More Saturday Male Beauty

The History of Homosexual Acceptance

The professional Christians repeatedly make the claim that societies and cultures have never accepted homosexuality and that marriage of one man and one woman has been the norm for "5,000 years of human history." Like so much of what these theocratic hate merchants say, these claims are simply not true. The truth is that homosexuality has been a feature of human culture since earliest history. Generally and most famously in ancient Greece, certain forms of erotic attraction and sexual pleasure between males were often an ingrained, accepted part of the cultural norm. The love spoken of by Socrates and Plato among others involved same sex love, not heterosexual love.

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Moreover, many historical figures, including Socrates, Lord Byron, Edward II, Hadrian, Julius Caesar, Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci, and Christopher Marlowe had romantic or sexual relationships with people of their own sex. Here's a sampling of the history of homosexuality through the ages and in different parts of the world and examples of how Jewish tribalism continued into the Christian anti-gay obsession ran headlong into practices in other parts of the world.

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AFRICA: Though often ignored or suppressed by European explorers and colonialists, homosexual expression in native Africa was also present and took a variety of forms. Anthropologists Stephen Murray and Will Roscoe reported that women in Lesotho engaged in socially sanctioned "long term, erotic relationships," named motsoalle. E. E. Evans-Pritchard also recorded that male Azande warriors (in the northern Congo) routinely took on boy-wives between the ages of twelve and twenty, who helped with household tasks and participated in sex with their older husbands. The practice had died out by the early 20th century, after Europeans had gained control of African countries, but was recounted to Evans-Pritchard by the elders to whom he spoke.

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THE AMERICAS: Among indigenous peoples of the Americas prior to European colonization, the most common form of same-sex sexuality seems to center around the figure of the Two-Spirit individual. Typically the two-spirit individual was recognized early in life, was given a choice by the parents to follow the path, and if the child accepted the role then the child was raised in the appropriate manner, learning the customs of the gender it had chosen. Two-spirit individuals were commonly shamans and were revered as having powers beyond those of ordinary shamans.

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Homosexual and transgender individuals were also common among other pre-conquest civilizations in Latin America, such as the Aztecs, Mayans, Quechas, Moches, Zapotecs, and the Tupinaba of Brazil. The Spanish conquerors were horrified to discover "sodomy" openly practiced among native peoples, and attempted to crush it out by subjecting the "berdaches" as the Spanish called them to severe penalties, including public execution and burning.

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EAST ASIA: In East Asia, same-sex love has been referred to since the earliest recorded history. Early European travelers were taken aback by its widespread acceptance and open display. None of the East Asian countries today have specific legal prohibitions against homosexuality or homosexual behavior. . . . This same-sex love culture gave rise to strong traditions of painting and literature documenting and celebrating such relationships. In Thailand "ladyboys," have been a feature of Thai society for many centuries, and Thai kings had male as well as female lovers.

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EUROPE: Western documents concerning same-sex relationships are derived from ancient Greece. They depict a world in which relationships with women and relationships with youths were the essential foundation of a normal man's love life. Same-sex relationships were a social institution variously constructed over time and from one city to another. In ancient Rome, the emperors with the exception of Claudius took male lovers.

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During the Renaissance, rich cities in northern Italy were renowned for their widespread practice of same-sex love, engaged in by a considerable part of the male population and constructed along the classical pattern of Greece and Rome. . . . The relationships of socially prominent figures, such as King James I [reviser of what became the King James Bible] and the Duke of Buckingham, served to highlight the issue.

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MIDDLE EAST, SOUTH AND CENTRAL ASIA: Among many Middle Eastern Muslim cultures egalitarian or age-structured homosexual practices were, and remain, widespread and thinly veiled. The prevailing pattern of same-sex relationships in the temperate and sub-tropical zone stretching from Northern India to the Western Sahara is one in which the relationships were—and are—either gender-structured or age-structured or both. . . . In Persia homosexuality and homoerotic expressions were tolerated in numerous public places, from monasteries and seminaries to taverns, military camps, bathhouses, and coffee houses. In one period, male houses of prostitution (amrad khane) were legally recognized and paid taxes.

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SOUTH PACIFIC: In many societies of Melanesia, same-sex relationships were, until the middle of the last century, an integral part of the culture.

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In short, homosexuals have existed and been accepted throughout the majority of history in most parts of the world. One could even argue that it is the Christianist and orthodox Jewish anti-homosexual precepts which are the anomaly when the issue is viewed over time and around the world. Some other web sites with historical reviews of the acceptance and prevalence of same sex love are here, here and here.

Saturday Male Beauty

Southern GOP Ideaologues Drag the Party Downward

UPDATED: An example of the lunacy now gripping the GOP comes from Raw Story which is reporting on Tennessee Republican John "Chip" Saltsman, a candidate for Chairman of the Republican National Committee, who is defending a song containing a racially insensitive term as mere "satire." These people truly do NOT get it. The song:

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[A] musical parody of "Puff the Magic Dragon" entitled "Barack the Magic Negro," sung by Shanklin imitating black civil rights advocate Rev. Al Sharpton, first played by Rush Limbaugh on his syndicated radio show in March 2007.

