Nigel Reed, second from left, plays homophile leader Harry Hay in Rep Stage production of “The Temperamentals” (credit: Stan Barough)

There’s nothing like having the wind of public opinion at your back on a controversial issue. I used to, but the wind changed. Gay marriage will come to my adopted state if voters let stand the Maryland legislature’s recently passed same-sex marriage law. The gradual leftward shift on this, in Maryland and nationally, defies a prediction I made years ago. Mine is no longer the clear majority view – and it certainly never was among my fellow homosexuals. Ignoring the matter as long as possible has been my response. But time’s up. The November 6 vote is near. Having consulted my conscience, I find that my opposition remains.

It would be wimpy to tiptoe quietly to the polls. Not when the “Yes on 6” side is having so much fun mobilizing politically, financially, and even theatrically. Three local stage companies have put on plays intended to boost support for same-sex marriage in the run-up to the election. I decided that, forced to again take up this question, I could at least mobilize myself to enter the civic arena and attend some live theater.

My field trips, about which more below, prompted rumination about plays for the opposition to mount – if so inclined, which of course they’re not – that would cast an approving glow over heterosexual matrimony. Eugene O’Neill? Edward Albee? The more I thought about it, the more obvious it was that a staple of the modern theater has been husbands treating wives perfectly shabbily and vice versa. Well then, what about that old stand-by, Shakespeare, whose comedies end in nuptials? No. He only shows the first moments of marriage. For all we can say, Beatrice and Benedick, Orlando and Rosalind and the others wind up tearing into each other with all the sadistic zest of Martha and George in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Despite how they were billed in the newspaper, the three productions I saw — two in Baltimore City and one in Columbia — addressed not same-sex marriage but the past prejudices that brought down upon us the cruel contempt of our fellow citizens. Who could disagree with preachments in favor of toleration? Two out of three so preached, I should say, for “Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?”, being the “edgiest” of the lot, was a total loss. A two-man play, it arrived in 2006 as British dramatist Caryl Churchill’s way of floating her theory that the UK’s close foreign policy collaboration with the United States was rooted in an erotic attraction between Tony Blair and George W. Bush. The piece has been revised to make it less keyed to those individuals and more symbolically about the evils of capitalist-imperialist Uncle Sam. But it was still expressionism, and we were still Baltimoreans. In the Q and A after the show, audience members did not hesitate to share their bafflement.

The other two were staged biographies: “The Temperamentals,” about Harry Hay, founder of the earliest gay rights organization, and “Breaking the Code,” about Alan Turing, the British computer science and artificial intelligence pioneer who played a crucial role in defeating Adolf Hitler. (Turing broke the Nazis’ Enigma code.) The latter drama, which was written by Hugh Whitemore in 1986, was well-acted. It was pitiful and searing to watch a world-historical figure being humiliated by the government he served.

Vandalism left in response to peaceful and orderly support of Chick fil A

Over the past day, I’ve seen more than a few discussions amongst Christians that we should not have done the Chick-fil-A event on Wednesday. After they ignore, reject, or exclude the free speech element of the event — which I will copy in order to counter their arguments — they have two lines of reasoning. First, this is Dan Cathy’s personal problem and therefore not “a hill to die on.” Second, the left feels like we hate them, and we are wrong to do anything that makes them feel that way. Whether we actually hate them is not the salient point. Both seem to think along the lines of one commenter, that this is a time to “keep our heads down” and practice our faith quietly.

Keep our heads down. I don’t recall such instructions anywhere in the Bible. I recall that we are to loudly proclaim our faith, that we are to offer succor to fellow Christians persecuted for our faith, and that we are to bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. As if my resolve to never keep my head down needed a boost, I received the “heads down” comment in my inbox as I walked out of my second viewing of The Dark Knight Rises, which is not exactly a modern morality tale about the “virtue” of keeping one’s head down.

A prominent Christan has been ridiculed and his company banned from certain public venues because of his Christian values. He needs our support, and we are called to give it. The left may feel hatred from our actions, but whether we actually hate is the paramount question. We are judged both by God and by criminal courts of law on our actual intent, not by someone’s perception of our intent.

Furthermore, is this not all backward?  

I like gay people and — let me be frank — hate fast food. But this nonsense about Chick-Fil-A underscores the reason I’ve been hesitant to indulge my natural libertarianism and plunk outright for gay marriage.

