Same-Sex Marriage Bill Is Going to Destroy Everything, Says Conservative Christian Group

What? Christians being forced to tolerate to married gay people? The horror! Next thing ya know, Jesus will probably expect those same Christians to hang out with prostitutes and tax collectors!!!

The same-sex marriage bill in Maine is being supported by many businesses for the exact reason Bill states: it’s going to increase business for anyone who provide services and products for weddings. It’s also supported by a surprising number of religious leaders (of course all very liberal faiths like UU, Presbyterian, Reformed Judaism, etc). I have to say they have earned some respect from me over this.

Hmm, whatever happened to “Teach The Controversy” and “Teach both sides” and “Let the kids decide for themselves”? I guess this doesn’t apply to lifestyles, only scientific theories.

I fail to see how allowing same-sex marriage takes away their constitutional rights to practice their religion.

Actually, the same-sex/interracial analogy is perfect.

It really takes some cognitive dissonance to believe this garbage. Yes, they won’t have the “right” to send their kids to schools that promise to completely ignore homosexuality; gay parents will be at parent-teacher conferences. Gay students aren’t going to be punished or bullied.

Racists don’t have the “right” to send their kids to segregated schools either. You can still teach your kids whatever you want at home – heck, you can even homeschool them or send them to a private Christian school where they’ll be taught your doctrine.

No rights are being taken away, just imaginary “rights” like the right not to be offended.

The 1954 version:

You’re Cordially Invited

To Witness Your Rights Being Taken Away

We wish to inform you that:

Anti-segregation ruling Brown v. Board of Education will deny citizens their religious rights.

Schools that wish to remain segregated will have no choice in the matter.

Their parents won’t either.

Church groups who won’t comply will be punished by the government.

Business will have to close their doors.

THIS DISTURBING LEGISLATIVE VOTE WILL TAKE PLACE IN

1954 in the U.S. Supreme Court

If you’re a Christian and against gay marriage, will you please tell me where Jesus said it is OK to be mean to and discriminate against people who are different than you? Because I never read that in my Bible. Stuff like this really pisses me off.

Hmmm, and straight people have done such a fantastic job preserving marriage. After all, only about half end in divorce. That’s pretty good, right?

Hypocrisy of this sort makes me ill.

Church groups who won’t comply will be punished by the government.

If they’re going to lie like this, why not go all out?

“All churches who preach against gay marriage will be dissolved by the US Government, all adult members will be imprisoned in Fema education camps, and all children will be taken away and raised on a hippy gay commune near San Fransisco.”

What a pack of shameless liars. These people don’t give a damn about putting the principles of their prophet into practice, they only want to protect their hate-and-fear power base from being eroded. They’ll say anything, including the same bogus dire predictions that were tried against interacial marriage.

This reminds me of the Galileo/Inquisition conflict. Many of the Jesuits secretly knew he was right about heliocentricism, but truth wasn’t important, only preserving power.

I imagine the dinosaurs made a lot of noise as they also went extinct.

Tax the churches that stick their nose into politics.

Liars for Jeebus: Do they ever cease?

Schools that wish not to teach gay marriage will have no choice in the matter.
Their parents won’t either.

Business will have to close their doors.

Apparently these schools have already been banned from teaching about subject shifts, sentence fragments, and proof reading.

Schools that wish not to teach gay marriage will have no choice in the matter.

Their parents won’t either.

Schools have parents?

As I’ve mentioned before, as a resident of CT, I get junk mail from these assholes. I always return their donation form with a detailed explanation of how utterly despicable they are. Even this bit of generosity is more than they deserve from me, but I just can’t help myself.

It always makes me feel warm inside when I get “cordially” invited to something. Those regular invitations (sans “cordially”, that is) are just rude and offensive, as if they don’t even want me to attend.

I gotta agree with MaleficVTwin. Just exactly HOW is the analogy flawed? Here is how I see it:

According to the CIA World Factbook, the black population of the US is just under 13%. According to some site I found the married population of the US is about 75% (not sure of it’s accuracy, but it works for my point).

