Why wont people live and let live and stop harrassing those who are different We are all Gods children Stop hurting others because they dont follow the rules you want

How do we ‘know’ that these swastikas were posted by gays? Were the especially artistic? Was the spacing and size indicative of a firm command of style?
Bearing false witness is a sin both of commission and omission.
Why do so many Christians define their love of God through hatred of us?

Some of the most important commonalities between the Nazis and religious conservatives — especially Catholics — were anti-communism, anti-atheism, and anti-secularism. The Nazis were a “secular” party in the sense of not attempting to form a new church or religion and many Nazis tended to be anti-clerical, but support and promotion of “positive Christianity” was an important platform of the Nazi part from its earliest days.

There is a similarity in mindset – yes, I am old enough to have made the acquaintance of both Germans who resisted (those who survived) and those who actually were Nazis – between fundamentalist, literalistic, conservative, followers-of-ancient-traditions and members of the Nazi party.
The revisionism, the pretended ‘not hatred of the person, but of the sin’, the total ignorance of or denial of scientifically gathered evidence to the contrary of their ‘beliefs’…
This is why we must separate church and State.

There is no such thing as a “gay-friendly” Catholic church – it is the gay members of this church’s congregation that are confused, not the protesters

It’s regrettable that whoever did this resorted to vandalism, but it’s well past the time for religious people to get out of politics and to stop forcing their beliefs on everybody else.

I don’t automatically believe that it was anti-prop 8 supporters that wrote the graffiti on the Castro church. It wasn’t long ago that there was anti-gay graffiti on a memorial just blocks away and I believe it too had swastikas. Our enemies lurk the neighborhood with regularity. Think strategy.

Religious conservatives didn’t bankroll the defeat in Florida to the extent they bankrolled the defeat in California.

The difference between Florida and California should be obvious: California’s Prop 8 took away existing marital rights & responsibilities of a group of people and threatens to void currently existing marriages.
Regarding the vandals, not all gay people are the same. We are not all of one mind. And we don’t all control each other.

Given the outpourings of hatred spewed forth by the fundamentalist, conservative, literalistic, followers-of-ancient-creeds “Christians” we see on this website, I shouldn’t be the least surprised if one of them had done it just to have a fresh basis upon which to attack us.

You’d think that gays would know which people are for them
I’m sure they know.
There is no such thing as a “gay-friendly” Catholic church
Huh?

“expressing different opinions” = “outpourings of hatred”. That really makes sense. Thanks for keeping the conversation adult.
The homosexual sex act is sin, plain and simple. That being said, anger and pride are also sins (among other things), and everybody is guilty of those on occasion. If our society declines to discriminate against people for anger or pride, it shouldn’t discriminate for homosexuality either. I would not deny anybody a job or housing or anything else because of their homosexuality.
But the radical homosexual agenda doesn’t want tolerance, they want celebration. They want to FORCE everybody to openly renounce their beliefs and pay to help them celebrate their sin with marriages and other absurd requests.

>The homosexual sex act is sin, plain and simple.
That is your church’s doctrine, not mine, so it isn’t
“plain and simple” at all.
And the “tolerance” that “radicals” want is that your church’s doctrine not be forced down the throat of my church – if you want to call that “celebration”, so be it.

‘Your Name’
Speaking of adult behavior, why not try a pen-name. It makes life easier for all of us.
Considering the number of gays and transgendered people who have been beaten, raped and murdered the last few months in the US, I don’t see why any of my statements are overdrawn.
The Bible (unless you are reading one of those perverted fundamentalist translations of the 20th century) does not even mention the word ‘homosexuality’.
Who are you to define my love for another man as sin? Why do you insist on focusing on sex? I don’t go around kicking divorced people who have remarried out of my church…oh, right, that was only something which that long-haired Jewish Rabi forbade, what was his name, nobody important compared to Paul…just the Son of God.
When ‘Christians’ like you start treating all those ‘sins’ you believe in equally, then I will believe that your motivation is other than hatred. Until then, get yourself a name and stop cherry-picking the Bible.

