The Washington Post reports that conservatives are outspending liberals 4-to-1 on the all-important congressional races which will determine whether the next president can accomplish anything, and whether the nation will move toward a freer, more frugal, and more intelligent future — or sell out our children’s lives and health for the present-day prosperity of military contractors, obsolete industries, and the AARP.

If you “like” a cause, but you aren’t financially supporting it, and as a result the cause is buried by better-funded opponents, then is it fair to say that you really liked it after all?

This move is just the latest in a long history of social-conservative restrictions upon the freedom of religious minorities — Jews, Muslims, atheists, Buddhists, and liberal Christians — in the armed services. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation uncovers new violations of religious freedom in the U.S. armed services on a weekly basis.

. . . Earlier you said you think all Australians are equal, but on Friday you said you wouldn’t vote for marriage equality because you really believe children deserve a mother and a father. So I’m wondering if you could tell us, and Senator Wong, why you think you and Melissa make better parents than her and Sophie.

As the audience resoundingly applauded, the camera cut to Hockey — looking veeeeeery uncomfortable — and then briefly to Wong, who flashed a tight-lipped smile and seemed surprised at the pointed, personal question. (While Wong is openly gay, she hasn’t made marriage equality a campaign issue.) Hockey denied that he thought he and his wife were better parents simply because they’re an opposite-gender couple, but said that when he became a parent, he came to feel that “we’ve got to give our children what I believe to be the very best circumstances, and that’s to have a mother and a father.”

The audience reacts in a deliciously awkward manner: one person begins clapping, and a handful of others tepidly join in. The tension is palpable. Hockey exacerbates it further by elaborating that when it comes to marriage equality, “[he's] being asked to legislate in favor of something that [he doesn't] believe to be the best outcome for a child.” (Note: there is no evidence whatsoever that opposite-sex couples are inherently better parents or achieve better outcomes than same-sex couples, or that children of non-LGBT parents do better than those with LGBT parents.)

Asked to respond to Hockey’s remarks, a still-stunned Wong begins with “Well, there’s almost nothing I can say.” She then proceeds to deliver a remarkably candid and dignified rebuttal to Hockey’s discriminatory remarks:

The first logical point is, marriage has generally not been prerequisite for children, so I don’t think the logical position holds, but just from a sort of values perspective, it is sad, I think, that some families have to feel that they have to justify who they are. . . When you say those things, Joe, what you’re saying to not just me, but people like me, is that the most important thing in our lives — which is the people we love — is somehow less good, less valued. And if you believe that, then you believe that, but I have a different view.

When the moderator asks Wong if remarks like Hockey’s are hurtful, she replies, “Oh, of course it is,” then resolutely adds, “But . . . I know what my family is worth.”

Thunderous applause.

Australian Marriage Equality campaign coordinator Rodney Croome called the exchange a “watershed moment” in the battle for the hearts and minds of average Australians. In the days since it aired, Croome said the AME office has been overwhelmed with messages of support for Wong. He also reported a surge in AME’s web traffic caused by a large number of supportive citizens sending emails to their MPs through the group’s website, and noted that those making contact tended to be older, straight voters.

The National Times reports that while marriage equality legislation is not likely to pass in Parliament, it is wildly popular with Australian voters, enjoying over 60 percent support. But I didn’t need a poll to tell me that. Comparing the near-silence of the Q&A audience after Hockey spoke and their uproarious response to Wong’s from-the-heart comments tells me everything I need to know.

Check out the video below. What do you think?

 In Midtown, more than a dozen African-American ministers stepped off their pulpits to stand behind a podium and denounce President Obama’s support of same-sex marriage.

The ministers are part of the Coalition of African-American Pastors in Tennessee.

Rev. William Owens is the founder and president of the coalition, “We do want the President of the United States to rescind his position on endorsing same-sex marriages.

Not going to happen. Next:

We stand for marriage between a man and a woman. Some would like to call it a civil right, but no right is a civil right if it’s not square with God.”

It’s funny, because Civil Rights leaders had to deal with arguments like those from racists for years. One would think people would have learned that it’s simply not wise to argue based on one’s own vision of what they think their god wants.

Owens said, “The homosexual community has taken the Civil Rights Movement and hijacked it stating that it is the same thing. I was in the Civil Rights Movement and I can tell you I did not march one inch, one foot, one yard, one mile for same-sex marriage”

As I’ve written many times before, the movements are not exactly the same, but they share common threads, and they’re following similar arcs. Civil Rights and other African-American leaders who understand this: Jim Clyburn, the late Coretta Scott King, Julian Bond, Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery, Melanie Campbell and Al Sharpton. Indeed, many of them signed a letter in strong support of Obama’s position on marriage equality.

Bishop Felton Smith is on the Board of Bishops with the Church of God In Christ, ”We’re not here as haters and bashers of the gay community. We’re just here to say your contentions are not legitimate.”

Rev. Dwight Montgomery heads the Memphis chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Council, “It’s not ordinary for a man to be with a man or a woman with a woman. God created animals, they know their place. Men and women should know their place, as well.”