In general, I have no problem with marriage for gays, if it comes about legislatively rather than through judicial fiat. I’ve listened carefully to the arguments of several social conservatives of good will who feel that changing the age-old definition of marriage will weaken a principle pillar of liberty. I’m not convinced — not even convinced that the possibility of such a moral hazard is a compelling reason to keep people from doing whatever they bloody well want with their private lives. As for the ideas that being gay is unnatural or a sin per se — that is, a sin whether it does any earthly harm or not — I reject them outright. Homosexuality seems as much a part of nature as left-handedness and is probably much less annoying when using scissors. And if it is somehow offensive to God, that’s His business: I am specifically instructed to judge not in such matters and tend to my own manifold offenses.

via Google Wants to Legalize Same Sex Marriage Worldwide – National – The Atlantic Wire.

Bravo, Google. The tech giant announced a new campaign to legalize same sex marriage across the world at an LGBT conference on Saturday. Pointed out to us by Think Progress, Dot429 reports Google’s Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe announced the “Legalize Love” campaign at an LGBT Workplace Summit in London on Saturday. The initiative starts in Singapore and Poland, but will eventually expand to every country that has a Google office. The idea is to “focus on places with homophobic cultures, where anti-gay laws exist,” before expanding into more liberal countries.

Palmer-Edgecumbe explained why Singapore is a good place for the company to start their campaign. ”Singapore wants to be a global financial center and world leader and we can push them on the fact that being a global center and a world leader means you have to treat all people the same, irrespective of their sexual orientation,” he said.

In some instances, he said Google hasn’t been able to employ the best person for the job because of some countries anti-gay culture. ”We have had a number of instances where we have been trying to hire people into countries where there are these issues and have been unable to put the best person into a job in that country,” he explained.

I wonder if I actually googled where in the world the most homophobic cultures and anti-gay laws existed what it would say. First result is Wikipedia: LGBT rights by country or territory.

Singapore: “Male illegal (Penalty: up to 2 years prison sentence; no plan to repeal 377A and not enforced since 1999)”

Male homosexuality as punishable with jail time is not acceptable but at least it hasn’t been enforced in a decade. So consider that some measure of progress.

Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia and much of the rest of the Muslim world:

Illegal (Penalty: death or prison/fines/whipping)

Google’s famous mantra is “Don’t be evil.”

Question: is it evil to focus people’s attention and money on fighting the minor evil of Singapore’s unenforced sodomy law while ignoring the far more significant evils of Saudi Arabia’s ongoing executions of gays, sorcerers, “dishonored” women, and Muslim apostates?

And where does Google MENA (Middle East and North Africa) fit in with this campaign?

Recommended reading: Mitchell Bard’s The Arab Lobby.

Non-bombshell: CNN’s Anderson Cooper comes out: ‘The fact is, I’m gay’ | Twitchy:

CNN’s Anderson Cooper officially, publicly came out as gay today. Most Twitter users met the news with a “big whoop” and not much surprise.

Anderson Cooper confirmed what we’ve all known for a while. Kudos to him.—
Joshua (@craftjoshua) July 02, 2012

Some, of course, questioned the timing!

Tell me Anderson Cooper coming out is not at all related to CNN’s recent shoddy journalism and poor ratings. #JumpTheShark—
S. Thistlethwaite (@YesBiscuit) July 02, 2012

Heh.

People were offended by one thing, though; he came out in a Daily Beast article penned by Andrew “Uterine Forensic Expert” Sullivan. Why, Anderson, why?

So, Anderson Cooper just came out on Andrew Sullivan’s blog?—
Seth (@srosenb) July 02, 2012

Anderson Cooper explains why he chose to publicly come out now.

You would think so if you watched Suze Orman’s show last week where she discussed gay marriage and the four financial advantages of being married. On her show, she mentioned that married people have all kinds of advantages in terms of health insurance, pensions, social security, and estate taxes. She says that you can leave your spouse 100% of your assets tax-free, get higher social security benefits if your spouse dies, and pension plans at corporations often let you leave money to your spouse. Employers often insure a spouse and not a life partner. Okay, fair enough but maybe that just says more about how our tax structure and employee benefits are set than about marriage. For example, your kids get screwed if you leave them your money too as part of your estate by high estate taxes. Why not change the estate law to make this more fair? But this post is about the other side that Orman did not touch on: What are the financial disadvantages of being married?

