Three major myths about marriage.

Due to a request I received I was doing some historical reading on the topic of the evolution of marriage. It is surprising, at least to me, how many modern myths about marriage exist. Primarily this is due to the fact that the so-called defenders of traditional marriage are not defending traditional marriage at all—they are defending their own unique religious version of marriage.

Their version tends to go along the lines that marriage is a “God-ordained” institution that is between one man and one woman and has been so for all of history. They often make more ridiculous claims as well. By “God-ordained” what they mean is the Christian deity in particular. The alleged gods of other faiths don’t matter to them.

So let us look at some of these myths, and a few others, about marriage.

Myth #1

Marriage has not always been about one man and one woman. History is filled with accounts of polygamy. Some of the most fanatical defenders of “traditional marriage,” the Mormons, are themselves frequently descendants of polygamists. Mormonism taught polygamy and condemned the “one man, one woman” concept of marriage.

The Bible, for what it is worth, claims that polygamy was quite common with the leading prophets and characters of Scripture. Esau had two wives; Abraham was married to Sarah and Hagar. We are told that King David had multiple wives and concubines both, as did Solomon. The Ethnographic Atlas discusses some 1231 societies in history. Of those only 186 practiced monogamy. Four allowed multiple husbands and the rest, 1041 of them, practiced polygamy to one degree or another. Polygamy is still practiced around the world and some Mormon fundamentalists still practice their own unique form of polygamy.

There has never been a time when marriage was exclusive limited to “one man and one woman.”

Myth #2

It is claimed that marriage has always been between individuals of the opposite sex. Christians, in particular, are known to make this pronouncement with utter assurance. Yet this simply is not true.

Consider that the Christian emperor of Rome, Theodosius II, created a code of Christian law for the Roman Empire. In that code he specifically banned same-sex marriage. Why? Why ban something that was never practiced? In fact it was practiced and it was well known.

One historian writes:

Marriages between males or between females were legal and familiar among the upper classes. Even under the Republic, as has been noted, Cicero regard the younger Curio’s relationship with another man as a marriage, and by the time of the early Empire references to gay marriages are commonplace. The biographer of Elagabalus maintains that after the emperor’s marriage to an athlete from Smyrna, any male who wished to advance at the imperial court either had to have a husband or pretend that he did. Martial and Juvenal both mention public ceremonies involving the families, dowries and legal niceties.

In the case involving the great Roman statesman, Cicero, he was approached by Curio the Elder asking for advice. Curio’s son was in a marriage relationship with another male. Cicero’s own description of the two men was that they were “united in a stable and permanent marriage, just as if he [Curio the Younger] had given him [his partner] a matron’s stola.” The stola was an item that married women wore to indicate they were off the marriage market.

A related myth, I might add, is the nonsense spouted by Conservatives that the collapse of Rome came about because it tolerated homosexuality. As already noted, Rome under Christian rule, became more intolerant of homosexuality long before it collapsed. The banning of same-sex marriage was the first step of a series of anti-gay laws. In addition to becoming more socially intolerant Rome became more and more authoritarian during the last days of the Empire. For instance, Theodosius also had 65 edicts against so-called heretics. In essence Rome became less economically free, less socially tolerant and more war-like and this fatal combination destroyed Rome. (For an economic history of the Roman welfare state see The New Deal in Old Rome.) Rome was tolerant of gays when during its height and least tolerant before its collapse. Christians, however, did become tolerated and they ruled Rome during the fall of the empire.

Myth #3

Many on the religious right claim that marriage was a “divine institution” all along and that the state took control of marriage from the church.

This is utterly false. Marriage was neither connected to the church or to the state for much of human history. A marriage basically amounted to two individuals announcing their marriage to friends and family and setting up house. There may have been a “wedding feast” as depicted in the New Testament but there was no church ceremony. Early Christian churches had nothing to do with marriage. They did not perform marriages.

The first attempt by the Christian sect to take control of marriage was in 1545 when the Council of Trent announced that marriages would no longer be recognized as valid unless a priest performed them with two witnesses present. Prior to that a marriage was considered valid if two individuals merely pledged themselves to one another, regardless if anyone else knew about the matter. Martin Luther went further than Calvin and said marriage was “of the earthly kingdom” and “subject to the prince, not to the Pope.”

It was the misnamed “Reformations” who brought in state control of marriage. Protestant leaders invited the state to take control of marriage. John Calvin’s “Marriage Ordinance of Geneva” required a state permit and church consecration before a marriage was recognized. This was in 1545 as well.

The state did not take over marriage. First, marriage was entirely private without interference of either church or state. Catholicism started to exert control over marriage in 1545 and then the Protestant Reformations demanded that the state take ultimate control over marriage. Of course, they assumed the state would be under their control at the time. Certainly when Calvin pushed his detailed regulations of marriage onto the law books in Geneva he was, for all intents and purposes, the ruler of that poor city.

Illustration: As an illustration for this posting I include a copy of William Hogarth's 1743 painting, The Marriage Settlement. It is clear that marriage at that time was often seen as primarily a business relationship and not much more. The bride is being courted, not by her future husband (to her left) who is ignoring her and may be portrayed as gay, but by an attorney. Her father is wealthy, the grooms father is broke but holds a title as Earl. The bride's father wants to merge his family into that of royalty while the Earl is anxious to get money from the wealthy father of the bride. You can see the pile of money in front of the Earl.

False poll pushed in California.

I recently said that it is my observation that religious people seem more willing to falsify claims and I used the lies being spread by the religious coalition that is backing Proposition 8 to strip gays of equal marital rights. Some people were unhappy about that -- generally religious people. I expected as much.

But I stated my observations because they are my observations and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. The false claims that were recently made, and are still be promulgated, by the Yes on 8 campaign were such obvious falsifications that one can’t attribute them to carelessness or simply having a different view.

Now the followers who spread these lies were not quite guilty of the same sin. The originators at Yes on 8 knew the facts and lied about them. The followers just stupidly accepted them because they corresponded with their pre-existing prejudices and beliefs. There were guilty of merely refusing to investigate the truth. They were avoiding the truth not falsifying it.

Another example of this sort of bald-faced dishonesty was recently exhibited by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization that has poured over $1 million into the antigay campaign in California.

They publicized a poll they commissioned on their web site which they say proves that Prop 8 is going to pass easily. But the way they conducted this poll was inherently dishonest. They revised the wording of the actual ballot initiative. On the ballot Prop 8 is described thusly: “Eliminates right of same-sex couples to marry.” In the poll it was” Limit on Marriage Constitutional Amendment” to “say that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid...” They make no mention of it removing rights from gay couples.

But these pollsters didn’t ask people simple questions about whether they support Prop 8 or oppose it. They engaged in a shady practice called “push polling”. This practice skews the results intentionally as a political tactic. It isn’t meant at finding out what people think but is an attempt to change how they think.

