One day after State Senator John Campbell announced he is going to introduce a gay marriage bill this legislative session, Campbell received a threat.

The Windsor County Democrat says he got a call at the Statehouse from a woman who threatened to blow up his house.Police are investigating the threat.

Where are all the conservatives who complained about the “violence” in the largely peaceful gay rallies? Why aren’t they up in arms about this?

And what about the hinting-at-violent threats made today by Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families. He said that the California Supreme court is, “playing with fire by threatening to destroy the people’s vote on marriage.” And that “if the court disobeys the constitution by voiding Prop. 8, it will ignite a voter revolt.”

So, if the court does its duty and protects a minority from discrimination, what kind of “revolt” and “fire” does the fanatical fringe have planned?

While gay-affirming Americans rallied for the freedom to marry in 300 cities last week, ex-gay activist Michael Glatze vented some misplaced resentment and boasted that he was glad to be free of his past desire for sexual honesty and for individual freedom.

Glatze professes joy in his ex-gay freedom-from-freedom. Desensitized by the religious right to the traditional American patriotic appreciation of freedom, Glatze projects his desensitization onto others. And in the person of Sarah Palin — deficit-spending opponent of science, history, basic geography, and critical thinking — Glatze finds “a message of God and love.”

In an article for the far-right WorldNetDaily, Glatze writes:

As I watch 100,000 people pile together shouting, ‘Gay, Straight, Black, White: Marriage is a Civil Right,’ begging to be allowed by law to participate in a life of homosexual behavior, I am impressed by how desensitized we have come as a society.

When I get despondent and feel that the voice of life in our American culture is threatened by what seems to be an avalanche of desensitization and death, I remember Gov. Sarah Palin appearing out of nowhere with uncanny political and leadership skills and a message of God and love. And, I remember how violently I protested — like the 100,000 — for ‘my RIGHTS!’ to freely participate in homosexual activity without any reminder of a conscience only a few years ago.

“I had the intent, without doubt, to silence every last individual whose message might suggest my homosexual activity was anything less than entirely equal to heterosexuality. Anyone who so much as intimated that there could be a health-related, psychology-related or self-worth-related impact to homosexuality that did not exist with heterosexuality was, merely, a bigot who needed my ever-present vigilance to turn his or her backward mind to the “liberated” present.

Glatze redefines “God and love” in terms of one’s choice of mental vacancy and blindness to one’s own amorality. He lashes out at those who defend freedom, as if freedom were an undeserved privilege in a society that ought to be ruled by the iron hand of fundamentalists.

And sadly, he bears false witness against those who oppose real bigotry. Unable to defend his own baseless prejudices against sexual honesty and American freedom, Glatze redefines bigotry and then applies his strawman arguments about bigotry to those who oppose prejudice.

Glatze adds:

That is why these disgusting rallies make me inspired, more than ever, to speak the truth and offer my love and help to the many human beings trapped by flawed viewpoints and incomplete logics. Not because I want to win an argument — God knows, in today’s climate of groupthink, that’s hardly ever possible — but, because I do love every human being equally, and believe we all have the same potential. Some of us have more difficulty, for a myriad of reasons, rising to our fullest potential than others; but, we all have potential.

I believe every human being has the potential to rise out of their confusion, break out of the shackles of groupthink, stand up proud and free, and see things clearly. I believe this is the case, because it happened to me.

Glatze is a practitioner and advocate of the groupthink that he perceives in others. He does not quote a single gay-equality advocate among all his strawman arguments, and he says nothing that has not already been parroted a million times before by other anti-gay, anti-family, anti-faith, anti-freedom fanatics who never take the time to listen to their opponents.

Lost in his own political echo chamber, Glatze conveys a message of shallowness, insecurity, and disgust for others’ freedom.

Hat tip: Joe.My.God

Armband religion is practiced by people who wear “faith” on their sleeve, for the world to see, and not in their hearts.

The Washington Post quotes Republican pundit Kathleen Parker about this prostitution of religion earlier this week:

Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth — as long as we’re setting ourselves free — is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that….

Which is to say, the GOP has surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows. In the process, the party has alienated its non-base constituents, including other people of faith (those who prefer a more private approach to worship), as well as secularists and conservative-leaning Democrats who otherwise might be tempted to cross the aisle….

Parker observes:

Suffice it to say, the Republican Party is largely comprised of white, married Christians. Anyone watching the two conventions last summer can’t have missed the stark differences: One party was brimming with energy, youth and diversity; the other felt like an annual Depends sales meeting.

The GOP isn’t the only victim of armband religion, of course.