Meh, anti-gay claptrap. Heard it before, and it’s getting kind of stale.

The BBC reports that overturning the ban will be unpopular with religious leaders and the general public in Malawi, but President Banda has the votes she needs in Parliament to pass the repeal successfully. It will be the first African nation overturn its anti-homosexuality so since 1994, when South Africa did so.

Let’s hope this encouraging trend continues!

But many current and former Catholics in Minnesota want their fellow citizens to know that the bigots in the hierarchy do not speak for them. Just yesterday, according to Minnesota Public Radio, a group representing about 80 former Catholic priests spoke out in a press conference against a proposed marriage discrimination amendment to the state’s constitution that will be decided by voters in November. (The Catholic hierarchy enthusiastically endorses the amendment and has diverted significant church resources to lobby for its passage.) Many of those priests left the Catholic Church themselves over marriage, since under current Church law priests cannot marry, meaning that one has to choose between marrying the person they love and serving the Church they love. The group said that the amendment goes against core Christian principles of love and justice.

In addition, three retired Catholic priests — Fr. John Brandes, Fr. Tom Garvey, and Fr. Tim Power, all of whom retain their priestly faculties — spoke at the press conference, saying that while they agreed with the Catholic Church’s right to choose who to marry in Catholic parishes within a sacramental context, the proposed amendment would eliminate the possibility of any civil recognition of LGBT relationships and stifle the important dialogue they believe needs to happen on these issues. Garvey, a priest since 1957, told MPR that it was seeing the human cost of homophobic bigotry that caused him to change his views:

He said his views on homosexuality changed decades ago after he watched an interview with a lesbian woman who described how she was different. “She began to cry convulsively and I said, ‘We’ve got the wrong position on this,’ ” Garvey recalled.

They also said that they know of many other Catholic priests, both active and retired, who oppose the marriage discrimination amendment but have thus far been too afraid to speak out, especially in the wake of Abp. Nienstedt’s stern letter ordering them to remain silent. Garvey remarked that in his 55 years of priesthood, he could not remember even one similar admonition:

“That was a terrible thing, such an injustice to us to say you cannot disagree with me on this matter,” he said. “And it’s just not true.”

The three retired priests submitted a letter to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, entitled “Catholics of Minnesota, You Have a Choice!”, in which they called gays and lesbians an important part of the Catholic Church, their parish communities, and their families, and said that the LGBT community needs allies. The letter also reminds Catholics that “there is not just one way for [them] to vote in November.” The editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune declined to print the priests’ letter, implying that it wasn’t newsworthy enough for publication.

Jason Adkins, executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference (the public policy arm of the state’s Catholic bishops), characterized the priests’ actions as divisive and told MPR, “The vast majority of Catholics stand with their bishops and the teaching of the church regarding marriage and protecting marriage as the union of one man and one woman.” Actually, on that point he couldn’t be more wrong: Catholics as a group are more supportive of relationship recognition for same-sex couples than members of any other Christian denomination, as well as the American public at large. A whopping 71% of Catholics support full civil marriage equality, and this margin is sure to grow even greater with the passage of time. On the issue of marriage equality, as on so many other issues, the bishops quite simply do not speak for the people they claim to represent.

The New York Times’ Benedict Carey reports:

The simple fact was that he had done something wrong, and at the end of a long and revolutionary career it didn’t matter how often he’d been right, how powerful he once was, or what it would mean for his legacy…Now here he was at his computer, ready to recant a study he had done himself, a poorly conceived 2003 investigation that supported the use of so-called reparative therapy to “cure” homosexuality for people strongly motivated to change…Dr. Spitzer’s fingers jerked over the keys, unreliably, as if choking on the words. And then it was done: a short letter to be published this month, in the same journal where the original study appeared. “I believe,” it concludes, “I owe the gay community an apology.”

…The study — presented at a psychiatry meeting in 2001, before publication — immediately created a sensation, and ex-gay groups seized on it as solid evidence for their case. This was Dr. Spitzer, after all, the man who single-handedly removed homosexuality from the manual of mental disorders. No one could accuse him of bias…But gay leaders accused him of betrayal, and they had their reasons. The study had serious problems. It was based on what people remembered feeling years before — an often fuzzy record. It included some ex-gay advocates, who were politically active. And it didn’t test any particular therapy; only half of the participants engaged with a therapist at all, while the others worked with pastoral counselors, or in independent Bible study.

…Dr. Spitzer in no way implied in the study that being gay was a choice, or that it was possible for anyone who wanted to change to do so in therapy. But that didn’t stop socially conservative groups from citing the paper in support of just those points, according to Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, a nonprofit that fights antigay bias.

On one occasion, a politician in Finland held up the study in Parliament to argue against civil unions, according to Dr. Drescher.

“It needs to be said that when this study was misused for political purposes to say that gays should be cured — as it was, many times — Bob responded immediately, to correct misperceptions,” said Dr. Drescher, who is gay.