An instance of this would be someone polling people with the question: “Would you vote for Candidate A., if you discovered he recently beat his wife until she was bloody before violently attacking his children?” A proper polling question asks what someone thinks. An improper polling question makes arguments for a particular position in order to skew the results. That is what the Knights of Columbus did with their so-called poll.

Here are a few of their questions. Voters were asked whether they would support or oppose Proposition 8 “if they learned that...”

If Proposition 8 passes, gay or lesbian couples will still be able to form civil unions and have the same rights as married heterosexual couples. If Proposition 8 fails, heterosexual couples who want to be legally married in a church that won’t perform same sex marriage would then have to be married outside their church. If Proposition 8 fails, priests, ministers, and other clergy who won’t perform same-sex marriages because of their religious beliefs will face lawsuits and may lose their right to perform heterosexual marriages.

It is surprising with questions like this that any voters were opposed to Proposition 8. I’d vote for Prop 8 if this were true. That it isn’t true doesn’t seem to matter to this Catholic organization. The initiative takes away the right of gay couples to marry. If gays don’t have the right to marry then how do they have all the same rights that married straight couples have. One has the right to marry, the other does not.

And the California Supreme Court, in the ruling on the legality of gay marriage, said that no religious institution has to change their beliefs. No one can be forced to perform gay weddings.

Another “question” claimed that schools will be forced to teach gay marriage. All the major education officials in the state have said this is simple not true. The president of the State Board of Education said this was “political campaigning at its worst.” But what are facts when your defending the faith?

To defend one lie Prop 8 proponents lie again.

It will upset readers for me to say this, but why change tactics now? The most dishonest people I’ve ever meet have been religious. The more religious they are the more dishonest they feel they have the right to be. Of course, they don’t just lie about anything. They only lie to push their religious agenda and that discrimination allows them to feel sanctimonious.

The religious groups operating the Yes on Prop 8 campaign are as big a batch of liars as I’ve ever seen. I outlined already how their ad campaign on Prop 8, to strip gay couples of equality before the law, was one lie after another. Now, they have a press release out allegedly proving their case regarding one of those lies.

That lie was the so-called requirement to teach gay marriage in the schools. They reported on 18 first graders going to San Francisco city hall for the marriage of their teacher to her same-sex partner. The Godly bigots said this was “overt indoctrination of children who are too young to have an understanding of its purpose.” This supposedly proves how gay marriage will be required course work at school Typically the Prop 8 Christians avoid telling the public all the facts.

It is true that 18 children were allowed to go to wait outside City Hall where their teacher was being married but they don't appear to have actually gone to the ceremony. But not one child went to that event without parental permission. If there was indoctrination it was indoctrination by the parents. Are the Christians now wanting to strip parents of the right to teach their values to their children?

Why are they lying and pretending that this was government indoctrination? They are doing it because the truth doesn’t back up their bigotry.

The field trip was not even the schools idea. The actual news reports on the field trip reported: “A parent came up with the idea for the field trip -- a surprise for the teacher on her wedding day.” So the idea came from parents not from the school. And the reports noted that every student who went was required to have parental permission to attend. Students whose parents objected did NOT attend but studied with another first grade class as the school. No student was forced to attend and the only “indoctrination” was the child’s own parents wanting him or her to do this. Video I watched of the event seemed to show a group of parents standing behind their children to greet the teacher. This is what parental choice looks like and the Christians don't like it. Choice to them means choosing what they want only.

There is another thing left out of all this. The school in question is the Creative Arts Charter School. Up until now I thought conservatives were fond of Charter Schools precisely because they do give more control to parents. The Charter School organization says these schools “operate with freedom from many of the regulations that apply to traditional public schools.” That is what attracted conservatives to the idea. And major conservative think tanks have been in the forefront of promoting Charter Schools precisely because they more controlled by the parents and less controlled by the bureaucrats.

So, here we have a case where a Charter School is being attacked by the religious coalition pushing Prop 8 who send out press releases attacking this field trip which are now being picked up by fanatical Christian web sites and news sites by the dozens. And these Christians intentionally left out critical information. Let’s look at precisely how they selectively left out facts to promote their cause.

1. They never tell the readers that it was a Charter School -- in fact they went to great lengths to avoid mentioning the name of the school lest it lead to someone discovering the facts. That this school is free of many government regulation with more parental controlled was ignored by them. Instead they said this proved how government would act if gay marriage remains legal.

2. They referred to this as a school sponsored field trip but they never mentioned the idea came from parents not from the school. And it appears several parents accompanied the students to the wedding. Also the students were not inside the wedding as the “Yes on 8” people imply. They stood outside City Hall and greeted the teacher when she came out but they do not appear to have attended the actual ceremony.

3. They called it indoctrination without mentioning that every single child who attended did so at the request of their parents not at the behest of the school. Of the students in the classroom two sets of parents did not want their children to go and those children were excused. There was NO indoctrination. It was a voluntary activity started by parents and done at their request.

As much as the Prop 8 people whine about being pro-family what they did here was attack parental rights. For this was not government indoctrination at work at all -- it was parents exercising their right to teach their values to their children. What has the Christians pissed off is that parents weren’t teaching the values that these bigots demand everyone live by. While they are pretending to support parental choice they are actually pushing for conformity where everyone must abide by their stilted “Biblical” view of the world. In this case, the parents of the 18 students who went to the wedding disagree with that view, so the Christians are attacking their right to decide what values they will have taught to their children. They call this attack “pro-family”. Sure, it is,

By the way, the Prop 8 people knew they were lying to the public. They used photos from a San Francisco Chronicle article on their web site. The article mentioned the name of the school, mentioned that the trip was a parent’s idea and explicitly said that all the students had parental permission to attend. So, while the Yes on 8 crowd read the article and borrowed the photo for their website, they just ignored all the facts which stripped their story of all its power. Lying for Jesus -- it’s the in thing in their circles.

UPDATE: Further news reports have confirmed what I suspected based on photos and video of the event. The children did NOT attend the wedding as the Prop 8 people have been claiming. They waited outside City Hall to greet their teacher. Almost nothing about this story, as promoted by the Prop 8 people, is true. However, the falseness of the report has not prevented Christianist web sites from reporting the falsehoods verbatim as the truth.

Hypocrites, gay marriage and polygamy

There is a lot of disinformation being spread by the religious lobby that is promoting California’s Prop 8 to remove marriage rights of gay couples.

I’m of two mind as to why the falsehoods. I concede that some of these people are just deluded and actually believe the crap that is being spread. But others, particularly those who put together these propaganda pieces, must know better.

One television commercial, paid for by the out-of-state money poured into California by the Mormons and Catholics, is basically a string of lies from start to finish. For the most part the ad is actually focusing on laws totally unrelated to marriage -- anti-discrimination laws in particular. And these laws will remain in effect whether or not gay marriage is allowed. Yet they give the viewer the impression that gay marriage is causing these things.

Prof. Dale Carpenter has done a good analysis of the commercial and the lies that are told over at the conservative-libertarian legal site, Volokh Conspiracy. And I will synopsize what he said. If you find it interesting you should read his original report.