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Today's GOP is a faint shadow of the once respectable national party it once was. Now, one has to be either a racist, far right religious fanatic, or incredibly selfish and self-centered, caring only about one's tax rates, to belong to the GOP. And the signs are that things are going to get even worse as ultra-conservative GOP members of Congress sit poised to be obstructionists to measures much needed to help turn around the sinking economy. Rather than looking out for the best interests of the country, the increasingly reactionary GOP members of Congress seem more consumed with punishing those they dislike - e.g., the United Auto Workers - egged on by the Kool-Aid drinking GOP base. David Broder looks at the phenomenon in a new Washington Post column. Here are some highlights:

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All the signs are that the stimulus spending will be opposed by congressional Republicans, whose shrunken ranks are increasingly dominated by right-wing Southerners who care not what their stance does to harm the party's national image. The spectacle of LaHood facing off in congressional testimony against those naysayers will dramatize a split that is crippling the GOP.

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The danger became apparent as far back as 2007. With Bush weakened by the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina and the midterm election losses of 2006, a Southern-led revolt killed his immigration reform bill McConnell, unable to stem the insurgency, joined it. The price was paid in the 2008 presidential campaign. Despite his personal credentials as a sponsor of comprehensive immigration reform, John McCain was caught in the backlash of anti-GOP voting by Hispanics. It contributed to his loss of Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Florida and other states.

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The same thing happened this year when Bush supported a bailout for the Big Three auto companies. . . . . the defeat of this legislation at Republican hands will not be forgotten when GOP senators run for reelection in 2010 in states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. It will also echo in industrial states such as Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, California, New York and New Jersey, when Republicans try to challenge for Senate and House seats.

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As point man for Obama's stimulus spending, he [transportation secretary, Ray LaHood] now poses the dilemma for his own party in the sharpest possible terms: Will congressional Republicans again sacrifice their political interest to satisfy their Southern-baked ideological imperatives?

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Having formally lived in the Deep South, I do not see much hope for moderation by the GOP. States like Alabama where I once lived have moved further to the lunatic far right over the last 20 years while the rest of the nation has tried to move forward to modernity.

The Ongoing Christianist Menace

As 2008 comes to an end, a retrospective shows that the Christianists scored some significant victories - Proposition 8 and other anti-gay ballot initiatives being among them - even as the younger generations seem to increasingly reject the anti-gay mantra of hate merchants such as James Dobson, the men at Concerned Women for America, et al. But we cannot let down our endeavors for defeating the rabid Christianists who in their own way are just as big a danger as the radical Muslim fundamentalists. Both groups seek to impose an intolerant and brutal religious belief system on all people. As such, the message is clear: LGBT Americans and others who oppose theocratic government must keep up the battle to blunt the undermining of the separation of church and state.

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As I have noted numerous times, while they whine incessantly about religious freedom and endeavor to depict themselves as victims of religious persecution, it is in fact the Christianists who despise religious freedom - for all but themselves - and who seek to undermine the religious pluralism that has made the USA successful in the past. Frederick Clarkson has a column that does a good retrospective on 2008. Here are some highlights:

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For a year or more in the run-up to the elections, we heard claims that the Religious Right is dead, dying or irrelevant and that the so-called Culture Wars are over, or about to be. Such declarations have turned out to be spectacularly wrong. There are many reasons for the staying power of the Religious Right. Among them is an extraordinary infrastructure developed over decades, especially at the state level.

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The Religious Right is on a mission, or rather a cluster of interrelated missions. They are religious in nature and transcend not only electoral outcomes but the lives of individuals and institutions. . . . For the aggressors in this largely one-sided war -- war is not merely a metaphor. It is far more profound and animating idea, stemming from conflicts of "world view," usually described as a "Biblical World View" against everything else. That is why we have seen decades of violence against abortion providers and against LGBT people, and almost nothing from other sides who are merely exercising their civil rights to believe differently or to seek greater equality under the law.

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[T]he Religious Right remains strong in the Republican Party, but that it intends and is capable of, waging and winning theocratic battles against LGBT and women's civil and human rights, as well as disrupting secular public education.

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There is a religious war going on in America in which one side seeks to thwart, and even to roll back, advances in civil rights. This poses one of the central challenges of our time for those of us who are not part of the Religious Right; those of us for whom religious pluralism and constitutional democracy matter, along with such closely related matters as reproductive freedom, marriage equality and free, quality and secular public education.

More Friday Male Beauty

Time to Reboot America

I book marked Tom Friedman's latest column in the New York Times a fee days ago because it looks at what I believe should be among the highest priorities of the Obama administration - in addition to health care insurance reforms - because it will help on both the employment front and, I believe, in bolstering confidence again in the country/economy. What is it? A public works effort to rebuild are aging and dilapidated national infrastructure. Compared to other nations, much of our public works infrastructure is old, out dated and falling apart. Moreover, as in the Great Depression a well thought out and disciplined public works campaign would provide jobs and much needed improvements. Here are some highlights from Friedman's column:

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I had a bad day last Friday, but it was an all-too-typical day for America. It actually started well, on Kau Sai Chau, an island off Hong Kong, where I stood on a rocky hilltop overlooking the South China Sea and talked to my wife back in Maryland, static-free, using a friend’s Chinese cellphone. A few hours later, I took off from Hong Kong’s ultramodern airport after riding out there from downtown on a sleek high-speed train — with wireless connectivity that was so good I was able to surf the Web the whole way on my laptop. Landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong was, as I’ve argued before, like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones.

