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Or Wow! I found a calm, rational, pro-civil rights conservative Christian!
This person's basic argument is that if conservative Christians want civil rights protections to protect their rights to their beliefs and practices, then they must support civil rights for all, even those with whom they strongly disagree. I went to this person's main site, Musings on Christianity, Homosexuality, and the Bible, and found that it's a woman who has made it a personal mission to learn and think about homosexuality. She's married, a mother, and a "conservative Bible-believing Christian". While she does believe that "homosexual acts" are sinful, she does not believe that sexual orientation is a choice. She seems to be a kind, compassionate, intelligent, thoughful, genuine person. Wow, how refreshing. Following is a great excerpt from one of her other essays:
If I only had a dollar for every time I have felt embarrassed by other Christians, or at least by those who have tried to pass themselves off as such.
I remember one night watching the news coverage of the murder of Matthew Shepard. Matthew Shepard, I'm sure you recall, was the gay college student who was lured out of a campus bar by two other men pretending also to be gay, then was robbed, pistol-whipped and tied to a crude fence in the middle of a lonely field in Laramie, Wyoming. By the time he was found 18 hours later, bleeding and still tied to the fence, it was too late to save him. He died in a coma five days later.
The tragedy was immediately seized upon as an opportunity for people to vent their opinions about hate-crimes and homosexuality. And as I watched that night on television how the aftermath of Shepard's death was quickly degenerating into an ugly shouting match between "Christian fundamentalists" and "gay activists," the television news camera panned a frenzied crowd and focused on one man picketing with a sign: GOD HATES FAGS!
At that moment my husband turned to me and said, "Why do we have to call ourselves Christians? Isn't there some other label we can use, to distinguish ourselves from people like that?"
Now this wouldn't be surprising coming from a liberal Christian, but this is a conservative Christian! Her essays are well-written, thoughtful, and very human. The only "bad" thing about her site is that there isn't more on it! I guess she's gotten busy with other things, because she hasn't added to it since 2002. But what's there is quite valuable.
7:51:16 PM | This is Post #149 | Permanent URL:  |
[The San Diego Union-Tribune]
Politicians debate San Francisco's same-sex weddings as couples celebrate
2/23/04 By Kim Curtis
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wants the state to step in and stop the marriages, said in an interview on NBC on Sunday that Newsom's action could cause other local officials to flout the law.
"In San Francisco, it is license for marriage of same sex. Maybe the next thing is another city that hands out licenses for assault weapons and someone else hands out licenses for selling drugs, I mean you can't do that," Schwarzenegger said. [What an idiot!]
"We have to stay within the law," he said. "There's a state law that says specific things, and if you want to challenge those laws then you can go to the court."
Newsom, who appeared on CNN's "Late Edition," says the city is mounting precisely that kind of legal challenge. San Francisco has sued the state, saying the gay marriage ban violates the equal protection clause of the California Constitution.
The mayor also fired back at Schwarzenegger, saying there was no basis for comparing laws on gay marriage to gun control.
"It's not about AK-47s," Newsom said. "It's not about these other hypotheticals. It's about human beings. It's about human dignity. It's about advancing and affirming marriage in a unique bond and relationship. It's about, I think, holding truth, faith and allegiance to the Constitution. I feel very strongly this is consistent." ...
At the mass wedding reception Sunday, some couples said the same-sex marriages were strengthening their families.
"This is a great thing for us," said Laura Bauer, who married her partner of eight years last Monday and attended the reception with their 5-year-old daughter. "With everyone talking about family, now we can give our daughter a family and no one should take that away from us."
The guests of honor at the event were Del Martin, 83, and Phyllis Lyon, 79, who have been together 51 years and are longtime leaders in the city's lesbian community. Martin and Lyon married on Feb. 12 in the first ceremony after Newsom's decision.
"We're going to be out there as a movement and as a vast, large, noisy movement," Lyon said at Sunday's celebration. "This issue has mobilized us, magnetized us and energized us."
The couple first rose to prominence in 1955 when they founded the Daughters of Bilitis, which became one of the nation's first lesbian groups. Named after book of lesbian erotic poetry first published in Paris in 1894, the group enabled lesbians to socialize outside the bar scene and to mobilize in defense of gay rights.
Soon after Martin and Lyon began publishing their newsletter, "The Ladder," Daughters of Bilitis chapters began popping up across the country, and in 1960 the couple hosted the organization's first national convention in San Francisco.
Later they founded a women's health clinic in the city, and in 1995 they were appointed as delegates to the White House Conference on Aging.
My comments: I just hope the fight really does stay big and loud here in California. I hope we take to the streets to protest any setbacks! There are millions of us who support same-sex marriage, and we need to keep making this a prominent issue until it no longer needs to be an issue! Yay for Phyllis and Del; yay for Gavin Newsom; yay for the triumph of love over narrow-mindedness!
12:25:06 PM | This is Post #148 | Permanent URL: |
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