Lie #1

The Christians claimed that “People are being sued over personal beliefs.” That is not true. There is a case when a medical care group was sued because a physician refused to offer services to a woman who was a lesbian. But the suit had nothing to do with marriage and was based on the Unruh Civil Rights Act, which was passed long before gay marriage was an issue.

Normally I argue that any individual has the right to discriminate on any basis they wish. But there is one big exception and one likely exception. A public servant has no such right when acting in a governmental role. For instance, a fire fighter can’t stand aside and let a house burn just because he harbors prejudices against the inhabitants. Clerks in offices can’t refuse to serve people based on their religious beliefs. Government employees do not, and can not, have the rights of private employees in competitive markets because the public does not have other alternatives. If the employees don’t wish to serve all the public then they should find private employment.

There is a second category which is a difficult one because it is semiprivate and semi-public. These are the professions which are cartelized by government edict protecting the workers from a truly competitive market. This would include physicians for instance. Since the medical profession has worked heavily to regulate the free market out of existence they enjoy higher wages than they would in a truly competitive market. I am not unsympathetic to laws which treat such legal cartelized professions as if they were public enterprises similar to the state.

In some areas the market has a limited number of pharmacists or physicians who are legally allowed to offer services. If these individuals indulge every prejudice they have they can literally leave people without options except to travel long distances. In other areas, especially in some urban areas, their are numerous options for the same service. The limitation of options is something these professions and their professional organizations have lobbied for and work hard to maintain. Since they work to cartelize their profession I’m not adverse to laws forbidden them to indulge their own prejudices. I don’t think I’d introduce such a law if I were a legislator but I would hesitatingly vote for it. And there is enough ambiguity here that I would leave the matter to the individual states to regulate and wouldn’t get too upset regardless of which way the vote went.

But the claim that people are being sued for their personal beliefs is false. The law suit was over conduct not belief and it was in a cartelized profession with competition limited by law. But, most importantly, the issue of gay marriage had absolutely nothing to do with the matter. Abolish gay marriage and the same law suit could take place tomorrow. It is a lie to imply this situation is about gay marriage.

I noticed that some commentators on Volokh, who are anti equality, pointed to other cases in other states to prove the ad is correct. Yet, none of the cases, had anything to do with gay marriage. In fact, some of the states in question don’t allow gay marriage or civil unions.

Lie #2

The Christians claim that churches could lose their tax exemption.

Again this isn’t over gay marriage. The Christian television ad cites an article that mentions how churches using their tax-exempt status to promote legislation could lose their tax exemption. But this is true about any legislation. The position that government has long taken is that if one wants to act as a political lobbyist you are free to do so but not free to collect income on a tax-exempt basis. Churches pay for none of the services they receive from the state yet few of them eschew those services. They want garbage collection, sewers, water, police protection, fire protection and often want special services offered to them because they attract crowds. But they don’t want to pay for them.

There is a case to be made that they should pay full costs like everyone else instead of being government welfare cases. But they can avoid taxes all they want provided they aren’t using their religious status as a cover for political activity. This is true about any issue and not just gay marriage. Again the evidence they cite has nothing to do with gay marriage.

Lie #3

The Christians claimed that if gay are allowed to marry that gay marriage will be taught in the schools. They are a bit vague as to what this means. I doubt, for instance, that there will be classes on how to be gay or how to marry a gay person, etc. They point to a law, which I suspect they helped pass in the first place, requiring schools to teach respect for marriage. Try to repeal this requirement and the Christians will howl and argue that you are anti-marriage and anti-Christian. Keep the law and they will use it to beat gay marriage over the head. I don’t see how they can have it both ways. I’d repeal the law and leave views of marriage up to the parents not the schools. But I assure you that the Christians want it the other way.

However, Carpenter points out that gay marriage wouldn’t change this law in any way. The law also now includes a provision saying the schools should teach respect for “all committed relationships”. That would include non-married couples as well. He also points out that no school actually has to teach anything about marriage and can avoid the topic. And where it comes up in sex education classes California law allows any parent to remove their child from that class. As Prof. Carpenter notes: “whether or not gay marriage continues, and whether or not Prop 8 passes, individual school districts and parents will retain ultimate control over whether and what children are taught about gay relationships and marriages. If they fail to exercise that authority in conformity with their beliefs, that failure can hardly be blamed on gay couples who want to be married.”

Some thoughts:

The first thing that strikes me about the ad is that they entirely avoid their actual motivation for their crusade against equality for gay couples. They are motivated by religion not by the alleged secondary affects of gay marriage. But they know that the majority of Californians are not religious fanatics swayed by quotes out of the Bible or the Book of Mormon. So they invent claims that make them appear to be the victim while they push for legislation that gives their religious views a privileged status in the law.

Secondly, it is curious to see the Mormons and Catholics banning together for this. I can’t think of two Christian sects which have had more sexual pathology attached to them than these two. Mormonism has never been able to full shake off its polygamous nature and their prophet invented a divine revelation to justify his philandering behind his wife’s back.

Included in his repertoire of many wives were several teenaged girls. Considering we are talking about the mid 1800s we should recognize that girls entered puberty much later in life than today. Smith’s 14-year-old wife may have been the modern equivalent of a 12 year old or younger. Smith married eight teenage brides. Of course he kept the polygamy secret for many years after he started cheating on the side. Joe Smith had 33 wives including five sets of sisters. His successor, Brigham Young, had 55 wives, ten of whom divorced him. The third LDS leader, Wilford Woodruff had 15 wives, three of whom left him. The fourth church leader had 10 wives at a minimum. The fifth church leader had at lest six wives.

One could argue that the LDS church is making much to do about “one man, one woman, for life” marriage precisely because their history is so filled with the contrary. Many Utah Mormons practiced polygamy well into the 20th century. And even today it is well known that the practice has not died out completely among LDS faithful. Of course there are well known Mormon off-shoos which continue the practice to this day.

Historically Mormon leaders have had nothing but contempt for monogamy. Brigham Young preached:

Monogamy, or restrictions by law to one wife, is no part of the economy of heaven among men. Such a system was commenced by the founders of the Roman empire....Rome became the mistress of the world, and introduced this order of monogamy wherever her sway was acknowledged. Thus this monogamic order of marriage, so esteemed by modern Christians as a holy sacrament and divine institution, is nothing but a system established by a set of robbers.... Why do we believe in and practice polygamy? Because the Lord introduced it to his servants in a revelation given to Joseph Smith, and the Lord's servants have always practiced it.

Prophet John Taylor said the “one-wife system not only degenerates the human family, both physically and intellectually, but it is entirely incompatible with philosophical notions of immortality; it is a lure to temptation, and has always proved a curse to a people.”

Mormon leaders today promote the false claim that the Roman empire fell because of homosexuality. “Prophet” Spencer Kimball called homosexuality a “heinous” sin and claimed, “Many cities and civilizations have gone out of existence because of it.” Included in his alleged litany of civilizations destroyed by gay people was Rome. But earlier Mormon “Apostle” George Cannon claimed that Rome fell because it promoted monogamy. "It is a fact worthy of note that the shortest lived nations of which we have record have been monogamic. Rome...was a monogamic nation and the numerous evils attending that system early laid the foundation for that ruin which eventually overtook her."