Since 1998, the ex-gay movement — led by Exodus International and funded by religious-right mammon-churches — has embarrassed the Christian faith by wearing religion on its sleeve instead of taking Christ-like values to heart.

Exodus demands that the human rights, equal opportunity, and daily welfare of sexual minorities be sacrificed to make life easier, softer, lazier for insecure ex-gays who wish to be free from need to face people who are sexually and spiritually honest.

Would Jesus crucify someone else to make his own life easier?

As they enter the second decade of their open political campaign for “freedom” from the freedom and honesty of others, the armband “Christians” of Exodus threaten not just the GOP, and not just Christian values, but freedom itself.

Hat tip: AmericaBlog

After the passage by antigay Californians of antifamily Proposition 8, peaceful rallies for gay equality and the freedom to marry were held in more than 300 U.S. cities.

Religious rightists ignored the peace, unfortunately, and looked for excuses to portray themselves as victims of those who lost the freedom to marry.

Antigay activists pointed to one incident (on video), in which protesters in San Francisco’s Castro district pushed antigay “Christians” out of the neighborhood, accompanied by a heavy police escort. Antigay activists’ complaint: Castro homosexuals are intolerant and inhospitable to peaceful Christian believers.

Ex-gay advocate Warren Throckmorton was among those who pandered to religious-right victimology and baselessly alluded to gay violence. (Throckmorton did, in fairness, acknowledge the hard feelings of those who unsuccessfully defended California’s freedom to marry from people like Throckmorton.

As facts emerge, however, the fairy tale of innocent Christians and intolerant gay people is being not only refuted but reversed.

Joe.My.God has discovered that some of the “Christians” were actually Christian Dominionists belonging to “Joel’s Army.” Joel’s Army — led by Focus on the Family rally organizer Lou Engle — advocates that gay Americans be stoned to death and teaches a religious mandate to violently overthrow the U.S. government and the nation’s non-fundamentalist places of worship. After executing, incarcerating, and silencing millions of supposed infidels and seizing the nation’s churches and temples, these hateful egotistical zealots would replace the Constitution and representative democracy with their own fundamentalist reinterpretation of the Bible.

Given that information, it appears that the Castro crowd was more than hospitable in its efforts to chase away provocateurs who have vowed to kill gay people if given an opportunity.

Hat tip: Box Turtle Bulletin

The United States government has a long history of subsidizing churches, indirectly, for benefits that churches and other ostensibly non-profit organizations are perceived to provide to communities.

Churches are subsidized primarily in the form of public services for which they are exempted from tax collection. Churches’ neighbors, on the other hand, pay for air and surface transportation infrastructure and regulation; clean air, water, and food; schools; national defense; Social Security, and more.

Until President Bush’s White House popularized “faith-based initiatives” costing taxpayers billions of dollars that have been funneled to churches with little accountability, churches were required not to channel the free services that they receive into the pockets and campaigns of corrupt political partisans.

“Faith-based initiatives,” while well-intentioned, became a revolving door for billions of federal taxpayer dollars to be channeled from the pockets of taxpayers into thinly disguised projects that support Republican political causes.

In 2008, shameless church leaders abandoned even the pretense if non-partisanship, as they used generously taxpayer-aided pulpits to declare the Christian Barack Obama an antichrist and to crown the nominally agnostic John McCain and other Republicans as their anointed leaders. These religious leaders knew, of course, that the politicians receiving their support would send additional billions of taxpayer dollars into church employees’ pockets. The churches, in turn, become pawns of politicians who gain effective control of churches’ annual budgets.

Various petitions such as this one are now circulating, seeking to revoke the tax-exempt status of churches that channel taxpayer support into partisan political bribery and racketeering.

Advocates of a more libertarian or fair-tax approach seek instead to revoke the tax-exempt status of all churches.

Do churches provide services that justify tax-exempt status?

Should some or all churches be required to pay taxes like everyone else?

Discuss.

CNN remembers:

In its May 15 ruling legalizing gay marriage in California, the [California Supreme Court] justices seemed to signal that a ballot initiative like Proposition 8 might not be enough to change the underlying constitutional issues of the case in the court’s eyes.

The ruling said the right to marry is among a set of basic human rights “so integral to an individual’s liberty and personal autonomy that they may not be eliminated or abrogated by the legislature or by the electorate through the statutory initiative process.”

