Same-sex marriage and freedom of religion

Opponents of marriage equality love to argue that legalizing same-sex marriage will violate the religious freedom of those churches that oppose it. Yet when wrong thinkers like me ask how the same has not turned out to be true of legally recognized remarriage after divorce, Catholics pretend not to have heard the question, while non-Catholic Christians engage in fanciful rewrites of Scripture to make it say just about anything except what it actually says. If I didn't know any better, I might start to think that no one actually believes in the Bible and church teaching, least of all the "believers" themselves.

I also have an issue with holding all of our rights hostage to a particular church's doctrine. Our opponents love to say that the Constitution guarantees freedom of, not from, religion. Yet they leave out that before it does that, it guarantees freedom from, not of, an establishment of religion. Also, who will enforce the Constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion -- those same unelected liberal activist judges whom they attack on other issues?

The possible demise of an LGBT media giant

Regarding the recent news about the parent company of the LGBT "newspaper of record," I have mixed feelings. While we do not want to lose an LGBT voice, publications such as The Blade may have condemned themselves to irrelevance. As I have noted in previous posts, The Blade often seems like the house organ of a narrowly defined subset of queerdom, eerily disconnected from the way so many of us live.

For one thing, how badly do we need a "gay" publication as stridently anti-gay-male as The Blade can be? As I noted in another publication, The Blade often came across as too much like The Washington Times on issues near to me.

Fabulous queer dating tip #6: Be selective, but be selective in how you are selective.

If you have impossibly high standards of muscle development, you just want someone who understands the importance of taking care of himself. If you are holding out for a person of a particular race or ethnicity, or for someone whose age fits within some ludicrously narrow range, that's just your preference. But if you care at all about a person's intellect or what he has done with his life, you have blasphemed and will burn, burn, burn.

Originalists in the hot seat

It's fun to watch judicial conservatives squirm when asked about Brown v. Board of Education. Apparently, original intent controls, except when it doesn't. In other words, no one actually believes their dogma, including them.

Our activists should debate more in this fashion, taking our enemies' stated principles to their logical conclusion, probing them until they break. Doing so would surely change more minds than the appeals to one's own emotions that we so often see.

More straight-washing from The Washington Post

In an otherwise interesting article in The Washington Post, the author limits the subject of eroticism in art to "men wanting to look at naked women" and even limits discussion of such thoroughly homoeroticized images as the martyrdom of St. Sebastian to their effects on heterosexual viewers. Yet homoeroticism in art goes back for millennia. How anyone can view such works as Ercole e Caco and not see homoeroticism, except through willful ignorance, is beyond me.

Democracy and marriage (3)

Since conservatives are so sure that matters of public concern must be decided by the voters rather than by unelected liberal activist judges, they'll surely support the following amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

1. The definition of marriage shall be determined by the voters of each of the several States, and the courts of the United States and of the several States shall lack subject-matter jurisdiction to intervene.
2. The scope of the right to keep and bear arms shall be determined by the voters of each of the several States, and the courts of the United States and of the several States shall lack subject-matter jurisdiction to intervene.
3. The freedom to prescribe and use medical marijuana shall be determined by the voters of each of the several States, and the courts of the United States and of the several States shall lack subject-matter jurisdiction to intervene.
4. The electors of the President and Vice President of the United States shall be chosen by the voters of each of the several States, and the courts of the United States and of the several States shall lack subject-matter jurisdiction to intervene.
5. For the purposes of this Article of Amendment, the district constituting the seat of government of the United States shall be considered to be one of the several States.

What do you mean, those other things are completely different?

Maine

The news from Maine, while disheartening, is not entirely bad. When I first came out, a loss by only that margin would have been unimaginable. Also, consider the amount by which the goalpost has shifted. Now, we fight over marriage; in the early nineties, people seriously considered writing sodomy laws into the Constitution of Kentucky. While social evolution can seem glacially slow, we are on the right side of history, and our enemies must know that on some level.

The irony! It burns! (3) Ayn Rand and conservatives

Ayn Rand is in the news again, as conservatives increasingly quote her. They seem to overlook that Rand, a militant atheist who was pro-choice on abortion, hated theocratic social conservatism as much as she hated the moochers and looters. They also overlook the contradiction in asserting that morality has no basis apart from God and then appealing to Rand's moral philosophy.