Could this zealous crusade to protect the “one-man, one woman” marriage concept be over compensation for their own history of condemning the very practice they now seek to defend?

As for the Catholic Church their sexual pathologies are so well known that it is a waste of time to outline them here. But they ought to be the last in line when it comes to attacking the sexuality of others.

It is certainly a well-known phenomenon that religious leaders who are obsessed with the alleged “sexual sins” of others are very often guilty of similar activities themselves. If this is true it might go a long way to explain why two of the Christian sects, most riddled with sexual problems, are in the forefront of a campaign against gay people.

Photo: Mormon leader and prophet Brigham Young and some of his many wives.

Bravo -- this is right on target

The No on Prop 8 campaign has released their new television commercial and it is enough to make me consider contributing some money to their campaign. This hits the nail on the head.



I know there are a lot of libertarians who don't have anyone they feel they can support in this election. So folks, here is a campaign you can help instead. And the message of this commercial is a good libertarian one. Please go and contribute to the campaign to get more of these commercials on the air before the election.

Today I contributed to a campaign.

I did something today which I hadn't planned on doing -- I gave a political contribution.

This may surprise some of my readers who know I have a complete lack of confidence in any of the major candidates. I still have none. I wouldn't contribute to a candidate today but I did contribute to a campaign.

As my readers would know their is a ballot initiative in California to strip gay couples of the legal equality before the law in regards to marriage. And the Mormons and Catholics have been pouring millions and millions of out-of-state funding into California in an effort to impose their bigoted, theological bullshit into the law. Today I learned that they even had people from outside the state working the phones to call California voters pegged as anti-gay to urge them to the polls to strip gays of this right. All this effort by these two corrupt and immoral institutions pissed me off.

For sometime I wanted to get to San Francisco to visit a friend and we arranged for today to be the day. And since I don't expect to have another chance to be in the area for a long time I made the effort to get there. I remembered that the campaign to stop Proposition 8, which is the anti-gay initiative, had their offices on Market Street. Newspaper articles I had read mentioned the building and it was one I knew fairly well at one time. So I took a little time off from my visit to make my way to the No on Prop 8 campaign headquarters.

Regrettably I had to turn down requests to help work their phone banks, which are actually in California. I told them I wouldn't be in the area long enough to be able to help. But I did want to donate some money. It doesn't match the tens of millions the religious nuts have poured in. And, at the last minute, I doubled the amount I gave. I wish it could have been much, much more.

It disgusts me that the Mormons and the Catholics are so blinded by their own fantasies about god, or gods in the case of the Mormons, that they feel compelled to wage such a hateful campaign. And I have to admit that when I saw the role that an old, but deluded former friend, Jenny Roback, was playing in this campaign of religious intolerance, that I made up my mind to contribute to help stop these nut cases. (I say former because after seeing what she is doing I wouldn't want to be in the same room with her and I doubt I could do so for more than one ten seconds without telling her precisely what I think of her -- and it wouldn't be nice.)

Money to a candidate is always corrupted because one has to pick candidates with hundreds of positions and must ignore their really bad or stupid views just because of a few that you like. In this case the campaign is one issue and one issue only -- should gay couples enjoy the same legal right to marry as other couples. There is no other answer that I can give as a libertarian but "damn right they should." I can find plenty of candidates who will say the same thing but they usually ruin it with stupid comments about nationalized health care or their desire to ban hate speech. With one issue to pick from picking the libertarian side was easy as could be.

I hope you will consider donating something as well. Just go to their web site and make a donation. The immoral bigots are not going to stop and they are flooding the state with tens of millions of dollars to strip gays of their rights. If you don't have a candidate that you can support with any enthusiasm at least this one issue is something worthy of support. Help defeat Proposition 8 -- and since the Mormons can raise funds from out of state then so can I, so you don't have to live in California to contribute. Give something today.

Anti-marriage initiative seems headed down the toilet.

The latest opinion polls in California indicate that Proposition 8, which would strip gay couples of the legal right to marry, is headed toward defeat. Not only has the proposition not been able to win over a majority of voters, it is losing support. Apparently the more that the proponents of the ban campaign the less support they receive.

When the antigay initiative was first placed on the ballot it was trailing by nine points in the polls. Since then the initiative has lost ground and now trails by 17 points. Only 38 percent of the public now expresses support for the measure.

Previously I have reported how religious groups are pouring money into the coffers of the antigay groups that are pushing the initiative. Even that is starting to backfire on them. Bruce Bastian of Orem, Utah learned that Mormons had given large sums of money to the antigay measure. Bastian, who was raised Mormon, got a bit angry about this and decided to make a donation as well. He gave $1 million to defend equal marriage rights. Actor Brad Pitt also tossed in $100,000. Pitt's statement on the matter was pretty much spot on from a libertarian perspective (Bob Barr take note): "Because no one has the right to deny another their life, even though they disagree with it, because everyone has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn't harm another and because discrimination has no place in America, my vote will be for equality and against Proposition 8." By the way, even with donations like these, the religious nutters are clearly winning the money war. Too bad for them, money doesn't buy bigotry.

Lynn Cheney on marriage equality.

A little faith is a dangerous thing.

Barack Obama said: "I think my faith is strong enough and my marriage is strong enough that I can afford those civil rights to others, even if I have a different perspective or a different view." The others in questions were gay couples and the rights he mentioned is a civil union. What is interesting is that Mr. Obama, at the same time, says he is against "same-sex marriage".

Hmmm, it appears his faith and marriage, while strong enough for civil unions, aren't strong enough for actual marriage. What the hell does this clown mean? If there is same-sex marriage does that imply that it would destroy his faith and/or destroy his marriage? Is his attempt to sound progressive to progressives and bigoted to bigots Obama has actually said the dumbest thing of all.

Let's be clear. Obama is saying the same sort of rubbish as the anti-gay Right, he's just trying to sound like he believes in equality. Obama is going one step further than most Right-wing nutters. They say that gay marriage threatens marriage. They never specify why, or how that's possible. They just throw up this vague claim about gays threatening the "institution of marriage". Obama says his marriage is strong enough for civil unions but apparently it is not strong enough for same-sex marriage. In other words gay marriage destroys marriage. That is what this means.

But then Obama jumps in where few homophobes have dared to go. He also said that his faith is strong enough for civil unions but apparently not strong enough for same-sex marriage. Isn't that saying that gay marriage destroys faith?

If so, that is another reason to support gay marriage, in my estimation.

Meanwhile in California the attempt to strip gay couples of their legal marriages seems headed for defeat. And religious groups, mainly from outside California, have flooded the state with millions of dollars to bash the gays at the polls. Two major groups throwing money at the anti-marriage initiative are the Mormons and Knights of Columbus, a Roman Catholic men's group.

