The lavender blacklist?

This person contributed money to the prop-8 campaign. Other people don't want to contribute to his income if he is going to use it in causes they find repugnant. How is that any different from the boycott of Ford when they decided to offer domestic partner benefits?

Rod,

Do you think we'll ever find a way to communicate the difference between moral disagreement and bigotry? Bigotry may result from moral disagreement, but it needn't be so.

Though I suppose, if I point to my traditional religious observance as the engine of my moral disagreement, then the argument could be made that my religious doctrines are not rooted in a loving God as I contend, but that they're in fact simply rooted in bigoty. And then, once again, impasse. Kyrie Elesion...

Tom

"Other people don't want to contribute to his income if he is going to use it in causes they find repugnant. How is that any different from the boycott of Ford when they decided to offer domestic partner benefits?"

Well--for one thing, it's a employment or quasi-employment situation. The context with regard to Ford and Disney had to do with an entire institution directly instituting a policy some individuals found unfavorable. We have anti-discrimination laws against denying individuals employment b/c of their religious views or race etc..., and with government employment it protects a person from being fired for their political views. This case goes more in that direction.

There really are no laws preventing a party from not buying from a company out of protest for their political views. I certainly think there is a distinction made in the spirit (though likely not the letter) of our legal system.

Perhaps now that I know the left is going all out for retribution against employees or quasi-employees for their political views, they'll stop bitching about the communist witch hunts in the 1950s.

The issue with the Hollywood blacklist was that people were being deprived of work based on accusations, frequently anonymous, and frequently false, that they secretly sympathized with the Communists, or that they refused to inform on others. Right or wrong, that is not this situation.

Eddie, you're wrong. The man resigned because the business for which he worked was being made to suffer economically because of his political and religious opinions. I uphold the right of Marc Shaiman and anybody else to withhold their patronage from a theater that employed this Mormon director. But I think it is dangerously intolerant, and immoral.

I have mentioned before a friend who is an Evangelical Christian, and who works in a major media newsroom. She lives in the closet, so to speak, because she's afraid she'd be forced out of her job, or denied promotions, if people knew she was a Christian. Nobody does, and she sits there and listens to people trash Christians all the time. Rather like the gay character in "Mad Men" who has to put up with open anti-gay slurs among his colleagues.

Respect doesn't require approval. We live in a pluralistic society. Religious people who disapprove of homosexuality still are obliged to treat their gay neighbors and co-workers with respect. Same with gay people and others who disapprove of religion.

You are living in a dream world, Rod, if you think that gay rights activists will reach a peaceful "settlement" with social conservatives on gay marriage.

Once "gay marriage" is in place in a widespread way, it will be used under the guise of "anti-discimination" law to bludgeon all those institutions or individuals that do not accept it. Already, it is a commonplace on gay blogs to call for the revocation of tax ememptions on any non-profit organization that does not institutionally support gay marriage. Just as the Boy Scouts have been de-funded in many places because of their policies on gays, great pressure will be applied to attack the funding or tax exeptions of organizations who don't get on board with supporting gay marriage.

Also, no traditional Christan, Jew or Moslem teaching in public schools will be able to avoid teaching marriage and family lessons that celebrate gay marraige without risking their jobs. That means that if "Heather Has Two Mommies" is prescribed reading for 1st graders, teachers will have to read and assign it or suffer consequences.

Gay rights activists have almost no interest im "marriage" as an actual lifestyle; that is they are not interested a long-term, sexually monogamous pairings between two people. (Although lesbians are much more likely to choose and live that kind of life than gay men.) Their interest in marriage is to use it as a wedge to legally force normalization of homsexuality in all areas of social and cultural life, and to marginalize all people who hold to a traditional sexual morality.

Their oft stated goal is that society and the law treat those who oppose homosexuality and homosexual marriage on moral grounds in the same way that it treats those who are racists and who discriminate on the basis of race. Once homosexual marriage is the law, this will be much easier to do.

What happened to this Mormon director happened without the force of law. Wait until the law is on the side of the activists. Among many other consequences: Christian counselors will have to offer gay marriage counseling if they offer straight, or risk their licenses. The same would be true in all liscensed professions. All public school teachers will have to teach curriculums that hold gay and straight marriage and sexual behavior in equal esteem. Any college professor at a state university, or any university who recieves state or federal funds, who holds that homosexual behavior falls short of the natural law and nature's intention for sexuality, would be denied tenure. (And even if she had tenure, she could still lose her job based on anti-discrimination clauses.)

It is one thing to urge tolerance; tolerance is putting up with something you don't agree with for the sake of social peace. We should be tolerant of homosexuality, as we are of many human weaknesses. Everyone has weaknesses that we urge tolerance for. We should honor and respect homosexuals as people, and their right of privacy with regard to their sexuality. Tolerance means no gay-bashing or violence against gays.

But tolerance is much different than acceptance and approval, and even that is differnt than enshrining something contrary to natural law in the positive law of society. If we do that, we will reap a whirlwind.

So let me get this right.

You loose your job because you support Joe Stalin during the 50's, and you become a folk hero and martyr in Hollywood.

You loose your job because you think two guys married is like two left shoes, and you had it coming to you.

Got it.

Shouldn't this mean that Dalton Trumbo will have to get down off his pedestal?

Interesting points, all.

Seems to me that Mr. Shaiman's action is rather petty, but we have the right to be petty. Mr. Eckern's action in response is part of the cost of standing up for a view that is unpopular within your industry.

In our free country people have the absolute right to be petty, and the right to stand up and take the hit for their views. We are protected from government discriminating against us because of our views, but not from other private citizens doing the same. I personally find it childish, but there's no law against being childish in America.

However, and this should be clearly stated: We've had blacklists in this nation's history. This is no blacklist.

Should we still be using words like "blacklist" when we're going to have a black (or half black) POTUS soon? Seems insensitive tome.

I boycott Domino's Pizza, Walmart and Coors. I tell anyone I meet given half a chance to do so my opinions about the owners of those companies and their political actions. At no point do I say or imply that they should be punished for their opinions of beliefs.

Oh, and that was indeed me above, not my Evil Twin Brother. Type in haste, repeat as needed. ;-)

Were gays boycotting Eckern ('s theater) before this issue? I cannot believe no one knew he was a Mormon before now.

This is a misdirection. Shaiman didn't withdraw his support because Eckern is a Mormon, just as other criticism of Eckern hasn't been focused at all on his Mormonism. Shaiman withrew his support because Eckern's private political opinion was revealed when he undertook a public act, to wit, a donation to the Yes on Prop 8 campaign. Franklin, you keep raising Eckern's Mormonism, as if that is even a salient factor here. It is not, except to the extent that Eckern's Mormon faith informed his opinion. But Eckern was pressured to resign not because of his religion, but because of his beliefs.

"Don,
You say that making your beliefs known re abortion shouldnt' result in your losing a job, and that's probably true. But could you really blame Planned Parenthood for not hiring you or your firm if you were giving funds to outlaw abortion? There's consequences to political action in social forums, always have been, always will be."

Hattio--of course PP should be able to not hire me or fire me, mainly because my opinion goes directly against their purposes: performing abortions and keeping abortion legal and prevalent.

The distinction, which is quite obvious obvious, is that this gentlemen was involved in his normal job--theater art. This business had nothing to do with gay marriage. If your lack of distinction were correct, I could be blacklisted from law firms if I volunteered at a crisis pregnancy center.

Larry--of course it would be different. They'd be howling at the moon.

I'm sorry, but if the owner and/or officer of a company contributed to a campaign to take away the right to marry, they had every right to do so.

No one is arguing that point. I find it interesting that people are up in arms over the idea that the people whom it affected are unwilling to patronize these establishments. Why should they? If I knew that the owner/officer of a company did something to take away my rights, I know I wouldn't want to spend my money there. That is what is so wonderful about free market capitalism. We have the rights and freedoms to vote in the ballot box and with our dollars. I think it's wonderful.

Eddie in CA, keep that list coming! I have a feeling pro-traditional marriage advocates like myself could help minimize these companies' potential boycott disadvantages. :)

So, everything I've read seems to highlight that the biggest factor in Prop 8 passing was the increased black voter turnout. While the black voters liked Obama, and voted down the parental-notification abortion proposition, they came down 70% against gay marriage.

Has anyone seen any anti-black backlash among gay marriage supporters?

(I realize that the TV ads were financed in large part by Mormons; but I wonder if Prop 8 had failed would there still be so much anti-Mormon sentiment, or would they just be dismissed as a hopelessly old-fashioned but otherwise irrelevant sect?)

