Obama Lets Go Of His Fear

I was on my way home from the hardware store yesterday afternoon when I heard NPR interviewing Andrew Sullivan, reacting to President Obama's statement yesterday that he supports the rights of gays and lesbians to get married, and that civil unions won't bridge the inequality gap.  It was a moving interview, and Sullivan said he was 'at a loss for words' which by his own admission, almost never happens =)

As a straight man in a long term monogamous relationship with my wife Dr Desert Flower, I do not understand the ideologues who insist that marriage must be between a man and a woman because their 'sacred' text says that.  Yes, their sacred text also says that polygamy is fine (in the Old Testament), slavery is fine, daughters can be sold for cattle and dowries, and that pork is forbidden (it does not chew cud) for human consumption (Leviticus Chapter 11, vs 3-27).  The sacred text also says to shun menstruating women as unclean, and to stone homosexuals... maybe the so called christians[TM] wish they still legally could?

Marriage is about love between the people entering the marriage.  No, it's not about marrying a dog or ice cream as Republican Congressman has stated, on the House floor, nor is it about marrying fruit salad, as Pee Wee Herman once did.  If your religious beliefs want to add more to that, for your own church and your own family, that's fine, add all you want, but don't hate or fear others in society who do not share your same beliefs.

Dr Desert Flower said it nicely this morning to me when we spoke on the phone:  "It's like racism.  If you don't speak out against it when you see it, then you are condoning it.  What if President Obama had said he supported the right of couples of different races to get married?  Many in the right[TM] would have reacted just as hatefully."

Over at JoeMyGod, Joe lists the various hate groups who masquerade as as religious and family christians[TM] organizations (link here).  The American Family Association, the Family Research Council, Alliance Defense Fund, Tradition Values Coalition, and the increasingly fanatical Catholic League are all calling their members to arms, to arms! To Arms! .. to fight this terrible assault on their paradigm. 

Yeah, the committed, monogamous gay couple who Dr Desert Flower works with, who adopted two small children when they were babies from their abusive and destitute single mother who gave them up, and are now raising them in a loving, nurturing, stable, middle class household are just terrible, terrible people.  Everyone knows that all 'the gays' want to do is all those things good christians[TM] have tried to bury the urge to do, deep deep deep inside, and if not for a good christian's[TM] devotion to limited excerpts of their sacred text, they'd be having 1000s of sexual partners, visiting bath houses and park rest rooms for anonymous sex with strangers, preying upon congressional interns, marrying dogs, marrying ice cream....  well... maybe not marrying the ice cream.