I find the defense of "traditional marriage" by these two sects to be most amusing. The first was founded by a horny prophet who couldn't keep his pants zipped so he invented a "revelation" that said having many wives was necessary for spiritual reason -- how convenient! A least one of the prophet's wives was rather young as well. This practice of multiple marriages continued well into the 1900s and is still practiced by fundamentalist Mormons who didn't get the message that God changed his mind. Now mainstream Mormons just practice "spiritual marriages" to more than one wife --- or so they say. But the number of plural wives in Mormon circles is much higher than anyone is willing to admit.

Ronald Reagan once gave a speech to assembled Mormons at the Salt Lake Tabernacle. He repeatedly mangled the abbreviation of the church and kept referring to them as the LSD church instead of the LDS church. But, from my reading of Mormon history, I'm not so sure that Reagan wasn't spot on.

Then we have the Catholic Church, a sect run by celibates, closet cases and child molesters. These are hardly the people to defend "traditional marriage".

Advice from the Catholic Church about marriage and sex is like driving in a car with my late grandmother. Grandma never drove a day in her life. Yet that never stopped her from suddenly yelling out: "Look out for that car" or "Watch the pedestrian." Her sudden shouts were most disturbing, never pointed out a real danger or a problem the driver was unaware of, and just made the drive rather unpleasant. She may have meant well, but with zero experience behind the wheel she ought not to have been offering driving tips at any decibel level.

Because the gays are getting married.

It has been 24 hours now and chaos is breaking everywhere. The shock of it is hard to describe.

Right before my very eyes social disintegration, destruction, death. Can the apocalypse be far behind? But why fear it? It would be a blessing now, a relief from the horror.

Yes, for 24 hours those “activist judges” in our largest state, along with the approval of the state legislature and the governor, are letting gays get married.

And you know the worst part about this horror --- it is not readily apparent. It is chaos that disguises itself as calm -- the very worst kind.

As I drove the California highways today I couldn’t help looking at the happy families in their cars oblivious to the menace. Just down the road radical, homosexual, lesbian, feminist, pinko, activists were defying God and getting married. Even worse, they have an agenda. They always have an agenda.

What will happen when those happy families degenerate and fall apart? They may not even know that it was the fault of those damn liberal,activist judges and their homosexual agenda.

Some will think the marriage fell apart because the man was exercising his biblical mandate to be the head of the family. How else was the wife supposed to submit and the kids obey if he didn’t follow God’s word and smack them around a bit?

Others will think it is because they were cheating on each other. And while God cries when they cheat, at least he smiles because it is a normal perversion. Better a philandering husband than a monogamous gay couple. God prefers Adam cheating on Eve than being faithful to Steve.

Little does the world know that an angry God will inflict his wrath if people dare love one another against his will. And he will do it by making sure that other people are miserable. Look how God destroyed so much of the South with Katrina because he didn’t like a gay party in the French Quarter of New Orleans! Only God in his infinite wisdom can explain why he didn’t actually destroy the French Quarter.

Watch the video above if you want some idea of the pernicious effect of allowing gays to be married.

PS: for the brain dead this is called satire.

The demons of stupidity.

As expected the Theopublican Party is going into a frenzy about the California Supreme Court ruling.

Tom Feeney, a Republican Congressvermin from Florida, whined that “unelected judges have irresponsibly decided to legislate from the bench and overturn the will of the people.”

Poor Mr. Feeny seems unaware that California Supreme Court justices, while originally appointed to office, have to be confirmed by the voters. California voters have confirmed every single member of the state Supreme Court. All seven received the support of between 70% and 75% of the voters. I doubt Mr. Feeny did that well.

Right-wing pundit Hugh Hewett had a fit saying this was a “judicial putsch” which was attacking the “representative nature of the California state government”.

OOPS, once again these Right-wingers shoot off their mouths without checking the facts. Twice the California legislature has voted to legalize gay marriage. Twice Republican governor Schwarzenegger has vetoed the measure. Each time he said he did so because he was waiting for the courts to rule on the matter. He is now appealing to voters to support the Court and says he would oppose any repeal efforts.

There are three branches in government: legislative, judicial and executive. In California the legislature supported gay marriage, the highest judicial branch has done so now, and the executive, Gov. Schwarzenegger, has voiced his own support. That seems to be all three branches on the same page.

Another Theopublican moron, Senator Jim DeMinit of South Carolina attacked the ruling saying it was an example of “elitist liberal judges” imposing “tyranny” on the people. Of the seven judges on the California Supreme Court six of them were appointed by Republicans.

Someone once said that it is better to remain quite and have people assume you are fool than to open your mouth and confirm it.

This is good -- and this is funny.

The California Supreme Court has said that a ban on gay marriage is not kosher. The state constitution guarantees equal protection under the law and this equality was denied by the ban. The court had been considered somewhat conservative so the ruling was not assured.

The ban was immediately denounced by Catholic bishops -- perhaps because age restrictions would still apply as they are equally enforced (even for altar boys). Governor Schwarzenegger said that he would oppose any attempts to overturn the ruling. Conservatives were foaming at the mouth of course. And they immediately started threatening to overturn the measure through a referendum.

But I think that would be a disaster for them. Let us recount a few facts from recent years. One is that when religion-addicts in Massachusetts tried to overturn the measure they had a major problem. After a few of years of gay couples marrying none of the apocalyptic results predicted by the Bible-beaters actually came to pass. Worse yet a lot of people got used to the idea. Even conservatives in the legislature started switching sides on the issue. By the time the signatures were collected to force the legislature to consider a referendum the tide had turned.

Supporters of the referendum had lost their seats in local elections, and with the numbers who had changed their minds, the anti-gay crusaders suddenly found they were in a decided minority. Then the Right-wing loonies tried to push a referendum in Arizona, the Goldwater state, to ban gay marriage. Voters rejected the ban.

Polls have shown that a majority of Californians are comfortable with the idea of same-sex marriage. If I were these sheet-wearing morons I'd squash the referendum idea immediately. A win would be hard going for them, very hard. And a lose in the most populous state of the union would be a major setback. They are better off pretending that the court is "attacking the will of the people" than proving that the people have moved on while the Christianists are still in the Dark Ages.

I'm almost tempted to sign a petition to put the damn thing on the ballot just because I think the it would lose, gay marriage would be affirmed, and a vote doing so in California would be a major blow to the Theopublicans. They simply can't afford to lose a popular vote on the issue and I think they will.

The Theopublicans knew the tide was turning against them. That is precisely why they tried to enshrine anti-gay bigotry in state constitution's. They wanted a dam which would prevent gay marriage. But those amendments are a temporary wall at best.

Even young Christians aren't lining up with the old farts in the pulpits anymore -- not on this issue. And the young in general are not sure why the presence of gay people sends some adults into a frenzy. (Freud might have some theories but I won't elaborate.)

As a sign of how much trouble gay marriage bans would have in California even the judge who wrote the dissent against the measure started her dissent stating that she wants California to legalize gay marriage herself.