This incident reveals why I am opposed to campaign finance laws that require the disclosure of individual gifts over a certain amount. Making this information public does less to create accountability than it does to create a climate of fear and intimidation. In my industry--higher education--I know that many conservative professors avoid making gifts to any sort of political causes because they are afraid of a potential backlash. While there are rules in place that protect employees from employment discrimination, it is not uncommon for tenure to be denied to conservatives on the basis of a lack of collegiality, which is code for "We do not like your views and therefore think you are a deficient colleague." I think it would be far better if no one knew what individuals decide to do with their own money.

Wow...talk about missing the point!

You can wrap it up in a pretty box all day and believe that his resignation was his own choice and that he just didn't have the guts to stick in there. But on the other hand, I am guessing you have never faced anything in your life with as much pressure and anger as he has. This protest movement has become exactly what it is fighting against-period.

"And, man, did you guys just rile up a sleeping giant."

Gee, I thought gays were a beleaguered minority?

"And this Sunday morning, the lead story in the news across the country will be the Saturday protests nationwide.

Count on it."

Reminds me of that Onion article, "Gay Pride Parade sets back gay rights cause 30 years."

What I find interesting is that all of the backlash I've seen over Prop 8 is targeted at Mormons -- because from what I've read of the election, it was the increased black voter turnout that made the difference. 70% of black voters supported Proposition 8. Yet I've seen no instances of anti-black backlash from the gay marriage proponents.

I guess it is because the Mormons contributed heavily to the Prop 8 campaign...plus, you are probably safer calling Mormons bigots than calling black people bigots, as black people tend to get a bit annoyed at comparing the plight of gays not being able to marry with the whole slavery/Jim Crow/segregation thing.

Has anyone seen any Prop 8 backlash directed at anyone other than Mormons? Surely, Catholics and conservative Protestants had to be against it, too, right?

Rod,
I am looking forward to reading your article on Sunday. Your willingness to think and reflect on topics which many other conservative Christians consider settled is a sign of faith and maturity.

There are several conflicting viewpoints and perspectives at issue right now, I think some of your opinions on us (gays and lesbians) are based on a false premise. We are not a unified block, committed as a group to achieving the imposition of our beliefs upon anyone. Even in San Francisco, barely 50% of the gays are said to have voted at all. Had we all voted as a monolithic block, well, Prop. 8 would not have passed.

There are many different mentalities and groupings of people within the gay community. Many gays are Christians, many are not. Some of us believe in marriage, others don't. I think you would find it useful, if you have not already done so, to look at the vast body of scientific research which has established that homosexuality is not a choice. Just as one finds green-eyed men who believe in astrology, one also finds green-eyed men who are devout Catholics. Defining homosexuals only by the gender of our sex partners is a very serious mistake. We desire marriage for the same reasons heterosexuals do.

As long as I am making un-solicited suggestions, have you looked at how the rest of the Western world has dealt with granting us full rights? Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK...the list is quite long. These countries have profited, not suffered from expanding human rights.

One of the greatest mysteries to me is the paranoia and outright spite of so many commentators here. My marriage to another man is not a threat to your marriage. Were it to be, then your marriage is based, not on a coming together before God, but on a very loose foundation of sand. How can my loving and committing to spend my life with someone 'hurt' you?

Clearly, religious institutions should have the right to marry whom they wish and not marry those whom they do not wish to bless with this sacrament. As far as I know, priests are still permitted to say “nope, sorry, no can do” if they find a couple to be, in their opinion, unsuited to marriage. If it will make nervous people feel more comfortable, fine, let the law be once again repeated: No religious body shall be coerced into granting homosexuals religious benefit or employment.

The State of California already grants every parent the right to exempt their child from sex-education. Setting aside the fact that homosexuality can not be 'taught' (nor, for that matter can heterosexuality), no teacher may instruct children on this matter against their parents' will. This was a very contentious and entirely specious argument which many raised to advocate a 'yes' on Prop. 8.

Goodness, I hadn't intended to write so much, I do apologize.

Thanks, again, for being one of the very few decent voices in the conservative Christian corner. I have yet to see one single, solitary gay person decide to embrace Christianity because of the hate and spite which so very many Christians had poured out upon him or her. Not one. Volunteering in crisis centers, I have, tho', seen many teenagers kicked out of their oh-so-'Christian' homes and thrown out onto the streets when their parents found out their offspring was gay.

"If this man votes for second-class citizenship for some of the very people he works with, he deserves a backlash. This is not simply differences of political opinion on a theoretical subject, this is an attack on an aspect of the personhood of his co-workers."

I guess you won't mind if I fire people from my 500+ law firm who contribute to abortion then. Note that your logic makes no distinction between boycotting a company and an employment context.

Except this director doesn't work for a private religious institution. This is like when certain admirable artists refused to play to segregated audiences. Artists will refuse to work with a director who publicly supports second-class citizenship.

I have yet to see one single, solitary gay person decide to embrace Christianity because of the hate and spite which so very many Christians had poured out upon him or her.

Hate never made converts. One member of my church group, an elderly, long married heterosexual man, confronted a "Christian" group outside the Democratic National Convention who were carrying signs saying, "God hates gays." My friend pointed out that the Father of Jesus loves everyone, to which came the retort, right to his face, "God hates YOU." If my friend hadn't already been a Christian, what do you think the chances are that this exchange would have made him one?

I think it might be time to review the gospels, and the test Jesus proposes for how his followers might be identified. No, it's not a particular creed, guess again.

But I don't think that people who walk around with signs that say "God hates X" are trying to make converts. I'm not sure what exactly it is they are trying to do, but not that.

Panthera states the situation far better than I could. Everyone here knows my views.

"who publicly supports second-class citizenship."

SSM supporters keep saying this, but that doesn't make it true. Maybe we should institute of poll tax for gays and set the firehoses on them on Saturday. Will they thank us for showing them what second-class citizenship really looks like?

To quote you... "The blacklisting of the Mormon director is a very bad sign". He wasn't targeted because he was Mormon he was targeted for his support of Proposition 8.

Salamander brings up a great point. It wasn't Mormons that carried the day for Proposition 8. It was African-Americans (70%)and Hispanics (52%) who did this. According to "The Washington Times" support for Proposition 8 was stronger in African-American neighborhoods than in Republican suburbs:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/08/blacks-hispanics-nixed-gay-marriage/

The gay marriage issue has the potential to cause serious tension in the Democratic party. If in a bid to force the rest of society to accept homosexuality as normal gay rights activists start trying to take away the civil liberties of religious conservatives as Erin and others have suggested, they will create a huge backlash from African-Americans and Hispanics that would roil the Democratic party.

Republicans have done a poor job at attracting minorities. But gay rights activists may give them a big opening. I'd love to see the Republicans throw out the neocons and country club types and build a new majority composed of groups that in many ways have a lot in common, namely Evangelicals, Catholics, Mormons, African-Americans, and Hispanics. That would be the ultimate "Sam's Club" social conservative coalition. It may never happen, but one can always dream. It would be ironic if the intolerance and blatant anti-democratic sentiments of some gay activists caused this to come to pass.

rr

Rod, you are right to note that some of those who opposed Prop 8 are going overboard in their unhappiness over what the voters did in California. The effect is being felt across the country. Example: a regional newspaper based in Colorado ran an editorial that slammed Prop 8 as "bigotry," complained about the "encroachment" of religion into public life and said that religion should "stay where it belongs---in the home and the church." It seems that dismay over Prop 8 has led some supporters of gay marriage to take cracks at religious faith generally and wish it out of the public square. I'm not a Californian, but I do come from another blue Western state where the voters in recent years resoundingly adopted something similar to Prop 8. If folks disagree with a ban on gay marriage from a policy perspective and can articulate their case in a reasonable way, I certainly respect that. Policy debate is fair game. But I really am concerned that some of these folks are going too far: telling people of faith to (for want of a better phrase) get back in the closet. That's the backlash that concerns me.

If in a bid to force the rest of society to accept homosexuality as normal gay rights activists start trying to take away the civil liberties of religious conservatives as Erin and others have suggested, they will create a huge backlash from African-Americans and Hispanics that would roil the Democratic party.

Eh, there's not going to be much of a backlash. The African American establishment is very pro-gay. Gay marriage passed twice in the California legislature largely because of votes by Latino members of the legislature. This is an issue that will take some time, but African Americans are moveable on this issue. They understand discrimination and they understand what it's like to have religion used as a blunt weapon in opposing civil rights.

I'm honestly confused by Erin's position, but I'm ready to be enlightened.

What sort of public religious actions or non-actions or whatever which are now legal would become illegal if SSM were legal? How is the Church threatened, in your view?

