is a huge mistake to have a religious sacrament in our civil code. The issue should be to take the word "marriage" out of our federal laws that determine who gets benefits. A civil union should entitle people to equal rights and marriage should only be a certificate you get from the church. I relate it to the difference between a birth certificate and baptism. What if we required baptism to access any rights for individuals. Of course we don't because that is covered by a birth certficate which has nothing to do with religion. To me this would solve the problem for all sides. The people who are afraid, unjustifiably in my opinion, that gay marriage will be forced on churches; the people who want their unions to be recognized in order that they receive equal rights on the state and federal level. Could we avoid a lot of the hysteria by just concentrating on semantics?

No, we could not "avoid a lot of the hysteria" by just concentrating on semantics because the hysteria is the whole objective of the so called public debate.

And, once again, fuck off jeebus. The correct analogy to the case of civil rights is if white people insisted that Martin Luther King address their hysterical cries that desegregating schools would lead instantly to increased black on white rape. No, gay people seeking legal recognition of a classic "love match" are not obligated to speak to right wing trumped up fears that plural marriage might be next.

They aren't asking for plural marriage and so they aren't obligated to decide how courts or legislatures should handle that case.

The whole argument you are making is an utter red herring and why you keep bringing it up is beyond me, except that its utterly disingenous. We have all kinds of laws that get changed all the time without leading to utter chaos or the instant reppeal of other, related laws. Laws on ownership, on transfer of property, on theft, etc... Similarly, when we have a law creating the category "statutory rape" or "minor below the age of consent" changing the age up or down doesn't imply that anything goes and we are going to throw all such laws out for every age. There's no necessary slipper slope. Every legal change isn't a slippery slope to another. But even if it were it is scarcely clear why one groups right to marriage should be prevented in order to hypothetically prevent some other set of individuals, at a later date, from appealing for novel rights themselves. And its far from clear that *refusing to entertain* equal marriage *prevents* the appeal of plural marriage advocates. That is why I pointed out that plural marriage as an issue is inevitably going to recur whether or not equal marriage becomes the law of the land.

Plural marriage, to take your personal bugaboo, predates equal marriage as a social problem. It was practiced by native american groups and forced underground, disallowed, or destroyed thorugh the same culturallly destructive processes of forced conversion and legal change by which the dominant white culture tried to destroy native american society, economy, and culture. Plural marriage was (famously) given up as a condition of Utah's statehood and remains practiced covertly among the FLDS--what that means is that some women and children simply lack all legal protections. Plural marriage is also practiced, of course, by numerous islamic communities and the women in those marriages who emmigrate to this country are often put in a very dangerous and ambiguous legal situation as a result of our refusal to recognize such marriages under our own laws.

In other words--equal marriage or no equal marriage plural marriage is going to be a legal and social problem for some people in this country until we start to face up to it legally and legislatively (whether we protect members in such unions or simply try to help them extricate themselves from them).

aimai

There is only one word for someone who admits that divorce is a “bigger threat to the American family” than gay marriage, but fights vigorously against the lesser threat while pandering to the greater threat. That word is hypocrisy. Reverend Warren can take cold comfort in sharing that title with the Pharisees and Sadducees who preceded him.

r€nato is right, “where are the ballot propositions and constitutional amendments to ban divorce?”

aimai--

Living in MA, what you don't know it that El Coyote is not just some little restaurant that can be replaced. It's been around since the 30's (something that very rare out here) and to many of us it's a legendary piece of LA, as much as Musso and Frank's Grill. It's someplace I always take out-of-towners to give them a taste of local (non-tourist) Los Angeles. As weboy said above, the situation is a bit complicated.

I'm not saying I don't see your points. I'm a 48 yo gay man whose celebrating 29 years with his partner this Christmas. But many of us are questioning whether targeting an employee for a $100 donation is worth damaging a family-owned business and local landmark. (And please note, Ms. Christoffersen isn't THE owner of El Coyote. The restaurant is owned by her family. She's one of the managers there.) I think our time and focus would be better spent pointing out the contribution of someone like the owner of Urban Outfitters, for instance.

I will add that I did not like that article and wrote to the columnist (Steve Lopez) to complain. I felt he should have pushed Ms. Christoffersen as to why she felt passing this proposition was so important that she needed to help fund it and not merely vote for it. The Mormon Church requires all member to tithe (donate 10% of their gross income to the church) and they are quite strict about it. Many of us suspect that many members felt forced by the Church to donate in order to fulfill their obligation. That is an issue that needs more investigation as far as I’m concerned.

