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The Indiana Senate will take our state to the brink of civil war this week when it votes, by a biblically thumping margin, to inscribe injustice into the Indiana Constitution.
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The Senate Judiciary Committee set the stage last week when it endorsed the ban on same-sex marriage and, for good measure, refused to make an exception for civil unions, under which gay couples enjoy various benefits of family partnership such as inheritance and hospital visitation.
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By voting to deny any and all government recognition to potentially thousands of loving households, the people's elected servants put the lie once and for all to their hollow refrain that they seek to defend "traditional marriage" and not to attack anyone.
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The Catholic Church, which sanctimoniously blesses this appalling agenda, and the Catholic state attorney general, who piously promises to defend it, ought to at least stop kidding themselves and us, their fellow Catholics, that they're following the Gospels.
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It is a Christianity Jesus would not recognize that fuels this crusade, and it is a religious war that will ensue.
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Gay and lesbian Hoosiers, with their many friends, will take to the streets, demonstrating that they have children, church memberships, paid-up taxes and no horns. "Family values" fanatics will hold thunderous rallies against the diabolical menace of full citizenship for their neighbors. They'll demand "tolerance" for their "principles," and denounce the anger they stir in those they pronounce beneath them.
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Who will say discrimination is discrimination -- and no law, no constitutional amendment and no process that perpetuates it is acceptable?
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The dogs of war, thus, appear loosed. Polite society is unmoved and shaken. It shall be a time of moral testing, much like that which prompted William Butler Yeats to write a lasting epitaph: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
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Yet again I find myself thinking that the world would likely be a better place if Christianity - or at least the conservative version of it - were a dead religion. Hatred of others, hypocrisy and unwarranted self-righteousness seem to be its only real fruits.
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