We all understand that preachers in churches can preach whatever they want to, and I don't think anyone proposes a change there. (Don't drag in that tired case from Canada, where charges were dismissed, OK? That's Canada, get it? And the charges were dismissed, get it?) No one that I know of is proposing to force, for example, the Roman Catholics to marry, in the Church, people who were previously divorced, even though those divorces are legal (as are their remarriages) in the secular society; still less is anyone talking about forcing SSM on the Church.

Catholics would be prohibited from marching around with signs saying "God hates gays"? Well, that's legal right now, and I imagine it will remain legal. You'll have to figure out for yourself whether that's in line with the gospel, but no policeperson is going to drag you in for it as things stand. No one that I know of proposes actual Catholic-approved physical violence against gays, but that's illegal now (gayness is irrelevant) and it should certainly remain so.

So, what is the problem?

This article that I'm posting was written by a gay journalist, who is a columnist for the UK Independent newspaper, and posted to the leftist Huffington Post blog. It's not the work of any right winger, and it expresses a concern among rationale gays about the attraction too many gays have for fascism. It explains the racism, the threats and violence perpetuated prior to and since the vote to pass prop 8. Last Sunday, the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, a radical gay group invaded a multiracial evangelical Christian church in Michigan, and sought to intimidate, demean and defame the congregation, they brought a member of the press with them, hoping to document members of the congregation fighting back, so as to ridicule them. They are a danger and this needs to be discussed widely.

The Strange, Strange Story of the Gay Fascists by Johann Hari

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-strange-strange-story_b_136697.html

The news that Jorg Haider - the Austrian fascist leader - spent his final few hours in a gay bar with a hot blond has shocked some people. It hasn't shocked me. This is a taboo topic for a gay left-wing man like me to touch, but there has always been a weird, disproportionate overlap between homosexuality and fascism. Take a deep breath; here goes.

Some 10,000 gay people were slaughtered in the Nazi death-camps. Many more were humiliated, jailed, deported, ethnically cleansed, or castrated. One gay survivor of the camps, LD Classen von Neudegg, has written about his experiences. A snapshot: "Three men had tried to escape one night. They were captured, and when they returned they had the word 'homo' scrawled across their clothing. They were placed on a block and whipped. Then they were forced to beat a drum and cheer, 'Hurrah! We're back! Hurrah!' Then they were hanged." This is one of the milder events documented in his book.

So the idea of a gay fascist seems ridiculous. Yet when the British National Party - our own home-grown Holocaust-denying bigots - announced it was fielding an openly gay candidate in the European elections this June, dedicated followers of fascism didn't blink. The twisted truth is that gay men have been at the heart of every major fascist movement that ever was - including the gay-gassing, homo-cidal Third Reich. With the exception of Jean-Marie Le Pen, all the most high-profile fascists in Europe in the past thirty years have been gay. It's time to admit something. Fascism isn't something that happens out there, a nasty habit acquired by the straight boys. It is - in part, at least - a gay thing, and it's time for non-fascist gay people to wake up and face the marching music.

Just look at our own continent over the past decade. Dutch fascist Pim Fortuyn ran on blatantly racist anti-immigrant platform, describing Islam as "a cancer" and "the biggest threat to Western civilisation today." Yet with two little fluffy dogs and a Mamma complex, he was openly, flamboyantly gay. When accused by a political opponent of hating Arabs, he replied, "How can I hate Arabs? I sucked one off last night."

Jorg Haider blasted Austria's cosy post-Nazi politics to rubble in 2000 when his neo-fascist 'Freedom Party' won a quarter of the vote and joined the country's government as a coalition partner. Several facts always cropped up in the international press coverage: his square jaw, his muscled torso, his SS-supporting father, his rabid anti-Semitism, his hatred of immigrants, his description of Auschwitz and Dachau as "punishment centres". A few newspapers mentioned that he is always surrounded by fit, fanatical young men. A handful went further and pointed out that several of these young men are openly gay. Then one left-wing German paper broke the story everybody else was hinting at. They alleged Haider is gay.

Rumours of an Indian waiter with "intimate details" of Haider's body broke into the press. The Freedom Party's general manager Gerald Miscka quickly quit, amid accusations that he was Haider's lover. Haider's close gay friend Walter Kohler - who has been photographed showing off a holstered pistol while Haider chuckled - declared his opposition to outing politicians. Haider - who was married and has two children - kept quiet while his functionaries denied the rumours. The revelation that he died after leaving a gay bar suggests these rumours were true.

On and on it goes. If you inter-railed across Europe, only stopping with gay fascists, there aren't many sights you'd miss. France's leading post-war fascist was Edouard Pfieffer, who was not batting for the straight side. Germany's leading neo-Nazi all through the eighties was called Michael Kuhnen; he died of AIDS in 1991 a few years after coming out. Martin Lee, author of a study of European fascism, explains, "For Kuhnen, there was something supermacho about being a Nazi, as well as being a homosexual, both of which enforced his sense of living on the edge, of belonging to an elite that was destined to make an impact. He told a West German journalist that homosexuals were 'especially well-suited for our task, because they do not want ties to wife, children and family.'"

And it wouldn't be long before your whistlestop tour arrived in Britain. At first glance, our Nazis seem militantly straight. They have tried to disrupt gay parades, describe gay people as "evil", and BNP leader Nick Griffin reacted charmingly to the bombing of the Admiral Duncan pub in 1999 with a column saying, "The TV footage of gay demonstrators [outside the scene of carnage] flaunting their perversion in front of the world's journalists showed just why so many ordinary people find these creatures repulsive."

But scratch to homophobic surface and there's a spandex swastika underneath. In 1999, Martin Webster, a former National Front organiser and head honcho in the British fascist movement, wrote a four-page pamphlet detailing his 'affair' with Nick Griffin. "Griffin sought out intimate relations with me," openly-gay Webster explained, "in the late 1970s. He was twenty years younger than me." Ray Hill, who infiltrated the British fascist movement for twelve years to gather information for anti-fascist groups, says it's all too plausible. Homosexuality is "extremely prevalent" in the upper echelons of the British far right, and at one stage in the 1980s nearly half of the movement's organisers were gay, he claims.

Gerry Gable, editor of the anti-fascist magazine 'Searchlight', explains, "I have looked at Britain's Nazi groups for decades and this homophobic hypocrisy has been there all the time. I cannot think of any organisation on the extreme right that hasn't attacked people on the grounds of their sexual preference and at the same time contained many gay officers and activists."

Griffins' alleged gay affair would stand in a long British fascist tradition. The leader of the skinhead movement all through the 1970s was a crazed, muscled thug called Nicky Crane. He was the icon of a reactionary backlash against immigrants, feminism and the 'hippy' lifetsyle of the 1960s. His movement's emphasis on conformity to a shaven, dehumanised norm resembled classical fascist movements; Crane soon became a campaigner and leading figure in the National Front. Oh, and he was gay. Before he died of AIDS in the mid-1980s, Crane came out and admitted he had starred in many gay porn videos. Just before he died in 1986, he was allowed to steward a Gay Pride march in London, even though he still said he was "proud to be a fascist."

The rubber-soled friction between gay fascists and progressive British gay people sparked into anger in 1985 when the Gay Skinhead Movement organised a disco at London's Gay Centre. Several lesbians in particular objected to the "invasion" of the centre. They felt that the cult of "real men" and hypermasculine thugs was stirring up the most base feelings "in the very place, the gay movement, where you would least expect them."

And this Gaystapo has an icon to revere, an alternative Fuhrer to worship: the lost gay fascist leader Ernst Rohm. Along with Adolf Hitler, Rohm was the founding father of Nazism. Born to conservative Bavarian civil servants in 1887, Ernst Rohm's life began - in his view - in the "heroic" trenches of the First World War. Like so many of the generation who formed the Nazi Party, he was nurtured by and obsessed with the homoerotic myth of the trenches - heroic, beautiful boys prepared to die for their brothers and their country.

He emerged from the war with a bullet-scarred face and a reverence for war. As he put it in his autobiography, "Since I am an immature and wicked man, war and unrest appeal to me more than the good bourgeois order." After being disbanded, he tried half-heartedly to get a foothold in civilian life, but he saw it as alien, bourgeois, boring. He had no political beliefs, only prejudices - particularly hatred of Jews. Historian Joachim Fest describes Rohm's generation of alienated, demobbed young men humiliated by defeat as "agents of a permanent revolution without any revolutionary idea of the future, only a wish to eternalize the values of the trenches."

