The kids are home; the chaos begins. I will be soon bumped off my computer so that one of the savages can get on the Cartoon Network website. But first I must pass on a few links to a massive and interesting and disturbing discussion about the Mormon role in the passage of Prop 8 in CA.
First link is to Andrew Sullivan.
I strongly support civility in this struggle. Religious services and practices should be scrupulously respected. But when a church, like the Mormon church, makes a concerted effort to enter the public square and strip a small minority of basic civil rights, it is simply preposterous for them then to argue that the Mormon church cannot be criticized and protested because they are a religion. I have never done anything - nor would I do anything - to impede or restrict the civil rights of Mormons. I respect their right to freedom of conscience and religion. In fact, it is one of my strongest convictions. But when they use their money and power to target my family, to break it up, to demean it and marginalize it, to strip me and my husband of our civil rights, then they have started a war. And I am not a pacifist.
He writes that that the Mormon church has a horrid record of dealing with gays in their own congregation.
I should add that I dated a Mormon man for a few months a while back. What he told me about the LDS church's psychological warfare on their gay members, the brutality and viciousness and intolerance with which they attack and hound and police the gay children of Mormon families, would make anyone shudder.
They hounded my ex for having HIV and for being gay. They followed him secretly, outed him to his family and persecuted him for his illness. When he was diagnosed with HIV at Brigham Young, he had to run out of the college clinic to escape those who wanted to sequester and punish him. He died a few years ago. Most of his Mormon family didn't show up for his funeral. You want me to love these people? Let me say it's my Christian duty to try.
I know something about this, she says vaguely.
And then from the other side: Ron Dreher, Nate Oman, Russell Arben Fox, and Hugo Schwyzer. They are concerned that backlash will hurt religious freedom.