A more precise headline would be, “Bully terrorizes gay Christian children in anti-gay sermon while congregation laughs.” Seriously: gay children were in fear of their lives during the sermon by Pastor Sean Harris shown below. Another pastor wrote to the Fayette Observer that the gay and lesbian Christian teens she counsels not to kill themselves include children who are members of Pastor Harris’s church.

Yesterday PJ Media published my post, “A Contrarian View of Dan Savage’s Rant,” which compares the offensive language of Dan Savage to the threats of violence against four-year-old boys by Pastor Sean Harris. If you read it there, I link the full video, but here is the clip that got my attention:

Transcript:

“So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, “Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,” you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed.

Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male. And when your daughter starts acting to Butch you reign her in. And you say, “Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.”

You say, “Can I take charge like that as a parent?”

Yeah, you can. You are authorized. I just gave you a special dispensation this morning to do that.”

(H/T: Good As You, a Leftist gay blog.)

From time-to-time I see Ace using the following quote — this time in reference to proposals that the government fight the obesity epidemic by forcing people to eat better and exercise more — and I am always surprised that he never makes the connection that however benevolent you believe it may be to force your religion on people through the government, it is tyranny:

As C.S. Lewis wrote, benevolently-intended tyrannies are the worst of all:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

via fixerupper

Not even a more-in-sadness-than-anger resignation to the idea that freedom must be abolished — no, they’re positively giddy about it!

They would strip the freedoms away from Americans to vindicate a busybody impulse to slim people down?

If they’re willing to jettison freedom over so trivial a reason — what reasonwouldn’t justify ending the American birthright of freedom?

What would not, in their eyes, justify the coercive power of the state squashing individual autonomy?

Did I say you legally can be fired in 29 states in America due to your race or religion? Dang. I meant sexual orientation. You can be fired because you are gay, no matter how well you are doing your job, in 29 states. In America. While Obama is president and head of the Democratic party, which claims to support gay equality. Even though it did not pass ENDA, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, which would protect gays from job discrimination, or repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, when Democrats controlled Congress and the White House from 2009 to 2011.

In fact, in September 2009, at the height of their powers, Democrats showed their true colors on gay equality and told gays that they would definitely repeal DOMA and pass all the laws needed to ensure gay equality as soon as hell froze over, but not a minute before. (Democrats do not deserve any credit for the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” because they didn’t do it until it was clear that the Log Cabin Republicans were about to prevail in their lawsuit to overturn the policy.)

And now, true to their word, Democrats are resisting including a plank in the party platform giving unequivocal support just for marriage equality, never mind protection from job discrimination.

Obama’s status of “evolving” on gay marriage took a baby step this week when he was cornered into releasing a statement through a surrogate that he “does not support” — which isn’t quite the same as opposing, is it? — a North Carolina referendum that would “make marriage between a man and a woman the only marriage the state would recognize.” The referendum will be voted on in North Carolina’s May 8 primary ballot.

Come November, Washington state, Minnesota, Maryland and Maine will have referendums on marriage equality on their ballots, so it will be instructive to see how far leftist gays will push Obama and the Democrats to deliver on their promises of support for gay equality. One of the most powerful strategies they could use to succeed in this is to start making a big show of willingness to hear lesbian and gay conservatives explain what fiscal conservatism has to offer the gay community. Show them that gays DO have options. Dear Human Rights Campaign, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, GLAAD and PFLAG: it’s called leverage, and I’m ready when you are.

My piece at PJ Media begins: “A meteor is threatening to destroy the institution of marriage, but it isn’t marriage equality.”

For background, read the full decision from Feb. 22 by a federal judge that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional.

Golinski v OPM Opinion 2-22-12 Declaring DOMA Unconstitutional

Updated: Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendan Ayanbadejo, who is speaking in the video above, supports same-sex marriage. The Ravens’ team color is purple, which is why he is wearing a purple shirt. (Baltimore and Maryland are crazy for purple in support of the Ravens — you can even get all-purple Christmas tree lights.) The Baltimore Sun has a transcription of the video and links a piece he wrote for HuffPo in favor of same-sex marriage equality.

Today the Maryland State Senate is expected to reconvene at 4 pm to vote on marriage equality. Listen live here (this link also goes to an archive of recordings — look for the Senate session on 2/24/12). Last year marriage equality was approved by the Senate and then sent back to committee instead of being put up for a vote in the House of Delegates. I was present and saw the speeches. This year marriage equality has passed the House of Delegates. Some 200 destructive and obstructive amendments have failed in the Senate and there are enough votes to defeat a filibuster. It has the support of Gov. Martin O’Malley, who says he will sign it after the House and Senate versions are reconciled.