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The next day I went to Penn Station, where the escalators down to the tracks are so narrow that they seem to have been designed before suitcases were invented. The disgusting track-side platforms apparently have not been cleaned since World War II. I took the Acela, America’s sorry excuse for a bullet train, from New York to Washington. Along the way, I tried to use my cellphone to conduct an interview and my conversation was interrupted by three dropped calls within one 15-minute span. All I could think to myself was: If we’re so smart, why are other people living so much better than us? What has become of our infrastructure, which is so crucial to productivity?

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My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.

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{o]ur present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us. That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover.

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[W]e must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely. It has to go into training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure — without building white elephants.

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America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society — in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage. John Kennedy led us on a journey to discover the moon. Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard.

Charlottesville Amusements

Today has been a lazy post Christmas day and the boyfriend and I ventured out for a while to the Charlotttesville downtown mall and wandered among the numerous people window shopping and looking for shopping bargains. We had lunch at an interesting landmark of sorts - Timberlake Pharmacy (pictured above in 1918 - it looks largely the same today) which opened in 1890 and is still in business, including it's soda fountain and and deli area complete with wood burning fireplace. The food was good and it was like a time warp of sorts. As always, Charlottesville and the Blue Ridge Mountains (pictured below) to the west of town are beautiful.
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The boyfriend purchased a wonderful feather boa for one of our more glamous friends - she has style and can carry off what lesser woman could never do - and he bought us some books before we ventured back to my mother's place. All in all it has been a relaxing visit so far and it is nice spending time with my mother whom has been totally charmed by the boyfriend. But then, he is charming and a very sweet man. Yes, he reads this blog, but I'm not out to flatter him. He is the real deal and he makes me very happy - even if Rick Warren equates our relationship with incest and pedophilia.

The Real Rick Warren Exposed

As the tempest over Barack Obama's selection of Christianist homophobe Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation continues, there is one positive aspect that is perhaps being overlooked. Namely, that the real, nasty, gay hating, non-Christian hating Rick Warren is finally being exposed to the light of day. Too often the lazy, afraid to criticize Christianists main stream media simply gives people like Warren a pass and the true vileness of their agenda does not come out. Not any more - or at least not for Warren who is having all of his nastiness exposed. Whether or not Obama ultimately uninvites this bigot, he will not be able to continue to get the free pass that he has enjoyed to date. Democracy Now has an interview with Max Blumenthal that highlights this development. Here are some highlights:

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Prior to this controversy, Rick Warren was, you know, proffered by the media as the voice of the new evangelical movement, which embraces environmentalism and fights poverty and is going to move beyond the old hobgoblins of the Christian right and the old, you know, draconian figures of the Christian right, like James Dobson and Pat Robertson. Rick Warren was supposed to be the pioneer of this new movement.

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[B]ecause, you know, the media has expected evangelicals, especially conservative evangelicals, to be draconian and retrograde, you know, they’ve made a hero out of Rick Warren without looking at who he really is and what he really believes. . . . So, the real Rick Warren is someone who fights the culture war with a velvet glove. He even—he freely admitted to a reporter from the Wall Street Journal that the principal difference, the only difference, between him and James Dobson is a matter of tone.

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And he’s [Warren]backed every anti-gay proposition that’s come down the pike in California in the last ten years, including Proposition 22, which laid the groundwork for Proposition 8. He joined up with James Dobson and Charles Colson and Tony Perkins and these people to do this. Beyond that, he compares pro-choice advocates to Holocaust deniers.

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Rick Warren has a doctrine of women’s submission, which he preaches to his church, and he tells the female members of his church that they have to support their husbands’ decisions, even if they make bad financial decisions, because women have to submit in a biblical manner to their husbands. So this goes way beyond being anti-gay. He’s, you know, patriarchal. He’s supported assassinating Iran’s president.

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[T]he question is, where does Barack Obama draw the line when someone demonizes a segment of Americans? Is this person really fit to address the nation and confer God’s blessing on the entire United States of America, when Rick Warren freely admits that he only believes that a small segment of Americans are going to heaven and that the rest of us are going to burn in an everlasting lake of fire? That’s the question.

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Personally, I believe that Obama's selection of Warren is an abomination - to use a term the gay-haters love - and I have discarded all of my Obama signs and campaign materials (as have other gays that I know, some of whom donated plenty of money to his campaign). Should Obama fail to uninvite Warren, I suspect the failure will ultimate haunt him. In the meantime, I hope more and more Americans come to know what a douche bag Warren is in reality. I am going to do my best to disseminate the truth as widely as possible.