Assuming that all ethnic demographics marry at the same rate and the gay population is 5% of the total US population, then for interracial marriage with one partner being black to affect the same number of people as gay marriage, about 32% of all marriages where at least one member was black would need to be interracial. Assuming that gays make up 10% of the population, about 56% of all marriages where at least one member was black would need to be interracial.

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage) the interracial marriage percentage among African Americans, in the 2006 census, was “3.7% of married African American women and 8.4% of married African American men have a non-African American spouse.” (about 6% average, assuming equal male and female populations of married African Americans)

Gay marriage rights affect a vastly larger number of people than interracial marriage rights (when one partner is black) do.

To compare the two and assume that you are even approaching overstating the case is a nothing more than a great display of ignorance to reality.

If someone else could check those numbers for me I would appreciate it. I checked it a few times but it’s mostly cocktail napkin math done with a calculator.

According to the 2000 census (http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-8.pdf) the percentage of people married is close to 50%. That didn’t affect the numbers in any significant way:
38% of marriages with at least one black partner would have to be interracial for 5% gay population (I suspect a miscalculation in my original comment with this number), 56% again for 10% gay population.

It’s so sad. The long-standing cultural tendency to blindly accept the bigotry of the established religious authorities is eroding in our society. They are losing their god-given right to be blindly followed and do not want to give up this right without a fight.

I can’t wait until my carpool buddy brings this up again. He voted yes on Prop 8, and kept ranting about “how could people destroy marriage,…the people have spoken,…yadda yadda…”. I said that “it’s civil rights and won’t pass muster in the California Supreme Court” (just like the time before). The reason I’m hoping it comes up again is so I can slide it into the argument that this is the case for most xtians. I’m going to further take the argument that we enjoy religious freedom in this country, and those people who are not xtian are not to be informed or dictated to by those who are.

And, oh, yeah, those people writing these ads are despicable.

Well when the truth won’t work we can always count on the christians to lie. Christians and lies they go together like peanut butter and jelly, or oreos and milk.

The good news is that the bill to codify marriage equality in Connecticut passed last night and was signed by Gov. Rell today, albeit with an amendment that essentially allows groups with a religious affiliation to discriminate against same-sex couples.

The bad news is that Fred Phelps is coming to protest next week. Ugh.

I guess the rights being denied are the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness being a giant douche.

Am I the only one who finds it deliciously ironic that Sacred Heart University has a Secular Student Alliance?

Oh, and the bigots can stuff it, too.

I completley agree. This ad is ridiculous! they are assuming that by passing the Same-sex marriage bill, somehow people cannot follow their religious practices just as they’ve been doing for the past whatever amount of years. How is allowing American citezens to get married going to prevent somebody from following their personal beliefs? It amazes me how close-minded people can be in a country like ours. They actually believe their own lies and have the nerve to try and push those beliefs on others with absurd ads like this one.

Well same-sex marriage hopefully will destroy the way America has been running;

biggotted: always have to hate someone, have an enemy, I’d say Middle Easterners are “it” this decade….I wonder who is next, we have already been through the Asians and Jews, blacks are always the and gays I guess are good for a few hundred years too.

racist: black people are still more apt to be sent to jail more for smoking crack than a white person doing cocaine and thats only one example.

no equality: woman still don’t get paid the same as men do for doing the same job.

I’m a CT native, but deployed with the Air Force right now…. I’d love to be there for Phelps.

I don’t understand how granted the same rights to one group takes them away from another. When women were granted the vote did men lose the right to vote? When black people were allowed to sit at the front of the bus were white people sent to the back or forced to stand? How will granting homosexuals the right to marry impinge on the right of heterosexual people to marry?

It’s about the right of bigots to pass down bigotry to the next generation. It is also about trying to keep religion relevant. Religion has wielded much power through the ages by dictating and regulating people’s sexual practices. If religion wasn’t involved in sex, religion would have long been relegated to the dust-pan of history. This is one reason why we are seeing a camaraderie between gays and non-gay atheists and an almost fanatical resistance to gay-rights from the deeply religious.

Of course gays can also be atheists and non-gays can also support gay rights simply because it is the right thing to do.

[...] to Friendly Atheist for the original [...]

HOVERFROG,

When women were granted the vote did men lose the right to vote? When black people were allowed to sit at the front of the bus were white people sent to the back or forced to stand?