On election day I was told by a woman here in Arizona that homosexuality and murder were equal sins. I suspect that people with strong religious beliefs are often mental cases and their leaders (preachers, priests, etc) are charlatans making easy money by selling their nasty snake oil.

Jeebus wrote: "I support gay marriage, but at some point I do think that gay marriage advocates need to either stop getting offended when somebody makes the plural marriage analogy, or explain exactly why it is discrimination to prohibit people from marrying within their own gender but it is A-OK to prohibit marrying more than one person."

How many time do we have to explain it? I've PERSONALLY explained it probably 100 times over the past decade. Here's the jist of it, Jeebus. Are there any people clammoring for polygamous marriage who make the claim gays make - that we are **constitutively homosexual** from birth? No! We make that claim and no polygamist has ever claimed that they are "constitutively ONLY able to have romantic and sexual attraction to SEVERAL people". Gays BOLDLY assert that we are constitutively homosexual from as early in our lives as it is possible for us to remember. Such a similar bizarre claim of being constitutively only able to be happy if you have several spouses leaps far beyond the realm of sanity. And while a growing and compelling body of science backs up the claim gays make, NO such science validates the polygamous equivalent. Gays are clammoring to marry EVERYONE, but rather SOMEONE, and that desire is FULLY in keeping with marriage tradition in it's present incarnation.

Finally, WHY is it the burden of gays to explain this? What person in America had to first explain why their marriage was not a positive referendum on polygamous marriage as a necessary hurdle before they could go down to the county and get their marriage license? Only when gay people embraced the IDENTICAL rules of marriage did this STRAW MAN slippery slope question come out. In the history of American law, name me an example in which a fundamental right EVER had to meet the Polygamy question before someone got married.

Here's why marriage equality won't lead to polygamy: polygamy is inherently UNequal. It means multiple beneficiaries for Social Security survivor benefits, etc. Couples with multiple spouses would receive MORE benefits, not equal benefits.

It simply wouldn't pass 14th Amendment scrutiny.

Next?

You're absolutely right, Joan. And as to polygamy, isn't it fine as long as we have enough polyandry included therein?

Liar liar pants on fire!!! A pastor can preach whatever he wants, regardless of whether there's a Pop 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12. Rick Warren knows that. If he doesn't know it, he's a moron.

The only thing Pastor Warren needs to worry about is being perceived as intolerant and sorry buddy but that horse is already out of the barn.

Honestly, this would be much easier for me to argue if I had a problem with polygamy.

Obama is trying to find common ground with Warren. Mr. Warren, however, doesn't seem to be returning the favor.

Instead of firing random negative comments back and forth, allow the legal system to work through the issues with intelligent input. If you don't agree with one side or the other, do so with respectful dialogue and not with childish rants and harsh words.

May I pose a question. Would there be this much or more/less protest if Obama had chosen the Reverend Wright to give the invocation? I think he mees the criteria of "hate-filled" listed here, but yet the left doesn't seem to be bothered by him as much. Don't get me wrong, I a fully support gay rights, but I do tire of the endless attacks on Christians when they are exercising their freedom of speech that so many on the left like to defend. Yes, this world needs to change and grow up, but name calling, drawing lines in the sand, and pouting just isn't that answer. Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukkah everyone (oops am I allowed to say that?).

دردشة

I wish the Christianists would stop this crap about how they "love" gays and lesbians.

Thanks for you post,It's useful to me

I decided to read "The Purpose of Christmas" by Rick Warren a couple of days ago. It uplifted me in certain parts but towards the end, I sort of felt like I was being backed up against a wall by the views of a fundamentalist. He made a few good points.. e.g. Stop trying to run the show yourself and give your worries to God... and the importance of spiritual connection and how it gives us peace of mind, etc., etc. That's all fine and good but he kind of ruined it by saying things like "you will continue to be miserable if you don't allow yourself to be saved by Jesus"...or "don't talk to your pets if you're stressed out..they don't listen...the only one you should talk to is Jesus". My dogs have helped me through some horrendous times because of their gentle healing nature...and I believe God sent us animals to sooth our souls and teach us about gratitude, forgiveness and unconditional love. Although I fully believe in Jesus Christ and his true message, this book was a little too black and white for me. I'm sure Jesus himself would agree that we all have a unique relationship with our Creator, and if we could only embrace all our differences and coexist in love, peace, and acceptance, the world would be a much better place. Sometimes I wish people would just delete their ego's & "the who's right and who's wrong" game (maybe they should allow God to take THAT burden off their shoulders) because it's all fear driven...which is the opposite of love.