Update:

Care for my father fell through, so I will listen online from home and live tweet.

Photo of vote tally for Maryland's marriage equality law, which passed in the Maryland Senate today (Feb. 23, 2012). Photo by Maryland Del. Heather Mizeur.

Update:

Marriage equality passed 25-21. (!!!!!!) My RealPlayer timed out during the vote, but came back for me to hear the senators explaining their votes, then Sen. Miller declared the vote official to the sound of cheers from the gallery. Shortly after that the Senate adjourned until tomorrow.

Update: H/T to Gabriel Malor for his tweet pointing me to the Baltimore Sun story explaining what happens next, since opponents of the marriage equality bill are geared up to bring it to referendum in November. The Democrat Left and Hollywood give a lot of lip service to gay equality, so let’s see what national political figures and celebrities come to Maryland to raise money and secure votes against the referendum to repeal marriage equality. The only celebrity I can think of who might actually show up is Kathy Griffin. What about Cher, you ask, as the mother of a transgender son? Gentle readers, can you suggest politicians and celebrities?

Today Fox News ran the story in the video above about how Obamacare will destroy marriage for the middle class because its means-testing requirements will force millions of couples to choose between marriage and health insurance. That’s because married couples who file joint federal tax returns will be means-tested by their combined income, but unmarried couples filing separately will not. Since marriage is optional, but Obamacare is mandatory, most unmarried middle class couples will have to forego marriage to afford their Obamacare. Obamacare may even force millions of couples to divorce.

The poor, the disabled and the elderly who need long term nursing home care already know how means-tested health insurance discourages marriages or forces divorces thanks to Medicaid. (One of the toughest things estate attorneys have to tell their married clients is that they should divorce promptly if one of them may need nursing home care in order to protect the spouse who is still able to live independently from being left destitute by Medicaid’s means tests.)

I pointed out that Obamacare will destroy marriage for everyone on March 24, 2010, the day after Obama signed Obamacare into law.

If the National Organization for Marriage really cared about protecting marriage, Obamacare is the asteroid that is going to make it all but extinct. If NOM’s true purpose were to protect marriage, it would be fighting the things that truly threaten it.

Dear libertarian Bruce Majors at Big Homo posted about a Washington Post piece in August on the release of Census Bureau results on the number of gay couples in Maryland and Virginia (the results on D.C. came out a week later). I recommend clicking to read the whole thing, but here’s a sample:

[Washington Post, Aug. 10, 2011, "Census shows surge in gay couples in D.C. area; officials cite more honesty"] The number of people who identify themselves as part of a same-sex couple has soared over the past decade in what demographers say is the product of an aggressive outreach effort by the Census Bureau and growing cultural acceptance.

Census figures released Thursday show 17,000 same-sex couples live in Maryland, a 51 percent increase over a decade ago. That accounts for 1.5 percent of couples in the state, including married couples and heterosexual partners living together.

In Virginia, the census counted 20,500 same-sex couples, a 49 percent increase that amounts to 1.2 percent of couples in the state.

[snip]

Del. Michael J. Hough (R-Frederick) said the numbers reinforce one of the arguments he and other opponents of same-sex marriage have been making.

“We’re talking about radically redefining marriage for what is a very, very small subset,” he said.

My reaction to Del. Hough is that since marriage equality won’t change his own marriage, or anyone else’s, or force any religion to change its definition of marriage, and the subset is small, then he is making the argument in favor of marriage equality, not against it. Marriage equality defined by the state is required to ensure religious freedom — which is why religions are trying to grab the power to be the sole definers of marriage from the state. Plus, I’m pretty sure that if you paired any other minority or religious group with numbers like “1.5 percent,” Del. Hough would be consumed with zeal to protect their rights from threats by a majority to force them into second-class citizenship because they are “a very, very small subset.” And, just to remind you, when the legislature has been co-opted into violating the rights of a minority, thanks to our system of balance of powers, it is the judicial branch that steps in. When it does, it is doing a job it was created to do, not legislating from the bench.

There’s more:

State Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr. (D-Montgomery), an openly gay man raising two children with his partner, said the statistics show how many people might choose to marry if it becomes legal.

“It demonstrates that there are a significant number of same-gender families in our state, and we are everywhere in the state,” he said. “It also shows that in the end, we’re not talking about a lot of people. The other side’s predictions of doom and gloom are oversized.”