This was a very intelligent article that puts the entire Spitzer study into its proper perspective. It is a telling and compelling narrative that places a definitive period at the end of a long, and often troubling, run-on sentence. For his part, Dr. Spitzer should be applauded for doing the right thing. It is never easy, particularly for successful people who are leaders in their field, to apologize or acknowledge wrongdoing. But, this is exactly what Dr. Spitzer did and we at Truth Wins Out are grateful that he is a man of integrity and conscience.

Unfortunately, there are still slippery organizations, like Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX), who refuse to take Dr. Spitzer’s repudiated study off of their website. The good news is that by leaving it up they further erode their already tattered credibility and reputation by showing how blatantly dishonest they truly are.

Truth Wins Out will be filming Dr. Spitzer next week in Princeton, NJ. We look forward to sharing the video with our readers and members. We are hiring a professional film crew to ensure that we have broadcast quality video that can be used by networks. Obviously, this will cost a bit of money — and we can use your help because this expense is out of budget.

Please consider a tax-deductible contribution today  to help us pay for the camera crew and travel to Princeton.

So this clip is kind of funny, as the speaker, Jonathan Haidt, argues that “sushi is the gay marriage of food,” in that not so long ago, people in the West didn’t like the idea of eating raw fish at all, but once it became commonplace and accepted, especially for Kids These Days, it became mainstream. Much in the same way, older generations of people are having a harder time accepting marriage equality, while Kids These Days are all “whatever,”  and they’re more likely to judge people who don’t know how to properly use chopsticks while gay marrying. (Or something like that.) Anyway, it’s food for thought. [Pun intended!]

[h/t The Awl, which you should all be reading daily, not least for the jokes they make in their post tags. It's a blog for smart people.]

An influential African-American evangelical pastor says that many black Christians are in an “adulterous” relationship with President Obama over the issue of same-sex marriage and that if the issue is not addressed soon, it will negatively impact the president’s desire for a second term in November.

Barack Obama needs to explain, or many black Christians will kick him out of the house and change their Facebook relationship statuses!

In an interview with The Christian Post, Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr., who is the senior pastor of Hope Christian Church in Baltimore, Md., and one of the nation’s most outspoken black pastors, maintains that Obama has drawn a hard line on major theological issues such as same-sex marriage and expects black Christians to compromise their beliefs.

“Obama laid down the gauntlet on black leaders,” Jackson said. “The question we are being forced to address is ‘are you going to be black or be godly.’”

Uh, what? Perhaps Harry Jackson is confused here. Barack Obama is the President of the United States and as such, is not required to agree with Harry Jackson on every little thing. Also, Barack Obama is not a religious leader. Also, Harry Jackson is freaked out because he’s one of the few black religious leaders, like Patrick Wooden in North Carolina, who seems to revel in being used by groups like NOM to further an agenda of hate, and he sees his voice becoming more and more irrelevant.

On Thursday, a group of black ministers calling themselves the Coalition of African-American Pastors, many of whom represent the nation’s fifth largest denomination, the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), are holding a press conference in Memphis, Tenn., to call on Obama to denounce his position on same-sex marriage.

That is probably happening very close to where I’m sitting, but I fear that the world’s largest barbecue festival [I can SMELL IT] will overshadow whatever little hate-filled diatribe COGIC’s got in mind.

The Rev. Bill Owens is a veteran of the civil rights movement and marched with Dr. Martin Luther King and other noted civil rights leaders during the peak of the movement in the 1960s. He believes Obama’s evolution on the issues will have far-reaching effects on society and specifically in the black community.

“We will be spending the next weeks and months visiting black churches, asking for support from pastors and their flocks to speak up against the media-generated view that gay marriage is a civil right,” Owens told CP.

“We ask President Obama to stand with the black church, on the word of God and evolve again back to the common sense biblical view that marriage is the union of husband and wife.”

Meanwhile, many, many other veteran Civil Rights leaders will continue to explain why the two civil rights fights are related. No, they are not the exact same thing, and no one every said they were. But they’re part and parcel of the same march toward justice.

Here’s the part where it gets really weird:

“The black community is in an adulterous relationship with President Obama,” Jackson said. “He is asking us to stray from the most basic tenets of Scripture – that marriage is an institution made by God for man and woman to become one and procreate. He’s telling us it’s fine to hold onto our beliefs but that it’s also okay to accept his stance on a position that goes against that core belief.”

“This is no different than a married person having a relationship with someone other than their spouse,” said Jackson.

Um, nah, really, it’s more that some people disagree with the president and others agree with him. It’s not likely to impact the President’s support from black voters in any significant way. Harry Jackson almost admits as much, in his desperate attempt to not admit it:

Jackson, like Owens, recognizes that the core issue for black Christians – like all Americans – is jobs. “Blacks want to be recognized and not taken advantage of,” Jackson said. “They want politicians to realize there are significant issues of race that still need to be addressed and that jobs and economic opportunity are more important that homosexual marriage.”

Exactly. Which is why, while many black Christian voters may disagree with Obama on this, it’s not going to be a dealbreaker in November. The American people really have moved on from the days when “gay panic” really worked as a political wedge. Sorry, Harry Jackson, but that’s the new reality.

[h/t Right Wing Watch]