Another problem for the opponents of gay marriage is that are a dying breed -- literally. It tends to be old people who get most hysterical about the issue not the young. And old voters tend to die more than young voters. And young voters who get older tend not to change their views that much as they age. So with each generation the numbers upset by the matter shrinks. It was the same when the Religious-Right predicted disasters if interracial marriage was allowed.

One sign of this shift can be found in that quintessential American television show -- the soaps. Every one of the soaps was losing viewers under the age of 34 -- every one but one. The one in question was As the World Turns. A year ago the soap added a gay plot line of the relationship between Luke and Noah. In one show they kissed and the fundamentalists had fits. The American Family Association wanted a boycott. Ratings went up. More and more young viewers started watching the show. At this point the network found they had another problem. Viewers were getting pissed off that the couple were at arms-length for episode after episode. They started webesites with countdowns of how long it had been since the two had kissed. For the record it was 211 days. Well the drought is over and young viewers have turned a show that was considered for the older crowd into a new young fad.

Now the fundies and farts might claim that Hollywood is cramming that down the throats of the viewers (a phrase they use often in such issues to the snickers of many). But Hollywood can "cram" all they want but they can't force people to watch. And the increase in popularity with the show indicates that a lot of people are no longer as mired in the 14th century as some Georgia tent revivalist.

So what is the funny aspect in this? Anti-gay Bob Barr jumped in and made a statement. Barr is pretending to be a libertarian in order to convince the Libertarian Party to nominate him president. He is the author of the odious Defense of Marriage Act. Barr now pretends "the primary reason for which I authored the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 was to ensure that each state remained free to determine for its citizens the basis on which marriage would be recognized within its borders..." Of course they were already free to do that. So his measure didn't change that at all. The only real change he pushed through was to impose a federal definition of marriage which explicitly denied rights to gay couples in any federal matter.

So even if a US citizen in California legally marries his or her foreign partner the Feds will still deport the partner. Under Barr's law there is no possibility of recognizing the marriage when it comes to immigration. Gee, Bob, what a sweetie you are!

I am not at all convinced that the individual states have the right to violate equal protection before the law. Apparently Mr. Barr would have been just peachy with Virginia cops when they broke into the bedroom of the Lovings, the incident that lead to the Supreme Court overturning bans on interracial marriages. So carting people off to jail for being legally married, as the Lovings were, would be a proper function of government in the world of Bob Barr.

Barr is in trouble when it comes to seeking the Libertarian Party nomination. Some in the party are happy to abandon all principles in order to attract more votes. They are even willing to run non-libertarians as the spokesman for what purports to be a libertarian party. But quite a few Libertarians are no feeling comfortable with the move. There is a backlash against the neo-con and theo-con Republicans who have infiltrated seeking to promote themselves at the expense of the party. Only time will tell what they will do.

Libertarians might want to take some advice from Mark Twain. Twain wrote to William Dean Howell, in 1884, "A man's first duty is to his own conscience & honor——the Party & the country come second to that, & never first... the only necessary thing to do, as I understand it, is that a man shall keep himself clean, (by withholding his vote for an improper man), even though the Party & the country go to destruction in consequence."

Photo: the famous kiss from As the World Turns. If you missed the story of Noah and Luke fans have all the clips at Youtube. So far the network is smart in not demanding they be pulled down. It is the Youtube clips that sent them all those young viewers that are boosting their ratings and advertising dollars.

How gays are overtaxed due to bigotry.

Under current legal standards in the US gay couples are put at legal disadvantages that don’t exist for straight couples. And under Bob Barr’s Defense of Marriage Act they are incapable of resolving those difficulties no matter how many private contracts they sign. The federal government is required by Barr’s law to discriminate against gay couples. Here is one example of that applies.

CNN reports on how federal tax laws penalize gay couples in ways that don’t impact straight couples. The federal government demands tax returns from US citizens under threat of violence. Gay couples are among those threatened. But the feds give straight couples options that gay couples are forbidden under Barr’s legislation. CNN gives these examples:

Take two couples where one partner has a taxable income of $20,000 and the other makes $40,000. If they can file their federal taxes jointly, the tax bill would be $8,217.50. Filing separately, the combined bill would be $9,032.50 -- more than $800 higher.

Another disparity comes with the federal government's treatment of employer-provided health insurance, which also affects unmarried heterosexual couples.

For example, Dan Jessup is a project manager at JPMorgan Chase in Indiana. His partner, Bob Chenoweth, is self-employed, running two businesses out of the couple's Mooresville, Indiana, home. So Chenoweth gets health insurance through Chase.

But Jessup is required to count the company's cost of his partner's benefits as additional income for tax purposes.

State and federal taxes on those benefits cost about $1,800 per year, Jessup said.

"I certainly think about it every payday," when the extra withholding is taken from his paycheck, he said. "If you think about 10 years, $18,000 is a lot of money. That could buy me a pretty nice car."

The reality is that same-sex couples help subsidize the tax bills of straight couples. Gay Americans are taxed disproportionately to subsidize straight couples. This holds true for social security as well. Under Barr’s legislation the federal government is required to punish same-sex couples. These are just a few examples of how that happens. Low-class homophobes just go out and bash gays. Upper-class bigots, like Barr, just let the government due their dirty work for them. That some people have stretched the meaning of libertarian so widely as to include this bigot is beyond belief.

Top conservative leader in same-sex union.

Somehow you just knew we weren't talking about the United States. America remains the only developed country in the world with a major phobia about same-sex relationships. And certainly outside Islam you won't find more fanatical antigay types than the Theopublicans in the United States -- the Mike Huckabee crowd for instance.

According to the London Telegraph, Conservative Party MP and the shadow business secretary for the party, Alan Duncan will into a civil union with his partner James Dunseath. The ceremony is scheduled for the summer and Conservative Party leader David Cameron says he is hoping to attend and is "thrilled" for Duncan and Dunseath. The two meet just over a year ago and Duncan popped the question on Valentines Day.

Both men come from military families and have the blessings of their respective families. The Telegraph quoted Sheila Randall, a Conservative Party activist for 54 years as saying: "Alan and James are lovely men. I was on Alan's selection committee and have know and like him ever since. I am so happy for them both."

The only reason this is news in England is that Mr. Duncan is the first member of cabinet, or shadow cabinet, to enter into a same-sex civil union.

The Christian resistance to marriage equality in the U.S. looks more and more absurd every day. None of the dire consequences that these people predicted have come to pass. Individual equality before the law ought to be respected. I predict it will be and that more and more states will join the civilized world and shun the bigoted legislation the Religious Right has promoted. It will take some time since the Religious Right knew the tide was against them so they pushed through constitutional changes [at the state level] since they knew they'd be in the minority on this matter soon. But the changes will take place. This is one battle the Christianists have lost already. They know they have lost but their hatred for gay people is so intense that they will cling to such laws for as long as possible. And hatred can be a very strong motivator. In fact, it seems very little else is keeping the Republican Party alive these days.