It was Rohm who first spotted the potential of a soap-box ranter called Adolf Hitler. He saw him as the demagogue he needed to mobilize support for his plan to overthrow democracy and establish a "soldier's state" where the army ruled untrammelled. He introduced the young fascist to local politicians and military leaders; they knew him for many years as "Rohm's boy." Gay historian Frank Rector notes, "Hitler was, to a substantial extent, Rohm's protégé." Rohm integrated Hitler into his underground movement to overthrow the Weimar Republic.

Rohm's blatant, out homosexuality seems bizarre now, given the gay genocide that was to follow. He talked openly about his fondness for gay bars and Turkish baths, and was known for his virility. He believed that gay people were superior to straights, and saw homosexuality as a key principle of his proposed Brave New Fascist Order. As historian Louis Snyder explains, Rohm "projected a social order in which homosexuality would be regarded as a human behaviour pattern of high repute... He flaunted his homosexuality in public and insisted his cronies do the same. He believed straight people weren't as adept at bullying and aggression as homosexuals, so homosexuality was given a high premium in the SA." They promoted an aggressive, hypermasculine form of homosexuality, condemning "hysterical women of both sexes", in reference to feminine gay men.

This belief in the superiority of homosexuality had a strong German tradition that grew up at the turn of the twentieth century around Adolf Brand, publisher of the country's first gay magazine. You could call it 'Queer as Volk': they preached that gay men were the foundation of all nation-states and represented an elite, warrior caste that should rule. They venerated the ancient warrior cults of Sparta, Thebes and Athens.

Rohm often referred to the ancient Greek tradition of sending gay solider couples into battle, because they were believed to be the most ferocious fighters. The famous pass of Thermopylae, for example was held by 300 soldiers - who consisted of 150 gay couples. In its early years, the SA - Hitler and Rohm's underground army - was seen as predominantly gay. Rohm assigned prominent posts to his lovers, making Edmund Heines his deputy and Karl Ernst the SA commander in Berlin. The organisation would sometimes meet in gay bars. The gay art historian Christian Isermayer said in an interview, "I got to know people in the SA. They used to throw riotous parties even in 1933... I once attended one. It was quite well-behaved but thoroughly gay. But then, in those days, the SA was ultra-gay."

On June 30th 1934, Rohm was awoken in a Berlin hotel by Hitler himself. He sprang to his feet and saluted, calling, "Heil Mein Fuhrer!" Hitler said simply, "You are under arrest," and with that he left the room, giving orders for Rohm to be taken to Standelheim prison. He was shot that night. Rohm was the most high-profile kill in the massacre known as 'the Night of the Long Knives'.

Rohm had been suspected by Hitler of disloyalty, but his murder began a massive crackdown on gay people. Heinrich Himmler, head of the Gestapo, described homosexuality as "a symptom of degeneracy that could destroy our race. We must return to the guiding Nordic principle: extermination of degenerates."

German historian Lothar Machtan argues that Hitler had Rohm - and almost all of the large number of gay figures within the SA - killed to silence speculation about his own homosexual experiences. His 'evidence' for Hitler being gay is shaky and has been questioned by many historians, although some of his findings are at least suggestive. A close friend of Hitler's during his teenager years, August Kubizek, alleged a "romantic" affair between them. Hans Mend, a despatch rider who served alongside Hitler in the First World War, claimed to have seen Hitler having sex with a man. Hitler was certainly very close to several gay men, and never seems to have had a normal sexual relationship with a woman, not even his wife, Eva Braun.

Rudolph Diels, the founder of the Gestapo, recorded some of Hitler's private thoughts on homosexuality. "It had destroyed ancient Greece, he said. Once rife, it extended its contagious effects like an ineluctable law of nature to the best and most manly of characters, eliminating from the breeding pool the very men the Volk most needs." This idea - that homosexuality is 'contagious' and, implicitly, tempting - is revealing.

Rohm is venerated on the Homo-Nazi sites that have bred on the internet like germs in a wound. They have names like Gays Against Semitism (with the charming acronym GAS), and the Aryan Resistance Corps (ARC). Their Rohmite philosophy is simple: while white men are superior to other races, gay men are "the masters of the Master Race". They alone are endowed with the "capacity for pure male bonding" and the "superior intellect" that is needed for "a fascist revolution." The ARC even organises holiday "get-togethers" for its members where "you can relax amongst the company of our fellow white brothers."

So it's fairly easy to establish that gay people are not inoculated from fascism. They have often been at its heart. This begs the bigger question: why? How did gay people - so often victims of oppression and hate - become integral to the most hateful and evil political movement of all? Is it just an extreme form of self-harm, the political equivalent to the gay kids who slash their own arms to ribbons out of self-hate?

Gay pornographer and film-maker Bruce LaBruce has one explanation. He claims that "all gay porn today is implictly fascist. Fascism is in our bones, because it's all about glorifying white male supremacy and fetishizing domination, cruelty, power and monstrous authority figures." He has tried to explore the relationship between homosexuality and fascism in his movies, beginning with 'No Skin Off My Ass' in 1991. In his disturbing 1999 film "Skin Flick', a bourgeois gay couple - one black, one white - are sexually terrorised by a gang of gay skinheads who beat off to 'Mein Kampf' and beat up 'femmes'. He implies that bourgeois gay norms quickly break down to reveal a fascist lurking underneath; the movie ends with the black character being raped in front of his half-aroused white lover, as the racist gang chant, "Fuck the monkey."

I decided to track down some gay fascists and ask them directly. Wyatt Powers, director of the ARC, says, "I always knew in my heart racist and gay were both morally right. I don't see any conflict between them. It's only the Jew-owned gay press that tries to convince us that racialism is the same thing as homophobia. You can be an extreme nationalist and gay without any contradiction at all."

One comment board on a gay racist website goes even further into racist lunacy. One gay man from Ohio says, "Even if you are gay and white, or retarded and white, YOU ARE WHITE, BOTTOM LINE! Instead of letting the white race go extinct because of worthless races such as the Africans or Mexicans popping out literally millions of babies a day, we have to fight this fucked up shit they are doing. They are raping our country." It's true that racism and homophobia do not necessarily overlap - but as Rabbi Bernard Melchman explains, "Homophobia and anti-Semitism are so often part of the same disease." Racists are usually homophobic. Even after reading all their web rantings, I didn't feel any closer to understanding why so many gay men ally themselves with people who will almost always turn on them in the end, just as the Nazis did.

Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has a sensitive and intriguing explanation. "There are many reasons for this kind of thing," he says. "Some of them are in denial. They are going for hyper-masculinity, the most extreme possible way of being a man. It's a way of ostentatiously rejecting the perceived effeminacy of the homosexual 'Other'. These troubled men have a simple belief in their minds: 'Straight men are tough. Queers are weak. Therefore if I'm tough I can't be queer.' It's a desperate way of proving their manhood."

'Searchlight' magazine - the bible of the British anti-fascist movement, with moles in every major far-right organisation - offers an alternative explanation. "Generally condemned by a society that continues to be largely hostile to gays, some men may find refuge and a new power status in the far right," one of their writers has explained. "Through adherence to the politics espoused by fascist groups, a new identity emerges - one where they aren't outcasts, because they are White Men, superior to everyone else. They render the gay part of their identity invisible - or reject the socially less acceptable parts, like being feminine - while vaunting what they see as superior."

But there's another important question: will fascist movements inevitably turn on gay people? In the case of the Nazis, it seems to have been fairly arbitrary; Hitler's main reason for killing Rohm was unrelated to his sexuality. From my perspective as a progressive-minded leftie, all fascism is evil; but should all gay people see it as inimical to their interests? Is it possible to have a gay fascist who wasn't acting against his own interests? Fascism is often defined as "a political ideology advocating hierarchical government that systematically denies equality to certain groups." It's true that this hierarchy could benefit gay people at the expense of, say, black people. But given the prevalence of homophobia, isn't that - even for people who don't see fascism as inherently evil - a terrible risk to take? Won't a culture that turns viciously on one minority get around to gay people in the end? This seems, ultimately, to be the lesson of Ernst Rohm's pitiful, squalid little life.

The growing awareness of the role gay men play in fascist movements has been abused by some homophobes. In an especially nutty work of revisionist history called 'The Pink Swastika', the 'historian' Scott Lively tries to blame gay people for the entire Holocaust, and describes the murder of gay men in the camps as merely "gay-on-gay violence." A typical website commenting on the book claims absurdly, "The Pink Swastika shows that there was far more brutality, rape, torture and murder committed against innocent people by Nazi homosexuals than there even was against homosexuals themselves."

Yet we can't allow these madmen to prevent a period of serious self-reflection from the gay movement. If Bruce LaBruce is right, many of the mainstream elements of gay culture - body worship, the lauding of the strong, a fetish for authority figures and cruelty - provide a swamp in which the fascist virus can thrive. Do some gay people really still need to learn that fascists will not bring on a Fabulous Solution for gay people, but a Final Solution for us all?