Friday Male Beauty

An Open Letter to Our Oppressors

What often strikes me about the anti-gay Christianists, Mormons, and corrupt Catholic hierarchy all of whom seem to live to oppress LGBT individuals is the way in which they relegate us to a sub-human status, as if we were not living, breathing humans like everyone else. Their message is burdensome at times, but we must strive to (1) always remember that God made us as we are, (2) never internalize the poison our enemies disseminate and (3) never let up our vigilance to oppose their agenda of marginalizing us. Peterson Toscano (pictured at left) who works tirelessly to counter the ex-gay myth, has an open letter to our enemies posted at Pam's House Blend which is a must read. Here are some highlights:

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Yes, I hear you. I am not deaf to your messages. To the Holy Father in Rome, Reverend Rick Warren in California, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the many supporters of Prop 8, Focus on the Family, Exodus International, and so many others who publicly speak out against LGBT people and our rights, I hear you loud and clear. No matter how you sugarcoat it and wrap it up with smiles and scripture and say that you are nothing like the extremist, Fred Phelps, I hear your message loud and clear telling me that I am inferior and unwanted in your world. These are not your words, but all the same this is the message you communicate.

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I hear you insist time and time again in multiple ways that heterosexuals are superior to gays and lesbians. Your marriages, your homes, your "lifestyles" are normal, but mine? Not so much. I hear you declare that I am not capable of producing anything good or beneficial other than some window treatments or a decent hair style. In essence I hear you say that I am a worthless piece of shit and the cause of untold woes and problems, the harbinger of even worst things to come.

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You treat us as an inconvenient and unwanted Christmas gift that you desperately wish to exchange for something better. You belittle our love, our families, our faith, our morals, our very lives while all the time you claim to speak the truth in love. This is not love. This is fear. It is control and oppression, and it is the rejection of God's gifts to the church, society and in some cases to your very families.

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I know all about rejecting this gift. I did it for years as I repented daily of the same-sex attractions and gender differences I found inside me. I demonized my sexuality and believed no good could come of my gay orientation. I proceeded to return this gift as I bullied God for something else--I coveted my straight neighbor's life believing the propaganda that his was the idealized norm to follow instead of trusting God for the life I had been given.

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In the midst of all that I experienced grace and tenderness from God, extreme patience, kindness ultimately leading to a deeper repentance, one based in Light and reality, a repentance that recognizes that a gay orientation and gender differences came to me as an astonishing gift of power and beauty.

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I may be a peace-loving Quaker and a Christian, but that doesn't mean I am going to avoid confrontation or assume we can all just hold hands and overlook our differences. To do so would be to support your oppression and enable you to continue in it with my permission. I point out to you what you may be unwilling or unable to see. You stand as oppressors, bullies, abusers imposing your sexuality and religious views on others. . . . In spite of the opposition and the oppression, we will thrive.

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And perhaps one day you will come to your senses. Perhaps you will see with clearer eyes. Perhaps you too will repent of your bullying and the rejection of the gifts among you. Regardless, we will not back down, and we will continue to live our lives with dignity.

Thursday Male Beauty

A Dishonest Definition of Marriage

Rick Warren and other gay-hating professional Christians constantly run their mouths about marriage being defined as a union of one man and one woman throughout the last 5,000 years of human history. This, of course is a lie, but the main stream media NEVER calls these windbags on the issue (or any of the other often told lies that is the Christianists' stock in trade). As a fellow commenter on Pam's House Blend points out, the one man -one woman form of marriage is of relatively recent origin and in fact is not the norm in large parts of the world even today. Here is a summary of some of the real structure of marriage from the Bible and from history:

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It seems that there are so many people in the gay community who are aware of the dishonesty of this claim of universal, historical, monogamous, different gender marriage in all places and times. We all know it's simply not true. Why doesn't the wider community know this? It's time we attacked that lie head on. We need to come up with a short list of examples to expose this lie. Something that can be a soundbite, and carry the message wherever we hear the lie. I would suggest the following inclusions:

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Jesus was single.

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Mary and Joseph didn't have the traditional marriage either, since Mary was a virgin mother and Joseph wasn't Jesus father.

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Abraham had many wives.

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Joseph Smith had dozens of wives.

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David had six hundred wives and three hundred concubines.

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St. Paul said it's better to be celibate than married.

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Cultures that accepted gay marriages included the Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Japanese, Native American, etc.

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As usual, the Christianists have lied. The truth is the opposite of their claim. In almost all places and times, until very recently, gay marriages were accepted. It wasn't until Christianity took hold of governments and cultures, that their own particular brand of homophobia became the norm.

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A recent case out of Saudia Arabia where multiple wives is often the norm - and where women are treated as chattel - underscores the truth of these statements and that "marriage" is often not as the Christianists define it. As CNN reports, a Saudi judge recently refused to annul a marriage between an 8-year-old girl and a 47-year-old man. Here are more highlights on this sick situation about which the Christianists say nothing:

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According to the lawyer, the girl's father arranged the marriage in order to settle his debts with the man, who is "a close friend" of his. The judge did ask for a pledge from the husband, who was in court, not to consummate the marriage until the girl reaches puberty, according to al-Jutaili.