Ironically those are 2 bad examples. Men’s votes were diluted once women could vote. They no longer had the legal assurance of complete dominance.
Allowing blacks to sit on the bus on a first-come-first-serve basis, meant that a white now had to sit in the back if the bus was crowded.

Gay marriage, OTOH, has ZERO effect on the marriages of heteros (other than maybe a slight shortage of wedding venues at first). Which is why I think it’s so bizarre that they are making this claim.

At least they didn’t also claim that everyone would be forced into gay marriages against their will.

It’s really sad that the people who support this sort of bigotry don’t understand that they don’t actually have the right to control other people.

@ Polly

Men’s votes were diluted once women could vote. They no longer had the legal assurance of complete dominance.
Allowing blacks to sit on the bus on a first-come-first-serve basis, meant that a white now had to sit in the back if the bus was crowded.

So Men no longer had complete dominance and Whites had to learn to share with their darker-skinned brothers. The HORROR!

Now they have to be nice to “queers”…it won’t be easy for their mean, little hearts, but it’s time they started practicing what they preach: unconditional love.

(I know you support equal rights for all, Polly)

P.S. to your earlier taxation comment: AMEN!
Just tax them all. Churches are businesses. Anyone who says otherwise has money at stake in the issue.

I’ve wondered about how one “teaches” gay marriage too. I was in high school when my province legalised same-sex marriage, and in university when the federal government put out a mandate, so maybe kindergarteners really are being subjected to lectures about SSM. At the same time, I can’t imagine what that lecture would consist of. “Today, children, we’re going to learn that sometimes men marry men, and sometimes women marry women! Uh…that’s it, really.”

Great group here! I am new to this blog. There have been some very thoughtful and intelligent points made. I like the observation from TalentedChimp, “Hmm, whatever happened to “Teach The Controversy” and “Teach both sides” and “Let the kids decide for themselves”? I guess this doesn’t apply to lifestyles, only scientific theories.”

It has been noted that students, to be fair, must also lean creation stories from various other cultures and religions, past and present, to be represented in the science of biology, cosmology, geology, etc. As well as Phrenology, astrology, exorcism, geocentrism, etc. Let the kids decide.

In the realm of marriage we should teach all forms of marriage — right? Let the kids decide.

I think these anti-gay ads are not a result of ignorance but cynicism. The people who made these ads are fully aware of the audience that they are trying to reach.

Imagine that you were hired by a major advertising firm to create an advertisement against gay marriage. (I’m going to assume that this is a completely hypothetical scenario for anyone who happens to read this.) What would your first approach be?

I would say — look at the audience you are trying to reach. An audience who are living in fear and more willing to create an imaginary scapegoat, and attack that scapegoat, than take a minute to think about it.

Whoever was behind this ad knew his target audience well and is exploiting them very effectively.

Let’s proceed: After gay marriage is legal then those supporting the gay agenda will continue to create special rights for their kind.

Your bibles will be taken from you and burned.

You will be dragged out of your churches and….

Me again: Despite this lunacy the ad shows a very sophisticated setting. The picture is geared toward the wealthy. Flowers, cake, silver, etc. Sure he’s welcoming all the wealthy investors he can get but that is not who this ad is geared toward.It’s geared to the poor who have been given a picture of wealth and affluence juxtaposed with a particular political message. Be one of us. The non-thinking individual will not make any attempt to evaluate this ad. Such an individual can look at a picture of ‘I wish’ and be sold. Then to be presented with the emotional appeal piggybacked on the scapegoat concept we have a sharp-shooter lurking back here.

I was waiting for George Bush to make a comment about how gay people shouldn’t be considered citizens, and how they shouldn’t have any rights what so ever, and aren’t patriotic, etc. That would have made my cake.

I’m amused how the bigots will make up any excuse to deny marriage to same-sex couples. There are federal benefits to marriage, that cannot be obtained in any other way. (Family Acts and what not). I’m also more amused by the hypocrisy of the governments stance on marriage to begin with. They claim it’s “up to the states” to decide, yet they clearly state that marriage is between a man and a woman. The DOMA (defense of marriage act) is a disgrace to the equality of citizens.