On the flip side, the majority of the state of California voted to WRITE INTO THEIR CONSTITUTION A BAN AGAINST SAME-SEX MARRIAGE.

How can a constitution DENY RIGHTS?

So now, all the tens of thousands of couples who already entered into the marriage contract may be told, “Whoops! It turns out you’re actually NOT citizens! Your marriage is annulled! Sorry! But we can still be neighbors and friends and co-workers, right?”

What. The. Fuck.

You want to talk about change?

How about recognizing ALL citizens as having inalienable rights?

“In view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship,” Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote of marriage for the majority, “the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.”

California already has a strong domestic partnership law that gives gay and lesbian couples nearly all of the benefits and burdens of heterosexual marriage. The majority said that is not enough. [source]

California joins Massachusetts in being the only two states to legally support marriage equality.

Idiots and godbags (as much as there is a difference) in California are not willing to focus on their own families, though:

Conservative groups have proposed a new initiative, this one to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage. If it is allowed onto the ballot in November and approved by the voters, [today's] decision would be overridden.

There must be something wrong with me, because I think it’s silly to get all huffy over two women or two men entering the marriage contract together.

In 2003 Canada ran these commercials on television stations across the country:

Here in the US:

Advocacy and awareness go a long way.

A growing number of Evangelical Christians believe there is a revival underway in America that requires Christian youth to assume leadership roles in advocating the causes of their religious movement. Jesus Camp follows a group of young children to Pastor Becky Fischer’s “Kids on Fire Summer Camp”, where kids are taught to become dedicated Christian soldiers in God’s army and are schooled in how to take back America for Christ. The film is a first-ever look into an intense training ground that recruits born-again Christian children to become an active part of America’s political future.

Here’s the trailer: It is no longer available.

And a “get it while you can” heads-up, here is the entire film in several parts on YouTube:
It is no longer available, due to copyright issues.

This film should be viewed, especially by those of us outside the Evangelical cult community — or those of us without children with whom we can journey to the Kids on Fire Summer Camp to see this stuff first-hand. Give copies to your family, friends, and neighbors.

Generally, the first realm of socialization for an individual is the family. Thus the film begins by taking the viewer into the homes and lives of several Evangelical families, most of which home-school their children. While Evangelical home-schooling is something worthy of investigation itself, this portion of the film is especially frightening — even for us non-educators — due to the amount of brainwashing and misinformation being passed on to these children under the guise of education.

For example, Levi’s mother can be seen using Exploring Creation with Physical Science, a textbook which “begins with a detailed discussion of the world around you and what makes it work. It will then take you out into the universe so that you may learn the majesty of God’s Creation”, from which she reads:

“One popular thing to do in American politics is to note that the summers in the United States over the past few years have been very warm. As a result, global warming must be real. What’s wrong with this reasoning?”

Levi replies, “It’s only gone up 0.6 degrees.”

His mother, apparently a climatologist, says, “Yeah, it’s not really a big problem, is it?”

The beginning scenes are not the worst, however, as we follow the families to their week at the summer camp. To say that these children are shamed, guilted, and otherwise emotionally beaten into religious submission would be a nice way of putting what we see happening on the screen. I cannot believe this shit is legal.

Children, according to Pastor Becky Fischer,

are so usable in Christianity. If you look at the world’s population, one-third of that 6.7 billion people are children under the age of fifteen. One-third. Where should we be putting our efforts? Where should we be putting our focus? I’ll tell you where our enemies are putting it: they’re putting it on the kids. They’re going into the schools — you go into Palestine, and I can take you to some websites that will absolutely shake you to your foundations, and show you photographs, of where they’re taking their kids to camps like we take our kids to bible camps, and they’re putting hand grenades in their hands, and they’re teaching them how to put on bomb belts, they’re teaching them how to use rifles, they’re teaching them how to use machine guns — it’s no wonder, with that kind of intense training and discipling, that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam. I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel, as they are over in Pakistan, in Israel, and Palestine, and all those different places. You know, because we have — excuse me! — but we have the truth!

I think it’s time for a nation-wide intervention.

Your thoughts?

Bible Course Becomes a Test for Public Schools in Texas

When the school board in Odessa, the West Texas oil town, voted unanimously in April to add an elective Bible study course to the 2006 high school curriculum, some parents dropped to their knees in prayerful thanks that God would be returned to the classroom, while others assailed it as an effort to instill religious training in the public schools.

Hundreds of miles away, leaders of the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools notched another victory. A religious advocacy group based in Greensboro, N.C., the council has been pressing a 12-year campaign to get school boards across the country to accept its Bible curriculum.

The council calls its course a nonsectarian historical and literary survey class within constitutional guidelines requiring the separation of church and state.

[...]

In one teaching unit, students are told, “Throughout most of the last 2,000 years, the majority of men living in the Western world have accepted the statements of the Scriptures as genuine.” The words are taken from the Web site of Grant R. Jeffrey Ministries’ Prophecy on Line.

[Source]

I’m wondering, are there no parochial schools in Texas?

The United Church of Christ’s rulemaking body voted overwhelmingly Monday to approve a resolution endorsing same-sex marriage…

[The resolution] also asks churches to consider supporting legislation granting equal marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples and to work against laws banning gay marriage.

[Source]

I do not endorse the institution of marriage, but I will endorse equality. It is absurd to deny equal rights to people, but it is even more absurd when the reasons for discrimination are backed by religion, but that’s nothing new.

I took a course last semester entitled, “Religion in America”, and unfortunately, the instructor limited our class discussions, not allowing for debate to take place. All but one of my classmates were religious, one even toting his Bible to class with him each day, and everyone had an opinion on the so-called gay marriage issue. All discussion was cut short before real dialogue could take place.

On a societal level, discussion of issues such as gay marriage works only to separate people onto different sides of some fictional fence – are you pro or anti? It is this separation and preoccupation with labels that keeps us from making real progress. We’re too concerned about who’s fucking who or what some holy book says, neglecting to examine that it is our governments and religions that are fucking us. I fear that when folks think about gay marriage, they think about two men or two women together sexually or think about what their holy book or preacher has told them, and not about who has the right to deny another person equal rights under the laws of this country.

It is beyond my brain capacity to fathom advocating for the denial of a beings’ rights.

Cheers for the UCC!