Ugh. I lost another one of my posts. My post above starting "Lastly,..." is missing the first two paragraphs.

Here's what I meant to say:

Rod-

It seems like you are saying that a boycott is morally acceptable so long as it doesn't work. We aren't talking about arbitrary discrimination against ALL Mormons. He's not being boycotted because of his Faith. He's being boycotted because he gave money to a proposition campaign that most in the LGBT community (his customers) see as hateful and bigoted. People should be able to excersize their first Amendment rights as they see fit. But doing so has consequences. If you gave money in support to planned parenthood or some radical secular anti-Christian group I'm sure your readership would have something to say about it. And that they should! Actions have consequences.

I would be incredibly opposed to blanket boycotts against Mormons or any other Christian denomination. But that's not what's happening at least in this case. Customers can and should excersize THEIR First Amendment rights as well; in this case its throw their pocketbooks. Lets quit with the slippery slope fallacies and instead concentrate on what actually happened in this case.

Daniel,

You're absolutely correct that African-Americans understand discrimination and violations of civil rights. That is exactly why I think they will react negatively to gay rights activists if they attempt to use gay marriage as a tool to discriminate against social conservatives who believe that homosexuality is immoral. If conservative teachers and professors start getting fired from their beliefs on homosexuality, African-Americans will notice.

I'd love to see the state get out of the marriage business and just issue civil unions to all consenting adults who desire them. That's the only fair way I see of avoiding a culture war battle royale. But I doubt some gay rights activists are interested in that as their purpose is to force acceptance of their lifestyle on the rest of society and marginalize those who disagree with them. If you don't think those kinds of measures will lead to a backlash in African-American and Hispanic communities (whose churches BTW are little different from Evangelicals on homosexuality-if Evangelicals ended up targeted by gay rights activists, so too will their churches), you need to think again.

rr

Bill -

None of the other western states had a major religion in their state pour in $30million to fund the bigotry amendment to take away rights from California Citizens.

I, personally, will go to New Mexico and Nevada to ski this year, despite how much I love Utah powder.

And Sundance? Um... forget it. My money will go to Telluride this year, for their film festival instead.

Old Susan -

Interesting. I boycott the following companies:

Wal-Mart
General Motors/Ford/Chrysler
Tyson Chicken
Carl's Jr./Hardee's
Wendy's
All major American beer companies (Because the beer sucks).

That list will be getting much longer soon.

What is being talked about here is not a blacklist, it is a boycott.

People were boycotting this theatre, so he stepped aside. Boycotts, in general, are fine.

Blacklists are when industries agree not to hire certain people. It is a boycott in the other direction, industry-wide. That is slightly more questionable...when an entire industry coordinates like that, antitrust issues show up.

OTOH, they can be good way to keep abusive people out of the system...most spam filters use blacklists (Of IPs, not people) and casinos share blacklists of troublemakers, people who they formally bar from their property the second they show up. Sometimes people are simply too much trouble to do business with or hire, and obviously businesses can deny them service or refuse to hire them for that...the real question is, can they tell other, similar businesses about these people, which hits antitrust laws from one direction and slander laws from another.

Although it's worth pointing out that when people talk about 'blacklists', they're actually talking about the last blacklist, in which the government, via paranoia and witch hunting, essentially forced a blacklist down Hollywood's throat under threat of investigation of themselves.

That wasn't a 'blacklist' in the traditional sense of the word, as the industry certainly didn't want to do it. A 'normal' blacklist is much less immoral than what the government did during the 50s, which was, essentially, making Communist sympathizing illegal, but without actual trials of the accused.

The African American establishment is very pro-gay.____Huh? I thought the very fact that 70% of black voters in CA voted 'yes' on Prop. 8 is what had many anti-8 people so upset.

Nate Silver over at 538 had a good article on the myth that blacks won Prop 8.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/prop-8-myths.html

[i]Certainly, the No on 8 folks might have done a better job of outreach to California's black and Latino communities. But the notion that Prop 8 passed because of the Obama turnout surge is silly. Exit polls suggest that first-time voters -- the vast majority of whom were driven to turn out by Obama (he won 83 percent [!] of their votes) -- voted against Prop 8 by a 62-38 margin. More experienced voters voted for the measure 56-44, however, providing for its passage.

Now, it's true that if new voters had voted against Prop 8 at the same rates that they voted for Obama, the measure probably would have failed. But that does not mean that the new voters were harmful on balance -- they were helpful on balance. If California's electorate had been the same as it was in 2004, Prop 8 would have passed by a wider margin.

Furthermore, it would be premature to say that new Latino and black voters were responsible for Prop 8's passage. Latinos aged 18-29 (not strictly the same as 'new' voters, but the closest available proxy) voted against Prop 8 by a 59-41 margin. These figures are not available for young black voters, but it would surprise me if their votes weren't fairly close to the 50-50 mark.

At the end of the day, Prop 8's passage was more a generational matter than a racial one. If nobody over the age of 65 had voted, Prop 8 would have failed by a point or two. It appears that the generational splits may be larger within minority communities than among whites, although the data on this is sketchy.

The good news for supporters of marriage equity is that -- and there's no polite way to put this -- the older voters aren't going to be around for all that much longer, and they'll gradually be cycled out and replaced by younger voters who grew up in a more tolerant era. Everyone knew going in that Prop 8 was going to be a photo finish -- California might be just progressive enough and 2008 might be just soon enough for the voters to affirm marriage equity. Or, it might fall just short, which is what happened. But two or four or six or eight years from now, it will get across the finish line.[/i]

the system is set up to make it hard to anonymously support a political cause with money for a reason! the light of day is a wonderful thing!

My heart goes out to all of the men and women fighting this fight.

I'm not gay but it hurts me to see the rights of the homosexual community destroyed in a state where they are such an integral part of the overall community. I expected this from Arkansas, not California. The whole argument of bigotry and unfair treatment of Mormons based on their beliefs is just, if unfortunate, treatment. I also like how the media tried to pin this one on black people. Just shows how much further we still have to go.

Equal Rights. Equal representation.

I live in CT. If you're gay and in Cali and want to get married... Fly out to the east coast.

You've got a place to stay.

you can reach me at zauberer44@yahoo.com

I'm so sorry.

rr,
While I dont disagree on any specific point; I would like to point out that in number 3 - it may also be important to note that there is a greater concentration of college educated individuals in blue states.

Does correlation imply causation? The flying spaghetti monster says no, but nevertheless this isn't really a USA issue, it's a California issue.

I would probably be the first one in line to protest a gay marriage amendment to the US constitution, but this group is entitled to pursue happiness within the same amount of reason as anyone else - and in their home environment, it is very sad to see those right stripped away.

No one expects Texas or Nebraska to pass a gay marriage law - and rightfully so. The general lifestyle in those areas are simply not conducive to the culture. They weren't welcome there so they went somewhere they were welcome. Now that has been taken away too. That's what's sad.

This could be acquainted to Rosa Parks moving to the front of the bus, The bus driver, and company that owns the buses being OK with it, then retroactively half the members of the city getting on the bus and forcibly moving her to the back while the rest watch.

"This could be acquainted to Rosa Parks moving to the front of the bus, The bus driver, and company that owns the buses being OK with it, then retroactively half the members of the city getting on the bus and forcibly moving her to the back while the rest watch."

Those of us who oppose the redefinition of marriage have pointed out time and again the pitfalls in terms of the fact that adherents of a 2000 year old faith (Catholicism) suddenly find themselves redefined as bigots for our beliefs about marriage. The use of analogies like the above illustrates that: the belief that the biological complementarity and corresponding reproductive ability of a male and a female is *intrinsic* to that relationship we call marriage is now swept aside as mere bigotry, as if no one could possibly believe such a hateful thing. Sad, really, the rush to dismantle the word "marriage" to the point of meaninglessness, and to redefine as "bigots" people who still think the old definition says some pretty powerful things about a kind of relationship that is fundamentally and inherently different from the relationship two people of the same gender may have with each other.

Rod:

Just what is your basis for asserting that anti-gay web page is an "official" document. Despite all the took of queens, we gays really do not have much of a formal operating structure. We pretty much do on the ad hoc. There really isn't much of an "official" gay anything. Except of course that rule about white shoes after labor day.

Larry:

So is it your position that whenever the county clerk gives out a marriage license, its performing a sacrament of the church? Or is it your position that only members of "the church" are real marriages and entitled to the word?