As long as we are on the subject, just what exactly is this ‘homosexual act’?
You are going to have some serious problems with that, even assuming you are able to define it.
Please, do.
(Personally, I find our joint mortgage payment every month pretty sinful, maybe you mean that?) Or is it that my partner quit his job and moved to the US to help take care of my elderly parents when my, presumably ‘non-sinful’ heterosexual brother and his family could not be bothered, although they live in the same town?
Oh, and don’t you dare try the old ‘sodomy’ nonsense…the Church defines sodomy as all sexual acts which are not specifically intended to procreate. That covers everything from kissing to having heterosexual intercourse at a time of month when you ‘know’ pregnancy is not possible.
Do shower your wisdom upon us, please.

“Your wife isn’t really your wife, just a legal stranger with whom you sin.”
“Your relationship is invalid.”
“If your ‘husband’ of 30 years were to be in the hospital, it is perfectly acceptable for his real family to keep you, his ‘wife’ (aka the woman of ill repute he’s living in sin with) from visiting or having any say in his medical care. If he died it would be perfectly OK for his family to back a UHaul up to your front door and take everything you owned together. You’re not his family, so you don’t have a right to any say in the matter.”
This is what you are really saying to gay couples when you tell them they don’t deserve marriage. It’s insightful, so stop being shocked when it makes people angry. No, it does not excuse vandalism or violence in retaliation. However, you don’t get to play the martyr card when you provoke someone into attacking you – you’re both guilty of wrong at that point.
Please stop using Jesus as an excuse to be hateful – Jesus’ message was ‘love one another’ and this crusade against gay marriage is the antithesis of loving your neighbor.

Anybody who is more indignant about unwanted paint on a wall, than they are about millions of people not being able to choose for themselves whom they marry without the government’s veto, are despicable and need to look at themselves.

“That is your church’s doctrine, not mine”
“perverted fundamentalist translations of the 20th century”
Oh, great, here comes the “my special translation is the right one” argument. Might as well be a Jehovah’s Witness. Pretty hard to translate “men inflamed with lust for one another” as anything other than homosexuality.
If you’re going to just throw out the whole Bible, call yourself an atheist, and jettison the notion of sin entirely, I can respect that to a certain degree. But this revisionist nonsense is beyond hypocritical.

“not being able to choose for themselves whom they marry”
If society as a whole is so despicable and you hate it, why insist on participating in one of it’s institutions? Why not just go get a lawyer and sign a binding contract with your partner that has all the same protections as marriage?
I’ll tell you why, because you want to throw a cloak of legitimacy over your sinful activities and force everybody else to agree with you. It’s attention grabbing, pure and simple.

“Why not just go get a lawyer and sign a binding contract with your partner that has all the same protections as marriage?”
Because you can’t just sign a binding legal contract with your partner that has all the same protections of marriage.

I find it sad that both sides are grouping people together based on the views of the radical. Many GBLT people appreciate the people of faith that don’t let their faith interfere with others legal rights – we do. We thank you for your understanding and recognition that GBLT folks are people too. However, there are extremists on either side of the issue – and unfortunately, that’s who gets the news because violence and drama sell the papers, and that gives a distorted view of both sides – the GBLT community as a whole is hurting from this blow to their civil rights, however most of the protests have been very peaceful – and many of them do not endorse these bigoted attacks on persons of faith and places of worship.
Just my two cents.

you don’t get to play the martyr card when you provoke someone into attacking you
But this particular parish isn’t provocative, that’s the point. Parishioners can be sad about such bad treatment without feigning martyrdom.
“perverted fundamentalist translations of the 20th century”
Yeah, I liked that one too, oh, you have no idea how much I liked it. Sweet.

“If society as a whole is so despicable and you hate it” Not something I said, ZZ. Do you have to make stuff up in order to make yourself look clever?

It is ironic how christians say that they have the right to disagree with gay people, but they don’t find anything wrong on imposing their views on others who don’t agree with them.
So, they are telling gays, your relationship is sinful and I don’t agree with you, yet you need to live under our rules. How democratic!
It is ok for the pope to say that homosexuality is destructing human kind and it needs to be protected, as we protect the rain forest from man’s destruction. If you ask me, that language spits hatre. I wish the pope would come out with the same harsh language for those priests sexually abusing children.

Homosexuality is a sexual perversion. It’s debauchery is considered no less that bestiality in God’s Word.
Next Please!

I wish the pope would come out with the same harsh language for those priests sexually abusing children.
Just how carefully are you listening for it, then?

Yeah the same is adultery!
Next please

All I heard is hush hush money to pay to the victims.