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The judge ruled that when the girl reaches puberty, she will have the right to request a divorce by filing a petition with the court, the lawyer said. Christoph Wilcke, a Saudi Arabia researcher for Human Rights Watch, said his organization has heard many other cases of child marriages. "We've been hearing about these types of cases once every four or five months because the Saudi public is now able to express this kind of anger, especially so when girls are traded off to older men," Wilcke said.

Christmas Hypocrisy from the Vatican

Ever the disingenuous hypocrite, God's Rottweiler a/k/a Benedict XVI gave his Christmas message at the Vatican last night and among other things appealed for an end to child abuse in all its forms. Among his remarks, Benedict XVI said:

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"Let us think of those children who are victims of the industry of pornography and every other appalling form of abuse, and thus are traumatised to the depths of their soul." Benedict said Catholics had to "do everything in our power to put an end to the suffering of these children."

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With Benedict, of course, talk is cheap and he continues to fail to take any action against bishops and cardinals who enabled and/or covered up for predator priests. Cardinal Law, for instance left the sex abuse scandal plagued archdiocese of Boston to take up a position living like a prince of old at the Vatican. Meanwhile some of Law's former lieutenants such as Cardinal Egan of New York continue to have their wide, falsely pious, corrupt asses kissed by delusional Catholics. Given the foul conduct these supposed "men of God" I personally can only wonder why anyone gives them the time of day. They belong behind bars not on an altar sermonizing to others about proper conduct.

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Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan has some good points on Benedict's slanderous comments on LGBT individuals which reflect a mindset stuck in the Middle Ages. Here are highlights:

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[Benedict] essentially argues that the forms of male and female as created by God can know of no complexity or variance. The fact of same-sex sexual and emotional orientation - displayed throughout nature and expressed by human beings since the beginning of time - is, in the Pope's view, a divine error. The entire universe must fit into the binary Thomist vision, or we are allegedly divorcing humankind from our own nature. And nature must be divorced from all new knowledge of the human and animal sciences. Well: at least the knowledge we have gained since the Middle Ages.

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What I found telling is how this Pope, in his summary of the recent history of the Church, simply erases the Second Council from reality - just as he erases homosexual orientation from the arena of open inquiry or meditation.

Merry Christmas!

I want to wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas!!

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The boyfriend and I had a wonderful Christmas Eve with friends in Williamsburg last night and then attended a beautiful traditional Christmas service at St. John's Episcopal Church in Hampton (pictured at left) not too far from his home. We did this rather than drive all the way back to First Lutheran in Norfolk. St. John's is an interesting church since it is the oldest Anglican parish in continuous existence in America, dating from 1610 - yes, 10 years before the Pilgrims even landed in Massachusetts. The present church building dates from 1728 and is a beautiful cruciform structure.

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Later today we will drive up to Charlottesville to visit my mother for the weekend. My children are out of town - the girls are in New York City with the ex-wife's parents and my son now lives in Prescott, Arizona - but I will be calling them later in the day to wish them a wonderful Christmas. The boyfriend continues to be a sweetheart and a treasure and I am so fortunate to have him in my life. So far, our first Christmas together has been wonderful.

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Again, Merry Christmas to all of you who visit this blog.

Southern Baptists Losing Members

The Southern Baptist Convention is among the most anti-gay denominations around, with spokesman, Richard Land (at left), nearly foaming at the mouth at times during his denunciation of LGBT Americans. Thus, I find it ironic and a source of amusement that the SBC is losing membership at record rates. Could it just be that Americans are growing tired of a denomination which often seems to define itself by who it hates? Losses seem particularly high among the younger generations. For example, I know that the Baptist church the boyfriend's parents attend seems to have a far older congregation than my more progressive ELCA parish that has more younger couples and youth. An article in the Washington Post that looks at this phenomenon. Here are some highlights:

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After decades of growth, the nation's largest group of Protestants, the Southern Baptist Convention, is reporting losses (in church membership and recorded baptisms) for the third year in a row. Baptisms are at a 20-year low, a figure liable to put an eternity-conscious church into a severe depression.

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Cutbacks at Southern Baptist seminaries and agencies are even hitting the denomination's bold, new marketing strategy designed to spread the gospel (and increase the flock) to every soul in North America by 2020. The campaign, called "God's Plan for Sharing" (Yes, GPS), includes a new image media campaign, "We Are Southern Baptists."

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No doubt there are market forces behind the SBC's declining statistics.

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1. The product is less appealing. Southern Baptists still profess the belief in Christ is the only path to salvation. But a new Pew Forum analysis shows that a majority of all American Christians (52%) think at least some non-Christian faiths can lead to eternal life. More surprising, among evangelicals surveyed, 35 percent said Muslims can go to heaven, 33 percent said Hindus can, and 26 percent said atheists can.

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2. The brand is less appealing. After 30 years of theo-political warfare within the denomination and the culture, which has included the merciless purging of evangelical moderates and even conservatives from all Southern Baptist school and agencies, not to mention strong public support for the Republican Party and Administration, the words "Southern Baptist" carry more negatives than positives. The largest and most prominent Southern Baptist congregation in America -- Rick Warren's Saddleback Church -- doesn't even use the word Baptist in its name.