Applause for Massachusetts! The hook for Romney.

Now and then are moments that make me proud of my country. Admitted they have been few and far apart in the last few years. I think there are some basic principles of life that ought to be upheld. I believe in maximum freedom for the individual in both his economic and his social life. I believe in limited government that protects all people equally. And I believe in equality before the law. No special privileges for one class of people over another.

And that is why today I’m proud of the Massachusetts. Gay marriage has been a contentious issue for some people particularly those who believe their religious definition of morality must be set into the rock of law. And for some years now opponents of marriage equality have been working to overturn the law.

But the legislature wasn’t particularly keen on the revoking the marriages of thousands of decent citizens. In the last four years since gay marriage was legalized people in the state have seen that the sky didn’t darken. Society didn’t fall apart. The much ballyhooed claim that gay marriage would somehow destroy straight marriage seemed completely unconfirmed. With none of the hysterical disaster predicted by the Religious Right materializing support for repeal was dropping almost as fast as support for George Bush.

The Theopublicans got desperate and hired people to go out and gather signatures for a referendum. People started complaining that the zealots with clipboards had lied to people in order to get signatures. Several petitions would be circulated on different issues and people asked to sign on one issue were then handed the anti marriage petition instead. Lots of money was poured by the Theopublicans into the state to try and end marriage equality.

Eventually enough signatures were gathered and the next step in the legal process began. Two sessions of the state legislature had to vote on the matter. At this point you would think it would be a cake walk for the Theopublicans. They only needed 50 legislators to approve the measure. That is only 25% of the legislature.

If two sessions passed the measure with 25% approval then it would go to a public referendum. At this point the plan was for the fuming fundamentalists to inundate the state with millions of dollars to drum up a hate campaign against gay people. A gay person to a fundamentalist is like a Jew to a Nazi. The same sort of irrational, visceral hatred comes out.

The last session of the legislature voted on the matter giving it just 62 votes in support. That was a safety margin of 12 votes over the very low threshold set by law for such referendums.

And in the last few months the lobbying got intense. Catholic cardinal Sean O’Malley spent his time lobbying for the ban on gay marriage. O’Malley said it was an issue of fairness. Pardon me while I laugh.

The argument has been that the public should vote, it’s only fair. Why? Why is it fair for majorities to vote on whether or not minorities should have the same rights as them? Should a town with a majority population of fundamentalist Baptists be allowed a vote on whether Catholic marriages would be recognized? When it comes to equality before the law, on any issue, is it ever proper for the majority to have the opportunity to deny this equality of rights to a minority? Could a majority white state deny rights to black people? O’Malley’s political lobbying statement would seem to indicate he’d support that.

Of course he wouldn’t. He would argue it’s different. Why? Because his church doesn’t say it is a sin to be black but it is a sin to be in a gay relationship. Acknowledged or not the real issue here is whether or not certain theological views about people ought to be the basis of law in non-theocratic state.

Representative Paul Kujawski is a Catholic. And he voted against gay marriage the last time. Since then, he says, he has met a lot of gay couples and spoken to them about the problems they faced before the law was changed. With each person he spoke to he found himself more sympathetic to legal plight imposed on gay couples. The Boston Globe reported:

Kujawski appeared to be heading toward a change of heart. He talked about the gay partners who were not allowed to see one another in the hospital after a near-fatal accident, because they weren't yet allowed to marry; about how the daughter of a former conservative lawmaker begged him to vote for the amendment on behalf of her lesbian daughter. He kept thinking, he said, about how it would feel if he couldn't get married or if one of his sons couldn't.

In other words he was thinking about the real fairness issue not the twisted sense of fairness promoted by Cardinal O’Malley. Today Kujawski went with his own sense of fairness and changed sides. He joined eight other legislators, 7 Democrats and two Republicans, who changed their minds to support gay marriage. About two-thirds of Republicans legislators voted against marriage equality. In the end only 45 legislators supported the ban with 151 opposed and it was defeated. This makes it unlikely to rear its ugly head again.

The voters of Massachusetts knew this matter was coming. They knew their legislators would be asked on whether to drag out the gay marriage issue for another year to hold the referendum in the 2008 election. And last year in the election voters chucked out anti-marriage candidates all over the place. Over and over the voters replaced antigay marriage candidates with candidates who were supportive. Had that not have happened the previous vote would have been much higher than 62.

Perhaps the most predictable response of all came from that master political chameleon Mitt Romney, the man who never met a principle he hasn’t changed. This man, who’s faith was created by confirmed polygamists, whined about “our efforts to defend traditional marriage.” Romney now wants to strip states of their traditional control over marriage by nationalizing the institution through a Constitutional amendment.

Romney’s great grandfather, Miles Park Romney had five wives and one great-great grandfather had 12 wives. Miles Romney married his fifth wife 30 years after the US government banned the practice and 6 years after the Mormon church said they discontinued the practice (the ban was for PR purposes and to gain Utah statehood, it was not taken seriously by the church for several more decades.)

His great-great grandfather, Parley Pratt had 12 wives and it was Parley’s brother, Orson Pratt, who was the first church official to publicly defend polygamy as being the will of God. And Romney’s father, George Romney the former governor of Michigan, was actually born outside the US, in Mexico, where family had fled in order to continue practising their traditional rite of marriage. And while Romney takes gay marriage very seriously he finds polygamy a joke. He has been known to jest that “marriage is between a man and a woman... and a woman and a woman.” So the first federal marriage ban was directed at Romney’s own family.

It’s nice Romney wants to defend “traditional marriage” but whose “tradition”?

Baby step for Marriage Equality.

There has been another “baby step” for marriage equality. The New Hampshire House voted on a bill that would give same-sex couples the same rights as married heterosexuals. The vote in favor of marriage equality was rather impressive: 243 in support and 129 opposed.

The Right-wing Marriage Alliance rallied outside the legislature and then packed the gallaries. At one point when Republican Steve Vaillancourt rose to speak in favor of marriage equality they booed and shouted at him. Several Right-wing protestors had to be removed from the gallary for their actions.

Typical of the double-speak of the Religious Right a spokesman for the Cornerstone Policy Research Centers, Karen Testerman, said that granting marriage equality makes “the homosexual community a special class.” How downright Orwellian the logic. If the right to marry is defined to exclude gays that is equality but it it includes gays then it’s special rights.

The Republican Party, still acting as the lap-dog of the American Taliban, in Indiana had public fits because an anti-equality law they were attempting to push through the legislature failed.

The Republican revolt that hasn't been noticed. Yet!

It was a Republican revolt that hardly anyone noticed. It was a revolt against the intolerance of the Theopublican movement. It was a revolt in favor of equality of rights and individual choice. It wasn’t huge. It wasn’t earth shattering but it was important.

In Wyoming the Republicans rule. Theopublican Owen Peterson had introduced a measure that would have barred Wyoming from recognizng equal marriage rights for gay couples legally married in other states. It was the sort of bill the Religious Right would assume would sail right through the legislature. Peterson said Wyoming law recognized marriages from other states and that would mean recognizing gay marriages from Massachusetts. Horrors! Hide the children in the storm cellar it’s the end of the world.

