Be Afraid; Very Afraid

I have been following a lot of Prop 8 stuff in CA. Partly because I have family there, but also because I see it as a trend that will continue. That is why you are getting more on that topic right here, right now. My Aunt Sue has some interesting and insightful things on the topic (actually, all my family does!), and I am going to quote her here:

You have probably all been following the news on the demonstrations by the “no on 8” people. They say we have taken away their civil rights. For those of you out of the state, domestic partnerships are legal in California, and those people have all the legal rights of a married couple. They just don’t have the word “marriage”—that’s what the fight is ostensibly about.

Never mind that Mormons are 2% of the population of California and 5% of the voters—we are a convenient target, and we don’t fight back. In Massachusetts, it was a Methodist church that was sued for not allowing a gay wedding on their property. They lost the suit, and their tax-exempt status as well. This led me to my belief that the gays are being used as pawns in a much larger agenda that has as its goal the loss of our freedoms of religion, speech and association.

Just this week, I read a quote that expands on that. I wish I could give it attribution, but none was given, other than it was in a publication called NRO. That person said: “The current conflict over marriage is in part a proxy for a larger ongoing conflict about the role of religious people and religious values in public life. As courts come to endorse the principle that sexual orientation is just like race, American government is going to find itself in the position of treating traditional faith communities just like racists.”

That means that anyone who opposes homosexuality on moral grounds will be prosecuted for hate speech. That has already happened in Canada. All the anti-discrimination laws we have put into place to protect the downtrodden will be used against any religion that does not accept homosexuality as normal. The lawyer who defended the Methodist church in the Massachusetts case said he found it incredulous that the court put a supposed civil right in front of a constitutional right. But those are the times we are living in.