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3. The market is changing. Nearly all predominantly white Christian denominations (Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopal) in America are seeing a slow but steady decline in membership, a decline that reflects changing U.S. demographics. "This is not about orthodoxy or unorthodoxy or failed methods," Baptist historian Bill Leonard, dean of the Wake Forest School of Divinity in North Carolina, told Peter Smith of the (Louisville) Courier-Journal. "This is about demographics and sociology."

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Just a thought, but perhaps if the SBC had a more loving message and did not condemn the majority of the human race most of the time, it might make the SBC brand an easier sell. Jettisoning bigots like Richard Land might be a positive first step in the process.

Wednesday Male Beauty

Pat Robertson Embarrasses Yet Again

Perennial embarrassment to the Hampton Roads area, Pat Robertson could not resist putting in his deranged two cents on the Rick Warren issue and the issue of gays in the military. It's pretty common knowledge to those dealing with a full deck - which of course excludes Pat - that there are THOUSANDS of gays currently serving in the military in this area with NO ill effects on the armed forces. Nonetheless anti-gay bigots such as Robertson always seem to obsess over those gays in the showers who might "check out" their straight compatriots. What kills me the most is that all too often the straights that worry about gays looking at them flatter themselves because NO ONE would want to look at them, naked or clothed. We gays do have our standards of male beauty which exclude these idiots. Here are highlights of Pat's latest idiocy:

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CNN went to longtime homophobe Pat Robertson to get his $.02 on the Rick Warren controversy, asking if he agreed with Tony Perkins that Warren was being used as a "pawn" by Obama.

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Robertson: "[Rick Warren] has his own agenda. I think he'll stick to it. After all, he's been asked to give an invocation. He hasn't been asked to endorse Obama."

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As a special bonus they got an answer out of him on whether or not he agrees with Colin Powell that the ban on gays in the military should be repealed.

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Robertson: "It seemed to be the unanimous decision of the military leadership that the question of open homosexuality in the barracks and the showers was not a good thing for the discipline of the troops."

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Funny how outed former Congressman Ed Schrock likewise whined about gays in the showers even while he was seeking gay hook ups via Mega Phone. Has Robertson stopped to ponder what that perhaps says about him?

Our Own Private Homophobia

In doing my early hours scan of favorite blogs I came across a post on Pams's House Blend by a write using the name "QScribe" that describes what many of us have experienced in our lives, either as the constant victim or as the one too terrified to do the right thing. For my own part, I experienced both roles at differing times in my life and for me it is something that no child or youth should have to ever experience. Of course, one of the main forces that helps maintain such abuse is the snake oil peddled by Pharisee like Christians like Rick Warren and Benedct XVI. The fact that these people peddle such poison without any regard to the harm they cause - or perhaps even enjoying the harm they do to others - sickens me and makes me angry and resolved to try to expose such "Christians" and others of their ilk for the foul individuals they are in reality. It is why I cannot let the Rick Warren issue pass without doing my best to have his hypocrisy and hate exposed. I recommend a full read of the post and here are some highlights:

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When I was five years old I had a boyfriend. Yes, that’s right, five. He was the kid across the street, and his name was Davy. He was just about exactly my age, and he had flame red hair and the bluest eyes you can imagine. (The red hair got imprinted on me. To this day I’m a sucker for a guy who’s a redhead.)We were “best friends,” the way kids that age often are. Inseparable. Constantly together. On alternate nights, we’d sleep over at each other’s houses, in each other’s beds. In each other’s arms. I’m sure it was terribly naive of me, but Davy seemed the only one I’d ever want to share my life with. To the extent two kids that age can be in love, we were. . . . But it ended when I was eight and my family moved to another neighborhood. That was that. No more boyfriend love for this kid. It took me ages to get over the loss.

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Fast forward to high school. . . . my parents put me into a Catholic high school. . . . Davy was there. His hair had darkened a bit, but I knew him the moment I saw him. It took me awhile to get over the shock of seeing him again (I can be pretty slow on the uptake). Then the truth sank in, a truth I was hardly prepared to deal with.Davy had turned out queeny. He was the school faggot, the one who got beaten up and spit on just for walking down the hall. The ultimate outsider. And since this was a good, loving, Catholic school, the abuse was vicious, frequent and unrelenting.

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Much too terrified to bond with him again, to let anyone suspect I was “one of them.” I forced myself to be polite but aloof to him. And it killed me. Almost literally. That awful mixture of desire for him and fear of being like him paralyzed me in more ways than I could begin to list here . . . I even remember him approaching me once and asking me, almost in tears, if we could be friends again. I was too terrified to do anything but stare at him and then walk away.Since high school I have never seen him again. I’d give anything to be able to find him again—and apologize for what I did to him and for what I had let myself become.
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A part of me—and only a part—hates straight society for what it does to us. It wasn’t Davy’s queeniness that kept me away from him . . . ; it was blind terror of what would happen to me, and to us. Every time I saw him punched in the school hallway, I died a little. But I was too crippled by fear to do a thing about it.

