Monk

Obama, by declaring that homosexual marriages should be on the same legal and moral plane as traditional marriage, just took command of the forces of anti-Christian secularism in America's Kulturkampf. And Nov. 6, 2012, is shaping up as the Antietam of the culture war.

-- Patrick Buchanan

I have not heard from Pat Buchanan in a while. I see he still has his fiery rhetoric. We'll also catch an excerpt from his opinion piece.


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It took Joe Biden's public embrace of same-sex marriage to smoke him out.

But after Joe told David Gregory of "Meet the Press" he was "absolutely comfortable" with homosexuals marrying, Barack Obama could not maintain his credibility with the cultural elite if he stuck with the biblical view that God ordained marriage as solely between a man and woman. The biblical view had to go.

Obama had to move, or look like a malingerer in secularism's next great moral advance into post-Christian America.

Consider. Obama had an appearance coming up on "The View," where Whoopi Goldberg would have demanded to know why he lacked the courage of Biden's convictions. He has a $40,000-a-plate fundraiser at George Clooney's, where the Hollywood crowd would want to know why he does not end discrimination against homosexuals.

He has appearances lined up before gay activists raising millions for his campaign. Monday, his press secretary was pilloried for his feeble defense of Obama's now-abandoned position.

His hand was forced. Yet the stand Obama took could cost him his presidency. Same-sex marriage may yet be a bridge too far, even for a dying Christian America.

-- Patrick Buchanan

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If it is any consolation to Pat, with respect to his feelings for Christianity, I don't think that it is necessarily the death of Christianity in our culture just because we no longer think to exclude gays from the Kingdom of God. Some Christians might say that it is a fuller realization of the Christian vision to understand that gay love is within the all-encompassing love of God.

On the day after President Obama makes some impressive civil rights history by endorsing gay marriage, we get reports of Republican candidate Mitt Romney bashing gays in high school. The most striking incident is the one in which "after teasing a gay student about his hair for a week, Romney attacked him, holding him down on the ground to cut his hair off while the boy cried for help.” Andrew Sullivan gives us an elaboration of that attack by one who says he considers himself a friend of Romney's, and who was a part of that attack.


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“It’s a haunting memory. I think it was for everybody that spoke up about it… because when you see somebody who is simply different taken down that way and is terrified and you see that look in their eye you never forget it. And that was what we all walked away with,” said Phillip Maxwell, who is now an attorney and still considers Romney an old friend.

“I saw it with my own eyes,” said Maxwell, of the anecdote first reported by the Washington Post. Maxwell said Romney held the scissors helping to cut the hair of a student, John Lauber, who was presumed to be gay and who had long hair. “It was a hack job… clumps of hair taken off.” Maxwell said he held the boy’s arm and leg, describing he and his friends as a “pack of dogs.”

Asked if Lauber was targeted because he was gay, as reported by the Post, Maxwell said, “We didn’t know that word in those days… but there were other words that were used. We weren’t ignorant, we just didn’t use the current names for things." ...

“This was bullying supreme,” he said.

-- Andrew Sullivan's Dish

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You understand that this probably will not hurt Romney's candidacy with respect to the Republican base. Indeed, it may even energize the more rabid members of that base of good old boys. Rush Limbaugh, for instance, will no doubt rhapsodize over it: "Well, well, I guess Romney really is a severe conservative, after all, all right!"

However, it could hurt Romney with the independents, the ones who will presumably decide the election. I would think that it is not too late for the Republicans to nominate a different candidate, but I have not come across the least suggestion that this move is under any consideration.

"In the end the values that I care most deeply about and [Michelle] cares most deeply about is how we treat other people and, you know, I, you know, we are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated. And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids and that’s what motivates me as president and I figure the most consistent I can be in being true to those precepts, the better I’ll be as a as a dad and a husband and hopefully the better I’ll be as president."