Del. Heather R. Mizeur (D-Montgomery), a gay lawmaker who has a wife, said the census numbers show the changing face of what is now considered family.

“There are 9,000 Maryland children that have two moms or two dads, that are looking to the General Assembly and saying, ‘Protect my family, like everyone else’s,’ ” she said.

By the way, not only do same-sex couples need to carry healthcare powers-of-attorney on them at all time — which I did for my late life partner, who was quadriplegic the last 10 years of her life due to MS — but also they need to have proof of their authority to care for and transport their same-sex spouse’s biological child. Without it, if they are stopped by the police for so much as a burned-out tail light, they will have to wait at the police station until the biological parent can verify they were lawfully accompanying the child.

The Empire State Building bathed in a rainbow of lights in honor of Gay Pride Week.

Yesterday evening I took my father to see our local minor league team, the Ironbirds, and when we got home we watched an episode of “Columbo,” one of my father’s favorite TV shows, through the magic of Wii and streaming Netflix. Dad loves how Peter Falk springs the trap on the murderer. I am saddened to learn of his passing from dear Moe Lane and dear Little Miss Attila.

I enjoy “Columbo,” too, but pulled out my iPod Touch to check out Twitter, which is how I learned that the gay marriage equality bill passed in New York. I see Hot Air had the live feed of the voting. I had not wanted to get my hopes up, having gone to watch the Maryland House of Delegates give final approval to Maryland’s same-sex marriage equality bill, only to see it sent back to committee to avoid being defeated on the record. (I plan to make YouTube videos of each of the speeches and add my own remarks.) Regarding New York, I am semi-elated: elated because it’s an advance for gay equality, semi because equality should not be subjected to the whims of majority votes and it should not vary from state-to-state. I consider equality for lesbians and gays to be an unalienable right, even if it is almost totally alienated right now.

In the conversation on Twitter, some conservatives were decent enough to call for conservative arguments for gay equality — @jtLOL (Jim Treacher of “The Daily Caller,” who correctly sizes up Obama’s recent speech to an audience of the last 600 gays unable to process the fact that “he’s just not that into them.”), @NolteNC (John Nolte, editor-in-chief of Big Hollywood, who has a lovely tribute to Peter Falk) and @sistertoldjah (who is one of the first conservative bloggers I began to read in 2008 and yesterday noted that the conservative world is more diverse than it gets credit for), and I suggested they read my blog. Oops! I’ve been focusing on my health and haven’t posted since May 16. Regular readers will recognize the following list of conservative reasons I have advanced for gay equality in general, and gay marriage equality in particular:

• Religions are free to define marriage any way they want for their own members. The Catholic definition of marriage does not bind Unitarians or Mormons or Jews or atheists. In fact, Mormons have THREE definitions of marriage, including one that defines all marriages not celebrated in a Mormon temple between Mormons according to Mormon rites to be inferior, base and spiritually dead. Mormons use this inferior marriage — a civil union for straight people, really — to force their members into the absolute obedience and tithe-paying required for the superior temple marriage. The reason that government must define marriage in a religiously pluralistic society is that secular legal marriage protects the individual’s liberty to change religions or be free of religion and still marry–and divorce. (I think I’m the first person to point out the value of government-defined secular marriage in preserving individual liberty and religious freedom.) Governments, which are the realm of coercion, can only provide for individual liberty when they restrict religions to the realm of persuasion. All the arguments against equality for gays are founded in religion and religions must not be allowed to appropriate the coercive powers of government to impose their rules on an entire population.
• The modern gay rights movement has a spiritual foundation because it really began in October 1968 when gay ordained Baptist minister Troy Perry founded the Metropolitan Community Church, not with the Stonewall riots in June 1969. Because the MCC performs religious marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples, there’s no need for gays to sue any Christian religion for discrimination. (Similarly, women are not barred from equality on the grounds that it would allow them to sue the Catholic Church to force it to ordain female priests.)
• If the Left could weaponize gays to bring down free market economies and democratic republics, then it would fight as hard for gay equality as it has for black equality. It can’t, so it hasn’t and it won’t. No group experiences discrimination as comprehensive as that forced on gays: in the name of family values, we are forced out of our own families. However, gays have responded to discrimination by becoming entrepreneurs and professionals, which makes gays a natural constituency of fiscal conservativism and explains why 31 percent of gay voters voted for Republicans in 2010 (including me). Gays are the most getable demographic in 2012 for Republicans because there’s no voting bloc Obama and the Democrats have screwed over more than gays and they are furious and looking for a new home. They are worth getting: Obama’s margin of victory in 2010 was almost exactly the size of the gay voting bloc.
• Regarding the demographic composition of the Left: there are three groups who are only on the Left because social conservatives drove them out of the Right for religious reasons: gays, women who support choice because they do not want to be the property of a man or a religion, and Jews. The first two groups were driven out because they are uppity and do not respond to the demands of a religion to produce children. Jews got tossed out for refusing to become Christians. The Left strings these three groups along but never really fights for them because each one has too many entrepreneurs to allow them to be weaponized against free markets/capitalism. Instead the Left exploits them for money, labor and votes. Let us call them useful idealists.
• Gays want marriage for the hundreds of rights at the state level — and the 1031 rights at the federal level — that allow same-sex couples to build their lives together. We have no agenda of destroying the family — we want to make families . If we can have full federal and state secular marriage rights, we have no reason to persuade any religion to change.
• I think one of the reasons some religions are fighting gay equality harder than others is that they have figured out how to get government money through their various charities and enterprises, such as adoption services and hospitals, which also function as recruitment centers to gain converts, and gays will be like a radioactive dye exposing the rivers of cash they’ve been taking in that will be cut off if they refuse to operate on the same non-discriminatory basis as any other government-funded operation. Remember, religions retain the right to discriminate according to their beliefs as long as they do so on their own property and their own dime.