Enemies of individual freedom and religious liberty — including Mormon, Catholic, and Protestant religious-rightists — chose to ignore the human rights of fellow Californians. Through a campaign of outright lies and unethical activities, religious-right groups conned California voters into approving — by a narrow margin — Proposition 8, which by a simple majority vote nullified human rights and family values of an entire demographic minority of Californians.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, defenders of the freedom to marry contend that Proposition 8 used a ballot-initiative process which is legally restricted to minor changes to the state constitution. According to California law, changes of Proposition 8′s magnitude are supposed to be made only through a careful and deliberative legislative process.

Prop 8 replaced the freedom to marry with a sectarian religious ban that discriminated against the civil marriage and relationship rights of persons who choose not to adhere to the religious biases of one powerful voter bloc.

Today, according to CNN, the high court agreed to hear challenges to the constitutionality of Proposition 8. The case will not be heard before May 2009; until then, antifamily religious-rightists continue their efforts to nullify the pre-existing marriages of gay and lesbian couples.

Hat tip: All Facts and Opinion

Call it karma, but Focus on the Family is now in big trouble. At the group’s peak, it had nearly 1,500 employees. This week, they announced another round of layoffs – shedding 202 jobs, an estimated 20 percent of its workforce. This brings the new total to around 950 workers, according to the Colorado Independent.

The move to can workers comes after the group threw away $800,000 on Proposition 8 to ban same-sex marriage in California. One wonders if Focus on the Family will cut staff from its failed “ex-gay” Love Won Out road show? This extravagant traveling circus must cost a lot of money and it doesn’t work.

The fact is, if this organization would butt out of gay relationships, it might be able to actually help heterosexual families. If it would stop its “ex-gay” propaganda – which helps no one and destroys lives – it would not have to downsize.

I think donors to this organization should focus on the money flushed down the toilet to uphold bigotry and discrimination at the expense of families.

Few people at the three Proposition 8 protest rallies I attended — two in New York and one in Chicago – were familiar. The ones I recognized were the hardcore advocates and tireless workhorses who have long carried the GLBT movement. However, these semi-spontaneous rallies had a different flavor. There was an injection of raw energy and an infusion of new inspiration that has eluded our movement for more than a decade. I peered into the great expanse and saw a wide-eyed sea of fresh new faces — neophytes who needed help to complete the old chant, Hey, hey, Ho Ho…(Homophobia’s got to go).

There has been a paradigm shift in the movement following marriage defeats in California, Florida and Arizona — as well as an anti-gay adoption measure passing in Arkansas. From seemingly out of nowhere, people who have sat on the sidelines are now making headlines at rallies across America.

The leaders of what is being billed as Stonewall 2.0 are not coming from large, established organizations, but Internet savvy activists who can use a mouse to mobilize the masses. While Internet activism is nothing new, the fact that this huge outpouring of organic outrage is not being channeled through official organizational channels has enormous implications.

Up until two weeks ago, major GLBT groups instructed people to write a check and then essentially instructed donors to check their activism at the door. Sometimes, one was asked to take their commitment a step further by sending e-mail or attending a dinner. I think this week’s protests mark the end of the Passive Era of gay politics. A sign at protests, “No More Mr. Nice Gay”, highlighted this monumental change. (Read More)

Last week, so-called “ex-gay” activist James Hartline tried to swift boat me on an op-ed I wrote about race and Proposition 8. I responded by pointing out that he was nuts. He had claimed to have prayed away AIDS and is so extreme that he once attacked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as “one of the biggest anti-christian supporters of homosexuality and abortion in the American government.”

Well, today he sunk to new depths of dementia by claiming protests against Proposition 8 are the cause of wildfires in California. According to Hartline:

God keeps trying to get their attention. They, for their part, are shouting so loud for the acceptance of homosexuality, that they cannot hear the thunderous warnings of God: ‘Repent! For the judgment comes soon!’Each time homosexual activists attempt to force their agenda on California, there have been raging, massive, incinerating fires sweeping across the California landscape.

The sad thing is, Hartline is what passes for an ex-gay “leader.” With this bizarre post, Hartline’s small shred of remaining credibility has now been turned to ash.

This morning, our website received an uplifting letter from a person who shed the bondage of the so-called “ex-gay” trap:

“I personally was a virgin at 36yo waiting for God to heal me of my homo “iniquity”. I listened to Baptist rhetoric that I was evil and never was with a man (or woman). I ended up in the Florida Everglades with a shotgun in my mouth before I realized that the churches don’t get it. God didn’t want me to blow my head off. Now in a 13 year gay relationship — SO HAPPY! So good! Don’t listen to them.”

It is always beautiful to see people leave the wreckage of th ex-gay nigmare behind and go on to find the very success and happiness that group’s like Exodus say is impossible. In the end, the truth does win out