-- President Barack H. Obama

Though, I take it that he also endorses the federalist approach, by which states can determine the issue of gay marriage for themselves as a matter of right and law. I doubt that this hedge buys him any grace from those who were against him before and who are now more firmly against him on account of this endorsement, but he is still overwhelmingly drawing kudos for his statement from the social liberals. Andrew Sullivan writes of being in tears.

I see Susanna has come upon a little controversy in Young Adults fiction, in which there is some fear and aversion about having gay characters. It is only in recent years that we have made serious headway in gay acceptance, and I expect that the publishers and literary agents are still just a little behind the ball, and the youth market is probably most ripe for this kind of progressive development.

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Originally posted by darkspirited1 at SIGNAL BOOST: SAY YES TO GAY YA

Whether the topic is hair length, celibacy, when life begins, or divorce, time and again, the leaders most opposed to gay marriage have demonstrated an incredible willingness to consider nuances and complicating considerations when their own interests are at stake.

Since graduating from seminary, I no longer identify with the evangelical community of my youth. The community gave me many fond memories and sound values but it also taught me to take the very human perspectives of its leaders and attribute them to God.

So let’s stop the charade and be honest.

Opponents of gay marriage aren’t defending the Bible’s values. They’re using the Bible to defend their own.

-- Jonathan Dudley at CNN

“Can you imagine how much a gay president would have to overcompensate to please the macho ninnies who control our national debate?” Bill Maher told me. “Women like Hillary have to do it, Obama had to do it because he’s black and liberal, but a gay president? He’d have to nuke something the first week.”

-- Maureen Dowd for The New York Times

Congress repealed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" today, marking another historical civil rights victory, allowing gays to serve openly in the military. President Obama and the Democrats actually closed out the session with a bang, including closing the nukes deal with the Russians. The big weapon in their arsenal was holding Congress over the holidays until they took care of business, over the lamentations and the gnashing of teeth of Republicans complaining about how the Democrats were committing sacrilege against Christianity. However, this legislative weapon only works when you have the majority, which they won't have next year. So, it's not going to get this good again, at least not before the 2012 election.

“I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens,” [Admiral] Mullen said during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on dropping the archaic “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. “For me personally, it comes down to integrity — theirs as individuals and ours as an institution.”

-- Maureen Dowd for The New York Times

The issue of gays in the military and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” seems to have picked up a lot of speed in recent days. I imagine it’s connected to the election shocker in Massachusetts when a Republican took Ted Kennedy’s seat, which may have even wrecked Obama’s bid for, well, something that was close to universal health care.

Maybe Obama is seriously considering the possibility that he will be a one-term president, and he would like to leave with a big victory in civil rights.

I can imagine the scene. President Obama has Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his office for a serious man-to-man, and he explains that he has given the military everything it has asked for on Iraq and Afghanistan, at no small cost to his political position in the Democratic Party, and he now wants a commensurate favor in return, “I want to be the president that allowed gays in the military as a matter of right.”

Secretary Gates understands the political situation and how Obama is in a very vulnerable position, possibly ready to fall as a failed president, and he nods sympathetically, “Yes, sir, Mr. President.”

But seeing how Mr. Obama has been hapless with executive power thus far, one shouldn’t start counting those chickens yet. After a whole year of working on health care, he is now prepared to let the whole matter drop and get nothing for it, even with heavy majorities in Congress. Funny, when a Republican president wants something, he can just ram it through and tell us to suck on it.

Republican presidents are quasi-kings; Democratic presidents are un-American traitors.

LOS ANGELES – An openly gay teen has been voted prom queen at his Los Angeles high school in a campaign that began as a stunt but ended up spurring discussion on the campus about gender roles and popularity.

-- Associated Press

I don't suppose the king will take up that celebratory dance. That's America for you: where almost anything can and does happen.

"If you fight love, you're always the loser."

-- Economist.com

This has to be the best slogan yet in the political battle in California over gay marriage and Poposition 8.

"Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with FELLATIO KILLS."

-- Rev. Dr. Peter Mullen Anglican rector of St Michael’s Cornhill and St Sepulchre without Newgate in the City of London

I'm sure pussy can be dangerous, too, but no guts, no glory hole.