"Except your employees may be protected from discrimination based on political affiliation and belief, while an artistic director who resigns voluntarily to protect his employer isn't."

The broader point here goes to what Rod was saying about his Evangelical friend in the news industry. It's very easy to be excluded and then winnowed out. And I'm not sure that federal civil rights laws protect a person from discrimination based upon political position. Also, I was responding to someone whose logic was to justify discrimination in the context of employment.

This is all a nasty episode, as is the gay activists invading a church in Grand Rapids and disrupting the ceremony and draping a gay banner from the balcony--all because they are pissed that people are exercising their democratic rights.

Actually, I misspoke, slightly, above. More precisely, it is up to the church to define what a valid marriage is, not the state. The historic, catholic (little-c), church. Traditionally this has included the marriages of non-members of the church.

Larry:

Wow. So I take it your position is that no one should be getting marriage licenses from the state, and all the benefits accorded marriage under the law should go away.

Good luck with that.

Don:

Re: This is all a nasty episode, as is the gay activists invading a church in Grand Rapids and disrupting the ceremony and draping a gay banner from the balcony--all because they are pissed that people are exercising their democratic rights.

Here's the news flash. We are not sitting around being nice gays anymore while you "democratically" write discrimination into state constitions and turn us into second class citizens.

Larry, so your issue isn't with gay marriages at all, its with civil marriages of any sort. The state seemingly hijacked marriage and stole your word, not the gay community. Its just that nobody (except you?) cared when heterosexuals appropriated your word.

Marriage was never appropriated by heterosexuals, it has always been about heterosexuals. The church has never limited marriage, or valid marriages, to only church members, recognizing it as an something instituted by God from the beginning of the human race.

And nobody has ever answered my question, why is the word "marriage" so important, why not be satisfied with civil unions if they grant all the legal rights and privileges now associated with marriages? Unless, of course, you just want to rub the face of religious believers in your "marriage"?

Interestingly enough, marriage licenses were first instituted, in this country, to prevent people from marrying. The first marriage license requirements in the US were part of Jim Crow laws to prevent miscegenation. Don't forget that what the state can grant, the state can just as easily take away with the next turn of the wheel.

The problem here is that some religious people can't seem to differentiate between the sacrament of marriage, and the legal status of a married couple. Churches can marry whomever they choose. It's not the church barring people from getting married. There are plenty of priests/churches out there willing to do the deed. This has nothing to do with religion, it has to do with legal rights. If religions have a problem with gays, then feel free to ban them from whatever church. plenty of churches ban certain "sinners" from being members. Some churches don't beleive in divorce, but they don't push legislation banning it.____If we could just seperate the legal rights into a "civil union" for ALL couples, and let the churches handle the marriage part, maybe people would be able to realize that denying people legal rights is NOT a christian/nice value to cling to.

These arguments are all rely on common logical errors, mostly definitional fiat. Marriage should be between a man and a woman because marriage is defined as being between a man and woman. You're just restating your belief as evidence affirming that belief. Show me an injured party if 2 men are allowed to marry. How are YOUR rights violated. Your religious sensibilities may be offended, sure, but there's no right not to be offended in America.

So relying on a definition that's thousands of years old is a "logical error", because you don't like the definition? I guess we could allow people to define words however they like, but the results would not be good. Words mean things, the word "marriage" means something, if you don't like what it means, that is just too bad, but like I said above, get your own word. Nor do the definition of words depend on their being an injured party. Changing the definition of the word "fish" wouldn't injure anybody, but its not logical nor the basis for any kind of valid argument.

While there may not be a right not to be offended in America, there is no right to get married, either. In fact, gays have the same ability to marry that everybody else does, I can't (legally) marry another man, either.

Oh, really? And non-members of the church are supposed to sit back and accept this? Why?

For the same reason that you accept the church's definition of what constitutes baptism and holy communion. Marriage is a sacrament (or ordnance if you're Protestant) of the church, it is something beyond the competence of lawmakers or any secular authority to define.

Larry, now *there's* an interesting argument, one I'd like to see developed further.

Marriage has been a sacrament of the church for two millennia, give or take. This statement is a gross over-simplification of history. There is a lot of discussion as to whether marriage was always considered a sacrament by Christians. The Council of Trent claimed that it always had been considered such, but official Church statements known to engage in shameless retrofitting in defense of the current doctrine. It is certain, however, that until after the Council of Trent, marriage was not required to be officiated over by a priest.

And it seems clear that Trent went to the bother of declaring marriage a sacrament mainly because Calvin and Luther had denied that it was one. Luther: "Marriage may therefore be a figure of Christ and the Church; it is, however, no Divinely instituted sacrament, but the invention of men in the Church, arising from ignorance of the subject."

So, "two millennia" of sacramental marriage is a bit of a stretch. In any case, even during the much shorter period of time during which the Catholic church considered marriage a sacrament (and most Protestant churches did not), this sacramental quality only applied to marriages between Catholics. A quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia up on newadvent.com: "It is equally certain that marriage between unbaptized persons is not a sacrament in the strict sense of the word."

Since the Church has never dignified the marriages of non-Church members with the name of sacramental marriage, I don't see why it would be such a problem to allow gay couples to call themselves "married," while Catholics continue to reserve sacramental marriage for themselves.

Larry: For the same reason that you accept the church's definition of what constitutes baptism and holy communion. Marriage is a sacrament (or ordnance if you're Protestant) of the church, it is something beyond the competence of lawmakers or any secular authority to define.

Marriage as it is expressed in the secular statutes and courts has nothing to do with what any particular church says about marriage as a religious sacrament. Legal, secular marriage is a fact that doesn't conform, in general, to many tenets of several Christian denominations (for instance, it recognizes remarriage after divorce.) People who are "non-members" of any particular church are not bound in any way, shape, or form by the rubrics of that church. What makes you think they are, or should be?

As far as civil unions go, civil unions applied on a state by state basis have no equality or parity in any way with secular legal marriage. There are an enormous number of federal implications for being married, which do *not* apply to civil unions, like federal tax law, immigration, gift tax, pension survivor benefits, inheritance, etc.

Larry:

Re: "California had, and still has, civil unions that grant all the legal rights of marriage, why not be satisfied with that? Why insist on using a word that you know will be deeply offensive to many people?"

Larry, technically, that's not true. But more importantly, do you oppose granting all the same benefits under federal law that are now granted to married couples? If so, then your assertion that domestic partnership is a viable alternative to marriage is disengenuous.

"Don:

News flash. I have no interest in coming into your church, but I'll challenge its tax exempt status."

Good--tell some of your friends who trespass and disrupt the right of others to worship. Glad your honest about your true goals--keep assaulting old ladies, and crying foul when someone doesn't approve of you. Keep up the victim mentality.

And here's a newsflash--this isn't a fascist state. The tax laws aren't on your side.

Re: As people get older they tend to become more conservative. Hence, as today's youth began to marry, have children, hold down real jobs, and buy houses, it's not entirely implausible that their views on gay marriage will actually grow more conservative over time.____I disagree with this, because it has never happened on any major (or even minor) social issue before. People do not grow more socially conservative as they age-- although they may grow more circumspect in their own behavior (a virtue of simple necessity quite often) and may also grow more economically conservative as they gain wealth. But note that the Baby Boomers still support birth control and premarital cohabitation, their parents still support interracial marriage, and so on all the way back to the Founding Fathers who went to their graves still supporting religious freedom. The tolerance and acceptance of the young for gay rights will not change as they age.____Re: Conservatives tend to have more children than liberals.____Political views are not hereditary. If they were we'd have a great deal of trouble explaining how anything has ever changed. Do you think George Washington's or Ben Franklin's parents were ardent anti-monarchists? Are the children of rock-ribbed segregationists equally obsteperous about Civil Rights? No, each generation makes up its own mind about things and usually breaks with its parents over various particulars. And that is as it should be.

rr
2) As people get older they tend to become more conservative. Hence, as today's youth began to marry, have children, hold down real jobs, and buy houses, it's not entirely implausible that their views on gay marriage will actually grow more conservative over time.

They get more conservative on economic issues. They do not get more conservative on social issues. Their social behavior might get more conservative, but their beliefs rarely change.

If anything, they stay in the same place and it becomes the new conservative.

No one seemed to call out Lancelot on his outrageous and offensive comments that simply lie about gays and lesbians and the depth of our commitments to each other and our willingness to take our relationships seriously.

I am hoping that is because you all recognize how indecent they were and so ignored them.

I get frustrated at the repeated stick-head-in-sand attitude many have about religious vs. civil marriage. The fact that no one is fundraising to overthrow civil divorce/remarriage and decrying how *it* turns the traditional definition of marriage on its head, tells me a lot about value judgements and priorities.