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When I see “men of God” attacking us on TV; when I hear clowns like Rick Warren quoting ancient texts to prove there was something wrong with the uncomplicated love these two boys felt for each other; when I hear of families being torn apart by bigoted churches and their ballot initiatives; the blend of sorrow and rage I feel an hardly be expressed. We must keep fighting, all of us, not only for ourselves and our relationships but for all the gay kids yet to come.

Questions Obama Must Answer

A little while ago, I was listening to Rachel Maddow discussing Rick Warren's latest video to his church congregation wherein he stated out right lies and accused his gay critics being "Christi-phobes." Using past video taped interviews, Rachel basically made Warren look like a pathological liar and the one who is trafficking in hate speech as opposed to his critics. Rachel's segment also looked at the way in which the Warren "scandal" seems to be growing rather than diminishing. I continue to ask myself WTF was Obama thinking?
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More scathing, however is Christopher Hitchens' column in Slate which not only rightly looks at all the things that make Warren a poor choice on Obama's part, but also asks questions that Obama now needs to answer given his disastrous pick of Warren. I suspect that unless Obama acts quickly to eliminate the Warren problem, it will continue to fester and increasingly harm Obama's image. Here are some column highlights:

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If we must have an officiating priest, surely we can do better than this vulgar huckster. . . . It is theoretically possible to make an apparently bigoted remark that is also factually true and morally sound. . . . However, if the speaker says that heaven is a real place but that you will not get there if you are Jewish, or that Mormonism is a cult and a false religion but that other churches and faiths are the genuine article, then you know that the bigot has spoken.

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That's all in a day's work for the wonderful world of the American evangelical community, and one wishes them all the best of luck in their energetic fundraising and their happy-clappy Sunday "Churchianity" mega-feel-good fiestas. However, do we want these weirdos and creeps officiating in any capacity at the inauguration of the next president of the United States?

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It is a fact that Rick Warren, pastor of the Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., was present at a meeting of the Aspen Institute not long ago and was asked by Lynda Resnick—she of the pomegranate-juice dynasty—if a Jew like herself could expect to be admitted to paradise. Warren publicly told her no.

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It is also a fact that Rick Warren proclaims as his original mentor a man named Wallie Amos Criswell, who was the inspirational figure in the rightward move of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1960s. Rightward in that time and context meant exactly what you might suspect it did—a cold hostility to any civil rights activism on the part of the churches.

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I think we are all entitled to ask and to keep asking every member of the Obama transition team until we receive a satisfactory answer, the following questions:

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1. Will Warren be invited to the solemn ceremony of inauguration without being asked to repudiate what he has directly said to deny salvation to Jews?

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2. Will he be giving a national invocation without disowning what his mentor said about civil rights and what his leading supporter says about Mormons?

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3. Will the American people be prayed into the next administration, which will be confronted by a possible nuclear Iran and an already nuclear Pakistan, by a half-educated pulpit-pounder raised in the belief that the Armageddon solution is one to be anticipated with positive glee?

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As Barack Obama is gradually learning, his job is to be the president of all Americans at all times. . . . However, the man he has chosen to deliver his inaugural invocation is a relentless clerical businessman who raises money on the proposition that certain Americans—non-Christians, the wrong kind of Christians, homosexuals, nonbelievers—are of less worth and littler virtue than his own lovely flock of redeemed and salvaged and paid-up donors. This quite simply cannot stand.

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[I]f we must have an officiating priest, let it be some dignified old hypocrite with no factional allegiance and not a tree-shaking huckster and publicity seeker who believes that millions of his fellow citizens are hellbound because they do not meet his own low and vulgar standards.

More Tuesday Male Beauty

A Gay Secretary of the Navy? - Oh My!!

Last week I reported that there was speculation that Obama might select William White, an openly gay man, for Secretary of the Navy. At the time, I speculated that professional homo-hater, Elaine Donnelly, would be having fainting fits and worse over the thought of a gay man in charge of all those young Navy boys. Well, Donnelly has not disappointed and AFA's faux news site, OneNewsNow, has a story quoting Donnelly - who has ZERO military experience herself - and her over wrought whining about White's potential appointment. Frankly, I see such an appointment as unlikely given Obama's embrace of Christo-fascist, Rick Warren. Here are some highlights*:

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Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, hopes president-elect Obama will not appoint the open homosexual White to such a high-level post as secretary of the Navy. "Frankly I think it would show poor judgment on his part to make this type of an appointment," she shares -- and admits White's name coming up was "something of a surprise" to friends of hers to know White, like him, and appreciate his work.

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"[But] if he is identified as [being considered for Navy secretary] and becomes a symbol of the issue of gays in the military, that could distort the debate in Congress -- and that's what I'm concerned about," laments the military watchdog. "Congress needs to look at this very objectively."

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"I don't think it ought to be a purely political appointment," she says of the Navy secretary's position. "[But] the fact that there is no military experience there would argue that he was appointed for some other reason -- and if that reason is perceived to be support for repeal of the law on gays in the military, that would be the problem."