Pick and choose whatever sins are good for my own convenience. That should be slogan for christianity.
Pope needs to come out of the closet.

if it was a “gay”, it wasn’t a san francisco “gay” since they know that MHR is as gay as catholic churchs get…
i am not asking for the church to change at all, just the state. that is what you religious people just can’t understand. i want the right to get married at city hall, not in your church.

I didn’t read any reason that would connect this vandalism to the gay marraige issue. With the info that I have, this sound like an assumption supported by homophobic paranoia. Is it possible that someone, like a angry teenager or even an organization that is known to use the swastica as a symbol did this?
Why don’t we hear about vandalism against supporters of gay marriage? Would it be right to demonize the whole conservative Christian community in Los Angeles becasue someone slashed a large No on Prop 8 banner that was in front of an Espicopal church in downtown LA. It makes about as much sense as demonizing all gays because a few have acted out against property.

Why would an LGBT person paint a swastika on anything…and in an LGBT neighborhood, no less? I’m with Panthera on this one. I call foul.
ZZ: “Oh, great, here comes the ‘my special translation is the right one’ argument. Might as well be a Jehovah’s Witness.”
At least the Jehovah’s Witnesses have their freedom of religion protected by the Constitution. LGBT Christians…not so much.

“Maybe it really doesn’t matter to gays that gays attend this church, they belong to a ‘bigoted’ organization that has to be punished for their views.”
Because clearly no over-zealous gay person ever does something without first consulting the entire LGBT community (assuming it was even a gay person who did this). I mean, you don’t seem to consider this possibility, so you must know this for a fact. You wouldn’t jump to conclusions, would you?

respect? how about respecting the poor folks whose lives where sent into a tailspin over prop 8. how sad that religious folks would attack gay people.
who cares about this- its a building! no one was harmed.
a few coats of paint and it will be fine.

Why a swastika? Well, how about this: Pope Benedict (the former Cardinal Ratzinger named in the graffiti) was a member of Hitler Youth and served in the Nazi Army. Hmmm…could that be the connection?
Without excusing spray-paint vandalism (hey, my building a half-mile away has been tagged several times, too, grr) I find it difficult to understand why the police are targeting this as a hate crime, when it’s clearly a political statement against the political actions of two particular men. Is it because it involved a church, a church whose anointed leader (whose authority is accepted by all parishoners, including the gay ones) has called GLBT people “intrinsically disordered,” gravely sinful, as big a threat as global warming, and an “obstacle on the road to peace?” Of course, that’s not hate speech, is it, since it was said IN a church and not written ON one.
Still, since Benedict has just opposed a UN measure supporting worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality (which can get you executed in a number of lovely countries), it’s hard to for me to get too upset over a political message spray-painted on one of his churches. Sorry.

>>>You’d think that gays would know which people are for them and won’t target their supporters:
And you have REAL SOLID evidence that this was done by gays??? Jesus whisper in your ear or something like that?

Not surprised; unfortunately I have seen ALOT of hatred in the gay community and I have now changed my view towards the hole “injustice” cry; I don’t think Jesus Christ would be pleased that people are using him in churches to promote a lifestyle that is not biblical. If a person chooses to disobey the law of the land, they get punished by the law, they don’t cry “injustice” because they weren’t able to practice their lawbreaking habit, but the glbt found a way to do it and has fooled alot of folks in the process, but Jesus did warn folks to be aware of deceivers, one of whom i believe to be the glbt. I don’t believe in discrimination or hate towards ANYONE, we are all sinners and struggling to be better everyday, however, there is a big difference between people who love God and strive to be more like HIM and those who wish to change the way HE is to suit their own selfish desires. You will know them by their fruit! Love/hate .. good/evil

“If a person chooses to disobey the law of the land, they get punished by the law, they don’t cry “injustice” because they weren’t able to practice their lawbreaking habit, but the glbt found a way to do it and has fooled alot of folks in the process, but Jesus did warn folks to be aware of deceivers, one of whom i believe to be the glbt.”
Well, if you feel that strongly about it, there are places in the world where homosexuality (and probably the other stuff too) is illegal and can get you prison time. In fact, last I checked 7 countries allow the DEATH penalty for it. So feel free to move to a country where “justice” is served.

Very Sad from many angles.