"Jim, you are a worse sinner than I am because you are gay and I am not. I have made accomodation with a society that permits divorce and do not challenge the right of civically remarried people to call themselves man and wife in the eyes of the law, the teachings of my church notwithstanding. I can do this because their actions are not as morally grave as yours. You are the worse sinner."

That's what this is about. We all know it.

Reading many of the comments here over the last few hours has made me realize just how many conservative Christians perceive themselves to be under attack.

It if frightening, first because I don't wish such anxiety upon anyone and, second, because the fear is not based on a real danger.

Many here have asserted that no true Christian would be out physically attacking gays, and I understand the basis of their statement. It doesn't change the sad fact that I have personally worked with many young people (the youngest was 12)who have been physically attacked by their Christian families. The justification one frequently hears for these attacks is that they were necessary to drive this nonsense out of the kid's head. (Obviously, I am not repeating the exact words here verbatim.)
I do not, however, conclude that these bad parents, who are very Christian in the fundamentalist sense of having been "saved" by accepting Jesus into their hearts, represent all Christians.

Could those of you suffering pangs of anxiety about the uprising of us, the dangerous homosexuals, please grant us the same accord? One act of despicable violence aside, the FBI statistics, compiled over decades show that if you had to entrust your young child to a random stranger, your child would be safest from harm with, in descending order of safety: a lesbian, a gay man, a heterosexual woman, a heterosexual man.
Does that mean a majority or even a significant number of heterosexual men are dangerous to small children? No! Break the statistics down and you will see, yes, over 90% of violent crime is committed by heterosexual men. You can't base your judgment of all men on the actions of criminals. Believe me, the most the fundamentalist Christians have to fear from us is that we condemn them to getting a decent haircut, trimming their fingernails and ditching those polyester shirts and suits.
Now, if you still think this is just a ploy and I am buying time until we can get the lions for the Hollywood bowl (Rome is so dreary at this time of year): Gays are not out to take away your rights. But those awful colors just have to go. They just aren't right.
:-)))

I may be wrong, but my feeling is that for many of the people writing the most alarmist texts here, gays are only images they know from TV and popular media. Since we are not welcome in the more fundamentalist churches nor the conservative communities, no wonder you might think we are only the sex-crazed, deeply troubled folks you see on the afternoon soaps, flitting from one relationship to another (newsflash, we aren't anywhere as cute as those guys, either). If you actually met us personally you would find out that Christianity embraces us, too.

There I go again, writing Russian novels. Sorry. Before I overload the server beyond repair, a personal message to the LDS folks here who are very upset. Your safety and protection from the considerable number of fundamentalist, Evangelical Christians who consider you a Sect (at best) is anchored in the laws, constitutional laws. If the same majority rule which just stripped me of my human rights, written into the Constitution in California, can attack me, well, I don't see why they can't turn around and attack you next. That is what this is all about: Protecting vulnerable minorities like the LDS and homosexuals from the tyranny of the majority. I don't quite buy into a Christian group whose leader talks to angels, but somehow loses golden tablets. Not relevant, I support your right to worship Heavenly Father as best you can. By attacking my constitutional rights, tho', you have set a very dangerous precedent.

Ah, Larry,
You can wish all you like, but the decision of the Supreme Court that the California Constitution granted us human rights is a matter of historical record.
Please feel free to go right on saying that you didn't like my being accorded human status. Please do continue impugning my belief in God and salvation.
Please, I beg of you, stop the revisionist nonsense. You took away a constitutionally anchored right.
Regardless of how you feel about me and other homosexuals, in stripping rights out of the constitution, you have set a precedent which echos the actions of Nazi Germany.
I seldom speak so gravely, but enough is enough.
As for 'activist judges', excuse me, either this is a nation subject to the rule of law or it is not. Personally, I find a court which, in its majority was appointed by republican governors and yet still makes decisions based upon the constitution anything but activist. I should rather term them strict constitutionalists.

Will you all ask yourself, is being with someone of the same sex RIGHT? What does the old testimate say about blacks and gays? People say these words are thousands of years old, but so is geometry and it still works. It is written marriage is one man and one woman, who are you to go against the word of God? All I know I'm glad I don't have to answer the questions you will when He call's all of His children home to the Holy Kingdom.

I happen to have people of color in my family, as well as a couple of gays. That does not change what was written by the prophets and Jesus Christ himself. If I have offended you I'm truly sorry, but I still do not have to answer to the lord about my marriage to my beutiful woman wife.

Well, I forgot to save a copy of my post and Beliefnet just ate it, even though I'm sure I got the stupid captcha right. The short version of it is:

Panthera, you are not doing yourself or your side any favors by demonizing your opponents or putting words in their mouth. Nobody is denying your humanity or your belief in God, and the only people that I see displaying Nazi like attributes are the ones that are threatening to burn down churches and beating up little old ladies.

And yes, it is a question of how we are to be ruled, by law or by a group of unelected, unaccountable judges. You seem to favor being ruled by by a tyrannical, nihilistic judiciary that neither respects the text of the law nor the interpretive tradition that lies behind it. Yet you have the nerve to call us Nazi's?

Considering the way gays have been discriminated against for decades by "Christians", this article is too funny.

None of those people are being blacklisted for their religious beliefs- they are blacklisted for imposing those beliefs on others through the forcible power of the state. BIG difference. If they have religious objections to gay marriage, they have every right not to enter into one, but they have no right to abrogate others' freedom of contract through coercive legislation.

If the population of California voted to disallow Christian marriage as a state-recognized institution, would you not pursue similar avenues of dissent? The perpetual otherization of gays by exclusionary Christians is an increasingly marginal position. You're cannibalizing your own cause. This is, despite efforts to implicate the black community, a generational issue. If you marginalize younger people through bigotry, as I hope you continue to do, you'll have no one left to pass on your closed-minded, inflexible rhetoric to.
There was a time when Christians could be counted on to help those that society confined to the margins. Although there are still many who can see past your outdated drivel, the toxicity of you screaming hate mongers mars, in the eyes of the more nuanced citizenry, the public face of all of those you claim to speak for.

If the population of California voted to disallow Christian marriage as a state-recognized institution, would you not pursue similar avenues of dissent? The perpetual otherization of gays by exclusionary Christians is an increasingly marginal position. You're cannibalizing your own cause. This is, despite efforts to implicate the black community, a generational issue. If you marginalize younger people through bigotry, as I hope you continue to do, you'll have no one left to pass on your closed-minded, inflexible rhetoric to.
There was a time when Christians could be counted on to help those that society confined to the margins. Although there are still many who can see past your outdated drivel, the toxicity of you screaming hate mongers mars, in the eyes of the more nuanced citizenry, the public face of all of those you claim to speak for.

Sorry, the post button is clearly working better than it appears to be. I didn't mean to repost at all, let alone 3 times. My apologies.

The early-1800s US Supreme Court decision (Marbury v. Madison, I think) ruled that the US Supreme Court is the *interpreter* of the US Constitution. Similarly, the CA state supreme court *interprets* the CA state constitution.

Interpretation does not mean that you have the right to make crap up out of whole cloth in the name of "interpretation". Words have meaning. Don't forget that if the courts can fabricate rights out of whole cloth they can destroy those rights just as easily, and there have been conservatively activist courts in the past that have done exactly that, when the screw turns who will be screaming about judicial activism then?

The redefinition of marriage that you are talking about are not changes to the fundamental nature of the institution, but even so, they are products of a state interference in an institution that the state has no business interfering with. The legalization of inter-racial marriage only happened after the state had made it illegal, inter-racial marriage was always recognized by the church as a whole, not counting a few Neanderthal (which is insulting to Neanderthals) denominations in the American south. Changes in the law regarding women holding property and inheritance rights are not changes in marriage, either.

As I stated above, I have no objection to gays having the right to form "civil unions" with all the legal rights of marriage, but the state has no legitimate power to redefine what is fundamentally a religious institution, and tyrants in black robes are still tyrants.

Frankly, I wouldn't give a hoot in hell if the state governments decided the whole thing was just too controversial and wanted to get out of the marriage business entirely.

I'm married, and my reasons for getting married had 100% to do with my own religious/cultural beliefs and 0% to do with civil government approval. As Joni Mitchel said, "we don't need no piece of paper from the city hall keeping us tied and true." Why has the gay world suddenly become so square?

