Colorado Faith Leaders Link Religion to Anti-gay Bigotry

It's always nice to see others affirm one's opinions. As I continually stress, the ONLY real basis for anti-gay legislation and the deprivation of full equality for LGBT citizens is RELIGION. In Colorado where a civil unions bill is pending, a group of faith leaders has come forward to support the legislation and have called out Christians who use faith as a justification for intolerance and bigotry. Indeed, they make it clear that only a perverse version of religious beliefs motivates the anti-gay efforts of the morally bankrupt leaders of the Catholic Church, self-enriching professional Christians at Focus on the Family and similar quasi-hate groups. Here are some highlights from The Colorado Independent on one of the rare occasions nowadays where religious leaders actually support equality under the civil laws (would that more faith leaders would speak out and stop yielding the field to hate):
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In advance of a committee hearing scheduled for Monday on state Senator Pat Steadman’s civil unions bill, Colorado faith leaders held a press conference at the capitol Thursday expressing support for the bill. Their presence at the capitol was frank acknowledgment of the way opposition to the legal recognition of rights for gay domestic partners has long been made on the basis of religion. In fact, religion stands on both sides of this issue, they said, and the issue, especially as addressed in Steadman’s bill, is about constitutional rights.
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“This bill is not about morality. It’s not about religion. It’s not about faith. It’s about basic civil rights,” said Rabbi Joseph Black from Temple Emanuel in Denver. He explained that the reason he was speaking out in favor of the bill as a faith leader was, in effect, to set the record straight.

“For too long the loudest voice from the religious community in regard to GLBT community has been that of condemnation and denunciation and that needs to change,” he said. “You’re going to be hearing opposition to this bill from faith communities and we just wanted you to know that that’s not the only voice that’s out there.”
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The religious leaders described Steadman’s SB 172 as a hard-core civil rights bill, explaining that it extends rights presently denied to gay citizens of the state and it also strengthens the right to religious freedom. . . . . The bill would extend tax breaks as well as adoption, estate-planning, medical decision-making and prison-visitation rights, for example– rights married couples take for granted.
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Just as important for many faith leaders around Colorado, the bill bolsters the right to religious freedom by granting legal recognition to presently unrecognized domestic unions entered into out of religious motivation and blessed by faith leaders. It also protects the right of religious leaders to refuse to recognize or solemnize unions that fall outside of or challenge their beliefs.
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The search for non-religious reasons to oppose Steadman’s civil unions bill can end in shadows and fog. Arguments referring to “common sense” and “long tradition” or even the “diminishment of the identity of marriage” offered almost exclusively by religious leaders and spokespeople serve mostly to beg questions. Attorneys, judges and citizens around the country have been led by such arguments to ask why “tradition” or “common sense” or something as vague as “diminishment of the identity of marriage” should ever be enough to deny adult tax-paying Americans rights?
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[T]here are literally hundreds of legal rights and responsibilities littered throughout the state statutes that accrue to married Coloradans that aren’t presently available to gay couples,