There are many. First, what about the marriage penalty? Two high earners who are married pay more than if they were single. Is this fair? Not in my book. Another disadvantage of being married is that spouses are often responsible for the other’s debt. If your spouse racks up a great deal of debt and bails on it, that can become your problem, depending on the state you live in. According to Nolo.com:

In community property states, most debts incurred by either spouse during the marriage are owed by the “community” (the couple), even if only one spouse signed the paperwork for a debt. The key here is during the marriage.

And what if you don’t want to leave your retirement account to your spouse? According to Nolo.com “your spouse–or former spouse–may have a legal claim to your retirement account, so proceed with caution.”

Finally, if you get divorced, you may end up giving most of your assets away, even if you earned them. And then, of course, there are the non-financial restrictions on you when married, especially if male. You often need your wife’s permission to get a vasectomy. Even your own body is no longer your own once you become wedded to a woman.

Can you name some more financial disadvantages of marriage that I missed?

It’s the dream of every pastor. This past week a sermon video went viral. Only for Pastor Charles L. Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, North Carolina, his dream may become a nightmare. And the negative reaction has the rare feature of coming from both the Right and the Left in the worlds of politics and religion.

On May 13th, Worley responded from his pulpit to President Obama’s support of gay marriage. His words, which were filmed by the church, later appeared on the church’s website (though later taken down). Within the week an “anti-hate” group picked up the sermon and posted it on YouTube, where it’s racked up over 500,000 views.

Here is a glimpse of part of Worley’s message:

I figured a way out, a way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers, but I couldn’t get it past the Congress. Build a great big, large fence – 50 or a 100 miles long – and put all the lesbians in there. Fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals, and have that fence electrified so they can’t get out. Feed them. And you know what, in a few years, they’ll die out. You know why? They can’t reproduce. … I’m gonna preach the hell out of all of ‘em. … God have mercy. It makes me pukin’ sick.

This pastor will now forever be known for these words. And the church will be remembered for the sounds of “amen” and laughter at the pastor’s words. And those who claim Christianity and support traditional marriage are in danger of being put in the same camp as these words of hate.

A powerful video launched by a group called Catholics Called 2 Witness has launched, in the name of freedom, an all out assault on the social policies put forth by President Obama.

When a non-Catholic, churchgoing friend sent me this video the message said: You don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate this ad, peaking my interest.

As a person of faith here is my interpretation of the “ad” and its underlying message.

The use of fire — a biblical symbol of God’s awesome power – is a demonstration by the Almighty of His intent to destroy or conversely to show His approval of man’s behavior.

In this video God’s people, i.e. the Catholic Church (but really all believers), must triumph over the anti-biblical social policies of the Obama administration (that are ultimately more important to fix than our nation’s economic problems in the eyes of God). But this important victory will only occur if HIS people rise up and vote Obama out of office. Otherwise our nation will be consumed by the fires of hell.

The video with over 1.3 million views is starting to go viral which means its strong message and imaging will be up for much political, social and religious interpretation.

As usual, I expect the comments of PJ Media readers to be among the most insightful.

Kotaku repots: Beat Takeshi Compares Gay Marriage To Bestiality.

One of Japans best known creators and comedians, Beat Takeshi, is catching heat for remarks he made about gay marriage.When shown footage of people celebrating President Obamas recent gay marriage remarks, Takeshi quipped, “Obama supports gay marriage. You would support a marriage to an animal eventually, then.” Um…Takeshi is, first and foremost, a comedian, and this might have been a very poor attempt at humor—though, its certainly not clear this was a joke. I dont think it was. Sure, hes not breaking any law, and hes clearly giving his off hand opinion, which hes entitled to. Some in Japan, however, found his remarks rather disappointing.

Jay-Z — I Support Gay Marriage | TMZ.com:

Jay-Z says he STRONGLY believes gay people deserve the right to get married … claiming discriminating against a gay person is the same as discriminating against a black person. Jay — arguably the most powerful person in hip hop — discussed the issue with CNN … saying President Obamas decision to come out in support of gay marriage was “the right thing to do.”