The only reason that I can see for civil government to be involved in what is essentially a religious or ideological issue (ask a dozen people what marriage is, get a dozen answers) is children. Or, as we might say in commenting on marriage in primitive societies, "fertility" is the issue. Fertility can have very volatile effects on a society. Not enough, you go away; too much, you can't effectively transmit culture to the next generation. It's only reasonable for government to try to put it in a context where it won't be destructive. People who produce children need to be supported and held accountable for the care and enculturation of the children. That is why civil government is in the marriage business and not in the "bff" business, for instance. The fact that this rationale doesn't apply to homosexual relationships says nothing about the value of those relationships or the equal treatment of those individuals under the law.

The notion that the civil government should be involved in certifying the care and concern of any two people (arbitrarily two, btw) who are genuinely committed to each other, or in sanctifying some religion's sacrament, or in putting its seal on the profession that two people really are soul mates is a weird involvement of the state in personal religious beliefs, and as such, a violation of the establishment clause.

So yes, I'd rather see marriage rejected as a civil institution entirely. Then we could all go on being married by whichever non-governmental authority we choose, without the additional inconvenience of state licensure.

Unfortunately Jim the Government is involved for reasons of inheritance, medical care etc. - all those things you and I as married people take forgranted.

It's about far more than that, else there wouldn't the insistence on calling the relationship a marriage. The state can grant a civil relationship between two or more people without demeaning the institution of marriage (and I realize heterosexuals have done their share of demeaning the institution). Even in the absence of civil unions, most of what you are talking about can be fixed with a 15 minute visit with a lawyer (much cheaper than a faux-wedding).

I asked the question above, repeatedly, and nobody answered, why the insistence on calling the relationship a marriage, which it is not and can never be? As I said above the only reason I can think of is to intentionally antagonize traditionalists.

Thanks for the list of people and organizations who wish to deny one of my civil rights. I will send this list to as many people as I am able. Sort of like black listing Woolworths, Inc. in the '6o's for prohibiting Blacks from sitting at their all white lunch counters.

Larry: If marriage is only church business and not "state business" then how would a couple of straight atheists get the benefit of marriage?

Suppose I believe that religion is a myth and will not get married in a church? How would I get the benefits of "marriage"?

Get over it. The State is in the marriage business for keeps. The State should have no religious test or bias.

....and separate is inherently unequal....

:-)

Larry: You're not thinking clearly.

How about I want the IRS tax deductions? How about I want my kids to be "legitimate"?

I just don't believe I'm making a "covenant with god"........I want the state to marry us without fuss and I want to be considered as married as you are by the state.......As far as I am concerned god has nothing to do with it.

Larry: You're not thinking clearly.

How about I want the IRS tax deductions? How about I want my kids to be "legitimate"?

I'm not the one having trouble thinking clearly. If the state wants to grant goodies based on marital status that's fine, they can do so. But they do not control the institution nor define it, it is simply none of their business. The state can grant goodies based on baptism too, but they similarly have no business defining what is, or is not, a legitimate baptism. Look, we got along fine without the state interfering in the marrying business, and as recently as 150 years ago, there is no reason we cannot return to that. And the legitimacy of children has traditionally been the purview of the church, anyway.

My gay friends and I are the silent minority who are too afraid to speak out because of the militant mindset of our community. We know that for million of years, marriage has always been between a man and a woman. Our Gay community has almost all the rights of being married with our civil unions. Why do we have to get in everyones face about this? We look bad, and it is not good publicity at a time when we have been able to force our life-style into the scripts of TV and movies. We have forced the schools to teach a pro-gay agenda. We've infiltrated womans athletics, and scouting... What more do we need? I think we should back-off and continue our slow seduction of society before there is some anti-gay backlash! We could loose much of the ground we've gained.

I am well within my rights to take my business to or away from any business for whatever reason I chose. If I own a business, I am not free to discriminate against potential customers because of certain attributes of gender, national origin, etc.

If, in the course of the first category of behavior, I choose to let others know which business I will support and which business I will not bless with my business, that, too, is perfectly acceptable. The right wing has been using these tactics for many, many decades.

But suddenly, now that someone at the other end of the political spectrum chooses to apply the same pattern, it is suddenly beyond the realm of acceptable behavior?

I'm thinking Crunchy Con describes the way certain brains work, not some endearing quality of wonderfulness.

I am well within my rights to take my business to or away from any business for whatever reason I chose. If I own a business, I am not free to discriminate against potential customers because of certain attributes of gender, national origin, etc.

So businessmen aren't allowed to have rights. I see.

"constructive termination" is normally a hard case to sell unless you've got some nice evidence of hostile working conditions. As for EEOC, religious accommodation only goes so far as undue hardships. The fact is that this guy's religious beliefs lost him a big client. That's a rather large hardship for a business to overlook.

So offended by their hate of Christianity, but yet so hateful towards them. I wonder which came first the chicken or the egg.

Boycotts are perfectly legitimate weapons to use in political challenges like the fallout from Prop.8. It's particularly upsetting to me that 70% of black voters supported that vicious initiative. Why is it that so many blacks feel that civil rights apply only to long-suffering blacks, with nothing left over for gays, jews, and other minorities. I'm tired of the political correctness that frowns on pointing out that a majority of blacks who have benefited mightily by civil rights legislation are so strenuously opposed to fairness and legal protections for homosexuals. Gays are not asking to force religious prelates to perform gay wedding ceremonies, but there is something in this country called civil marriage, and that should be available to everyone, gay or straight. Why is it that so many countries in Europe and even in South America are so far ahead of us in social attitudes. The religiosity in this country is making us a laughing stock in the industrialized world. This country is socially cruel. We are also shamefully anti-science which will cost us dearly as we fall further and further behind in the sciences.

Karen wrote "The ugly rhetoric coming from so many "Christians" is also very disheartening". Oh really, what hate is that? You mean by following their faith. I don't see them physically attacking anyone.

Here is something most people never talk about. It was not just those 'terrible' Christians or Mormons.

Bay Area Muslim leaders told their members at Mosques and Muslim organizations to vote Yes on 8. There was even a Muslim site on line talking about that. It is still in Google, but they have quickly taken that down that site once the thugs and "brown shirts" in the gay movement started to look for victims of their bigotry.

Now they are not Christians.

In the Gay dominated city of San Francisco a large district did voted Yes on 8. Interestingly the Conservative district in S.F. voted No on prop. 8. Was it a Christian district that voted Yes on 8? No, it was Chinatown. That is correct the Chinese people overwhelmingly voted Yes on 8. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote that 4 out of 5 Chinese voted Yes on 8. But interestingly the majority of Chinese are not Christians in that area.

Then 70 percent of African-Americans voted Yes on 8. Yet have these thugs gone and protested at any large black churches? Nope. Because they are cowards.

The majority of Latinos voted Yes on 8 against Gay marriage. Are these protesters targeting Latinos and the Catholic church? Nope. Why?

Instead they went after one elderly women who gave a mere 100 dollars to the Yes on 8 campaign because of her faith. The restaurant even hires gay workers who gave money to gay causes. Yet they want to boycott the place. Then they strong armed and black mailed her to give their gay organizations money. That is pure blackmail and a shack down. The FBI should investigate that. They went inside her business and threatened her if she didn't pay they would protest her business till they closed it down. That is black mail, pure and simple.

Then these thugs and bigots wanted to boycott a radio station because one employee gave 600 dollars to the Yes on 8 campaign. Not the owner, not the business, but one employee. What is the station supposed to do? Oh yeah, fire this person.

Then these hypocrites pressured a man to resign his post in Sacramento.

So what happened to freedom of speech in this country? This is just thuggish Nazi tactics to chill peoples participation in the political process by using fascist Nazi tactics. The government should prevent these thugs from doing this.

During one protest black gay men were called the N-word because many of the protesters turned their anger towards black members of their community.

So now karen who is being hateful and intolerant? You should open you eyes and think for change.

Nothing wrong with boycotts and blacklists? Ostracizing people who hold views different from your own?

Then there was nothing wrong with blacklisting communists in the 50's.

Choosing who you will associate with should always be a personal right. Institutionalizing the basis for those associations is another matter. Or maybe McCarthy wasn't such a bad guy after all.

mrdon
Then there was nothing wrong with blacklisting communists in the 50's.

You mean the government forced testimony of dozens of innocent people under threat of prosecution if they did not cooperate and name more people?

Yeah, no difference between that and some people taking their business elsewhere when they find out what it's funding.

The HUAC was, in the traditonal sense of the word, a witchhunt, It looked for 'crimes' that mostly weren't there (And should have been legal if they were.) and required people to essnetually make up information about others to save their skin.

That, and not the 'blacklist', was the problem there. If various Hollywood studios, on their on, had decided not to hire communist actors, or if normal people had 'learned' of the communism in Hollywood and stop paying for their movies, no one would have any problem at all.