No, it’s not unfair

From Reflections on faith, politics, and society: However, efforts like this (www.mormonsstoleourrights.com), to single-out and scapegoat Mormons in particular, based on their support of Prop. 8, are unfair

No, it’s not. The LDS Church mounted a concerted political campaign in California against Proposition 8, and succeeded. There are internal accounts before the election of the pressure that the LDS hierarchy was putting on bishops to pressure their congregation into doing pro-Prop8 work: here‘s one account: and from a different perspective, here’s another.

Now they see their tax-exempt status threatened as a result, they’re going all weak-kneed and saying “it wasn’t just us!” but this is cowardly bullspit. It wasn’t “just” them – but they were the only church that, as a church, stepped over the bounds that separate church from state and got their congregations to work as a political unit.

In 1978, the LDS Church ended a long-standing tradition of religiously-inspired racism when it seemed likely that the IRS was going to take away their tax exempt status. I don’t know whether their pro-Prop8 battle will be enough to lose them their tax exempt status now, but the threat should at least ensure that the LDS leadership will never again pressure members of the congregrations to take part in political campaigning and donation at the will of the church leadership.

The number of LDS church members, fervently pro-Prop8 themselves, who lack the courage of their convictions about same-sex marriage when it turns out that their public, political and financial opposition to same-sex marriage has brought public, political, and financial opposition on them, is quite astonishing to me – clearly, for all their fanatical talk about how same-sex marriage is the ultimate threat to the society, they don’t really believe that crap, any more than pro-lifers really believe that abortion=murder.

If these LDS church members believed that in supporting Proposition 8 they were supporting everything most dear to them, then the LDS Church losing its tax-exempt status (and their facing the opposition of their less-bigoted neighbours) would be just the price they had to pay for saving society. If they were brave. If they believed what they were doing was the right thing to do.

They aren’t just bigots and bullies. They’re cowards.

Banned again…

You know, it’s one of those peculiarities of right-wing blogs; they complain a lot (a lot!) about how “liberals can’t tolerate dissent”… yet the one thing, routinely, they cannot tolerate is people showing up in their comment threads who don’t agree with them and can say why. I got banned from Family Scholars Blog back when they were still accepting comments; Maggie Gallagher shut down comments on her blog at least partly because I just kept showing up and pointing out she was talking nonsense: recently, I noticed, multiple threads just happened to get closed to comments because, er… I showed up! and

I’ve been banned again. I think that means I won the argument, since the loser I was debating can’t cope with it…

*grin*

Support Equality and Make Savage Love You

Dan Savage writes:

A NOTE TO MY READERS: I get more letters at Savage Love than I could ever hope to respond to personally, and infinitely more letters than I could ever hope to fit in this space. Now there’s really no secret to getting your letter into the column: I just have to find your problem somewhat interesting, basically. (You are, however, better off e-mailing me on Tuesdays, when I actually sit down to write, than you are on, say, Fridays, when I’m sitting down to drink.) The fact that I can’t respond to every letter leads to a lot of hurt feelings. Every day I get complaints from readers who can’t believe I replied to the dude with shit on his dick and not to them.

Well, dear readers, for two weeks—and two weeks only—you can get a guaranteed response from me. Just go to noonprop8.com, click “Donate Now,” and do your part to help preserve marriage equality in California. On the left-hand side of the donation page, there’s a spot where you can indicate that you’re making your donation in someone’s honor. Type in “Savage Love,” put my e-mail address—mail@savagelove.net—in the space provided, and then send me your question in another e-mail along with the e-mail confirmation that No On Prop 8 sent you after your donation cleared. The three biggest Savage Love donors over the next two weeks get their letters in the column; everyone who makes a donation of $25 or more gets a personal reply to their question from yours truly. The cutoff dates for donations that qualify for a letter in the column are October 9 for the October 16 column, and October 16 for the October 23 column.

So, Cake Fart Fetishist, you’ve been badgering me with inane e-mails for three years now. This is your chance to finally get your stupid letter in the column. You too, David in Brooklyn. It’s time to put up or shut up. But, hey, you don’t have to be an annoying stalker to participate. Got a good question and want to help fight the good fight? Make a donation at noonprop8.com, send me your letter along with your receipt, and you’ll be hearing from me in print or privately.

This is such a great idea.

How to celebrate your 55th anniversary

Get married.

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon made history – again – at 5:07 p.m. Monday [16th June] when they were declared “spouses for life.”

At that moment, standing next to each other in the mayor’s office in San Francisco City Hall in front of cheering friends and relatives, the couple of 55 years became the first same-sex newlyweds in San Francisco and among the first in California under a new right bestowed by the state Supreme Court.

“And it feels great,” said Lyon, 83. (link)

These days, unless of course you’re in the military, or you’re a teenager still at school, or financially dependent on homophobic parents, most Americans can come out about their sexual orientation in reasonable certainty that while some people may be stupid and rude enough to publicly disapprove, no one is likely to kill them over it.

When Del and Phyllis met, 55 years ago, their love was legally regarded as a illness or a disability: a feeling that they were supposed to be ashamed of or want to be “cured” of.

That things have changed so much in 55 years is due, in part, to the courage and hard work and sheer admirable stubborness of these two women, and many others.

Thank you, Del and Phyllis.

There haven’t been very many days like these around the world, where suddenly couples who had been denied the right to be married may at last be legally wed.

“A thousand welcomes to you with your marriage kerchief, may you be healthy all your days. May you be blessed with long life and peace, may you grow old with goodness, and with riches.”

For Del and Phyllis, this wedding blessing is already so: they’ve lived their lives to grow old with goodness, long life, and peace.

But there’s another traditional blessing, even more appropriate for this day:

May those who love us, love us.
And those who don’t love us,
May God turn their hearts;
And if He doesn’t turn their hearts,
May He turn their ankles,
So we will know them by their limping.

Don’t let the anti-marriage activists try to redefine marriage for everyone by eliminating from marriage the love, respect, devotion and joy that Del and Phyllis feel for each other, and cutting marriage down to a card figure of any man or any woman.