It’s almost 4 am. That’s enough for now.

Update: Prof. Reynolds, unalienable rights that are opposed by a majority are going to have to be imposed by courts. It is not acceptable to gays to be fully human in one state and not in another. It is antithetical to the concept of unalienable rights. Such a checkerboard also is a source of economic and social stagnation. Until mid-2001 when Maryland included sexual orientation as a class protected against discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations (such as restaurants, theatres, stores), I couldn’t move from one county in Maryland to another because I had equality where I lived and therefore could protect my quadriplegic life partner, but did not in the county where my parents lived when it would have been best for me to move. This disparity almost cost me my life and did result in heavy financial losses.)

Update: Thank you, Prof. Reynolds, for the link, and welcome, Instapundit readers!

I also thank Daniel Blatt for his link and welcome Gay Patriot readers. Daniel ponders the following:

The question is: how do we break them [Leftist gays] from their prejudiced view of the GOP, particularly given how the media dwell on social conservatives’ (alleged) dominance of the movement — and the ignorance of many gay leaders of the underlying philosophy of the Republican Party as it has evolved since the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and the election of Ronald Reagan sixteen years later.

One of the reasons I started this blog is to educate gays about the principles of fiscal conservativism so they can see their natural home is on the Right. By casting gays out of every socializing institution and by stigmatizing gays as intrinsically evil, it is the good intentions of social conservatives that have paved the road to hell for gays. That is why another reason I started this blog is to educate social conservatives about gay equality so they can see that gay equality actually supports their core values of individual liberty, strengthening marriage and the family and creating a more moral, stable and prosperous society. So, Daniel, that is what gay conservatives must do. We are the among the pioneers and the ones in the best position to do it.

I also welcome readers from the Sundries Shack, and thank dear Jimmy Bise for linking this post even though he opposes gay marriage equality.

Just kidding: lesbian wedding FTW. I figured out how to make YouTube playlists and for the last two weeks I’ve been singing to the clips from the musical show where Callie wakes up from her coma and her first words to Arizona were, “Yes, I will marry you.”

Sorry, Fred.

Update: I thought Fred Karger was included in the first debate, but he’s not. Tonight’s candidates are as follows: No; Hell, NO!; Not on Your Anti-Semitic Ass; Who?; and WHEN HELL FREEZES OVER.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Although, for the dear innocent and guileless straight people who are asserting that you can tell our beloved Andrew is straight because he is married and has four children, claims like that just make gays and lesbians helpless with mirth. Really. That is ROFLOL, pants-wettingly funny. That’s because plenty of gays and lesbians marry and have children for the perks of heterosexuality and lead their gay lives on the down-low. Which is one of the very, VERY best reasons for gay marriage equality. It will rid our community of these predators and ensure straight people who marry get an honest-to-goodness straight spouse who truly desires them. Because when we can’t marry each other, we will marry you — in my head, I’m saying that with the same cadence Khrushchev used when he said, “We will bury you.” On account of I remember when that was the “evening news,” not “history.”

Oh, and if you’re wondering, we don’t ask for proof that someone is straight or gay because it’s an inner experience and cannot be proved. We go on your say so.