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For those who have forgotten, when Ms. Donnelly testified before the House Armed Services Committee back earlier in the year, she came across as a total nut case - which of course she is - and was mocked on The Daily Show for her insane conduct. She has any military credentials and no credibility outside of Kool-Aid drinking circles. If Elaine Donnelly is the best that the GOP and Christianists have to offer, they should yield the field and get out of the way of DADT.

Bush/Cheney's Parting Gift: Home Sales and Prices Drop at Record Pace

The economic gift of the Chimperator and the rubber stamp, more deregulation GOP Congress that he had for six and one half years just keeps on giving - bad news that is. Home sales and home prices dropped at a record rate last month and sadly things do not appear to be bottoming out as yet. As I have been saying since the summer of 2007 or longer, unless and until the residential real estate market is stabilized and turned around, the larger economy will continue to nose dive. Supposed foreclosure assistance is not yielding results and the banking institutions that have received billions of dollars in taxpayer funds are not passing the relief on to consumers either in terms of loan modifications or easing the difficulty many credit worthy borrowers are experiencing in securing loans. What may turn out to be a refinance boom may save some working in the real estate industry, but it will otherwise probably yield little boost to the economy. Here are some highlights from Reuters:

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The pace of existing home sales plunged a record 8.6 percent in November and prices fell a record amount as layoffs and a stock market crash worsened an already grim housing market, a real estate trade group said Tuesday. The median home price fell 13.2 percent on an annual basis, down for a fifth straight month to $181,300. It was the largest drop since the current data series began in 1968 and probably the largest since the Great Depression.

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The quickly deteriorating conditions in the job market, stock market and consumer confidence in October and November have knocked down home sales to another level," Yun [Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors] said. "It is, therefore, imperative to provide incentives for homebuyers to get back into the market, Yun said.

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The housing malaise, which triggered a global financial crisis, has infected other sectors of the broader economy and sent unemployment rates higher. Analysts says stability in the housing sector is key to any recovery in the U.S. economy, which has been in a recession since late last year.

Tuesday Male Beauty

Rick Warren Fall Out Continues

UPDATED: My friend Lyndon has an excellent post over at My Two Cents that does a great analysis of the message Obama is sending by selecting a Christo-fascist like Rick Warren. Here is a highlight:

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When Warren or anyone else for that matter, finds fault with a group of individuals because they don't fit into his stringent, bigoted views of lifestyle and perceived religious dogma, that can only give the perpetrators of the December 13 attack [the svage rape and brutalization of a lesbian in the San Francisco area] and others the attitude and view, that it is not only alright to carry out such an act, but is acceptable to do so "because they are different".

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As noted last night on this blog and others, including Pam's House Blend, Mike Rogers was on Hardball and went after the Warren apologists and did a great job of it. It increasingly seems that Warren is attempting to do damage control - Lisa Derrick's post, "Saddleback Site Removes Anti-Gay Statements, Warren Lies to Congregation looks at some of Warren's efforts. I believe that it is important that the scrutiny of his anti-gay rhetoric - and general intolerance to all who are not fellow Kool-Aid drinkers - remains ratcheted up. In today's Washington Post, Richard Cohen has a column that likewise looks at the negative fall out that continues from Obama's selection of Warren to give the inaugural invocation. It also suggests that Obama may not have the guts to do what's right when it comes to equality under the law for LGBT Americans. Here are some highlights:

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Not that he was planning to attend, but Barack Obama should know that my sister's inauguration night party -- the one for which she was preparing Obama Punch -- has been canceled. The notice went out over the weekend, by e-mail and word of mouth, that Obama's choice of Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation had simply ruined the party. Warren is anti-gay, and my sister, not to put too fine a point on it, is not. She's gay. She is -- or was -- a committed Obama supporter.

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"I'm opposed to redefinition of a 5,000-year definition of marriage," Warren told Beliefnet.com's Steve Waldman. "I'm opposed to having a brother and sister being together and calling that marriage. I'm opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage. I'm opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage." Waldman asked, "Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?" "Oh, I do," said Warren.

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There you have the thinking of the man Obama has chosen above all other religious figures to represent him in this most solemn moment. He likens my sister's relationship -- three children, five grandchildren, so loving as to be envied and so conventional as to be boring -- to incest or polygamy.

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But the real problem has nothing to do with ministers and everything to do with Obama's inability or unwillingness to be a moral leader. Sooner or later, he just might have to stand for something. This was apparent to me almost a year ago when I reported that Obama's church, the Trinity United Church of Christ, had given a major award to Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam.

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Now we have a repeat of that episode. This time it is not Obama's preacher who has decided to honor a bigot, it is Obama himself. And, once again, we get the same sort of rationalizations. . . . Sounds nice. But what we do not "hold in common" is the dehumanization of homosexuals. What we do not hold in common is the belief that gays are perverts who have chosen their sexual orientation on some sort of whim. What we do not hold in common is the exaltation of ignorance that has led and will lead to discrimination and violence.

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Finally, what we do not hold in common is the categorization of a civil rights issue -- the rights of gays to be treated equally -- as some sort of cranky cultural difference. For that we need moral leadership, which, on this occasion, Obama has failed to provide. For some people, that's nothing to celebrate.