And while the Theopublican movement is strong in the Republican Party across the country the West is not the brain-dead American South. The West is the home of old fashioned small government Republicans -- a kind not found in the authoritarian South.

The first anti-marriage amendment to fail a popular vote was in Arizona, the Goldwater state. Even though Republicans are a majority of the voters, and most major elected officials are Republicans, the measure was defeated. It was that libertarian sentiment, something Reagan once said was the real heart of conservatism, that was the final nail in the coffin of that bigoted piece of legislation.

In Wyoming the measure was being debated in the House Rules Committee. It needed to pass here or die. Dan Zwonitzer, a young Republican legislator stood up. He says he had heard all the remarks made by the proponents of the bill and he got angry. He said: “when one of the proponents of the bill said some very infuriating things, it triggered something in me and I went a bit overboard in my off-the-cuff speech, but so many people came up to me afterwards to than[k] me.”

He hadn’t planned on speaking and had no prepared notes but he wrote down later, as best he could what he remembered saying. Here are most of those remarks.

I am not going to speak of specifics regarding this bill, but rather talk about history and philosophy in regards to this issue.

It is an exciting time to be in the legislature while this issue is being debated. I believe this is the Civil Rights struggle of my generation.

Being a student of history, as many of you are, and going back through history, most of history has been driven by the struggle of man against government to endow him with more rights, privileges and liberties to be bestowed upon him.

In all of my high school courses, we only made it through history to World War 2. It wasn’t until college that I really learned of the civil rights movement in the 60’s. My American History professor was black, and we spent a week discussing civil rights. I watched video after video where people stood on the sidelines and yelled and threw things at black students walking into schools, I’ve read editorials and reports by both sides of the issue, and I would think, how could society feel this way, only 40 years ago.

Under a democracy the civil rights struggle continues today, where we have one segment of our society trying to restrict rights and privileges from another segment of our society. My parents raised me to know that this is wrong.

It is wrong for one segment of society to restrict rights and freedoms from another segment of society. I believe many of you have had this conversation with your children.

And children have listened, my generation, the twenty-somethings, and those younger than I understand this message of tolerance. And in 20 years, when they take the reigns of this government and all governments, society will see this issue overturned, and people will wonder why it took so long.

My kids and grandkids will ask me, why did it take so long? And I can say, hey, I was there, I discussed these issues, and I stood up for basic rights for all people.

I echo Representative Childers concerns, that testifying against this bill may cost me my seat. I have two of my precinct committee persons behind me today who are in favor of this bill, as I stand here opposed, and I understand that I may very well lose my election. It cost 4 moderate Republican Senators in Kansas their election last year for standing up on this same issue. But I tell myself that there are some issues that are greater than me, and I believe this is one of them. And if standing up for equal rights costs me my seat so be it. I will let history be my judge, and I can go back to my constituents and say I stood up for basic rights. I will tell my children that when this debate went on, I stood up for basic rights for people.

I can debate the specifics of this bill back and forth as everyone in this room can, but I won’t because the overall theme is fairness, and you know it. I hope you will all let history be your judge with this vote. You all know in your hearts where this issue is going, that it will come to pass in the next 30 years. For that, I ask you to vote no today on the bill. Thank you.

That’s the pre-theocratic Republican Party reasserting itself. Read what these words carefully.

He says he wants to speak about history and philosophy. Republicans don’t do that anymore. They speak about “the base” and God and the Bible. He spoke about “the struggle of man against government to endow him with more rights”. What! These kinds of words have been missing from the Republican Party ever since Ronald Reagan retired.

He recognized the immorality of “one segment of society trying to restrict rights and privileges from another segment os society” and he called that “wrong”. Wrong? Republicans gave up the morality of equality rights for the morality of theocrats long ago. But I guess there was always a Remnant of Republicans clinging to the old ideas.

And what politician, in either party, tends to say things like “If standing up for equal rights costs me my seat so be it.” I mean say it and mean it! Not many.

And it had some impact. Republican Pat Childers spoke out about his lesbian daughter and said that she was born gay and that bills like one “would be violating my daughter’s rights.”

House Speaker Roy Cohee, a Republican, spoke on the bill as well. “Is it a responsible thing of government to say that, OK, as a government, we’ll provide certain benefits, and entitlements and rights to the people of this country and of this state, unless you are this or that? Is that our responsibility to do that? I don’t think it is.”

And Cohee cast the tie-breaking vote defeating the measure. Even one Republican supporter of the bill seemed to be having second thoughts before he cast his yes vote. Tom Lubnau said: “Maybe the right thing to do is stand up for tolerance.” He didn’t in the end but it seemed to be on his mind.

Carrie Evans, the local representative of the Human Rights Campaign, which purports to support gay rights, but is really a lobbying group for the Democratic Party, admitted that conservatives in the state are not quite the same as elsewhere in the country and said the state is of a “special few states that doesn’t already deny recognition to same-sex unions from other areas.” She says that Wyoming is “not very reactionary in terms of social issues. There’s no horrific anti-gay laws on the books, but they also don’t have any laws banning hate crimes even after Matthew Shepard’s death.”

Good! While I can’t watch The Laramie Project, the film about the Shepard case, without breaking down, I vehemently oppose these ill considered hate crime laws. What was down to Shepard was already a crime. Hate crime laws don’t ban the crimes, they are already crimes. Murder is murder no matter the reason it is committed. Assault is assault no matter the thoughts of the criminal.

These laws do not punish people for assault or murder. Other laws already do that. They punish people for having the wrong thoughts. Additional penalties are applied because of the values and views of the criminal. Now I happen to think those values and views are wrong. But we do not punish thoughts in America -- at least we didn’t used to. We punish actions and we should only punish actions that violate the rights of others. The boys who cruelly and viciously killed Matthew Shepard are in prison. They got the punishment they deserved.

Evans said: “There will be a discussion that probably won’t happen for decades about whether it is legal or not for the full-faith-and-credit laws to extend to marriages between same-sex couples.” Well, I think she was wrong. That debate took place. Apparently she missed it.

People need to understand that the Republican Party does have an old-fashioned conservative wing that actually does believe in limited government. And that reflects a lot of the Western values of “live and let live” or “leave us the hell alone or we blow a hole through you” attitude. It is in conflict with the Southern Bible-thumpers who are Johnny-come-latelys to the GOP. And the more the Republicans make the Theopublicans happy the more unhappy they make the West. That is one reason that the Democrats made gains in the West.

The Theopublicans have already made California a fairly safe Democratic state. Now they are seeing states like New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada becoming hard and harder to win. So the Republican Revolt in Wyoming does have some national significance. It symbolizes the bigger conflict within the Republican Party between the more libertarian wing and the socialists of the soul like James Dobson and Jerry Falwell.

Photo: The photo is Don Zwonitzer.