Kiddy Mind Control

Apropos of fundamentalists who are so irrational about same-sex marriage specifically and homosexuality more generally, professionals wonder – and research. When we went looking to see what shrinks and sociologists have concluded, we found a lot of rich, thoughty material.

If you are inclined to peek into the brains of the mad dads, you can start with educational psychologist David C. Berliner. The Arizona State professor delivered the E.L. Thomdike Award Address for the Division of Educational Psychologyy of theAmerican Psychologist Association, August 1996, in Toronto, on the mad dad's interest. The speech was Educational Psychology Meets the Christian Right: Differing Views of Children, Schooling, Teaching, and Learning. In our terms, it might be What About Those Loonies Who Want to Control the Schools?

Among Dr. Berliner's conclusions is:

The antagonism of the Christian Right to these programs is based on a fear of losing control over their children's thinking, rather than any compelling empirical data. It is concluded that many among the Christian Right are unable to engage in politics that make a common school possible. They may be unable to compromise and live with educational decisions rejecting a pluralistic democracy keeping separate church and state.

The 24-page HTML version of the address details his research, other reports and his conclusions.

He cites some scary sorts, such as Christian Right advocate and educator Robert Thoburn, who has a popular book in this subculture, The Children Trap (Dominion Press, 1986). The gist is that public schools "are immoral" and "they breed criminals." "I imagine every Christian would agree that we need to remove the humanism from the public schools. There is only one way to accomplish this: to abolish the public schools. We need to get the government out of the education business. According to the Bible, education is a parental responsibility. It is not the place of the government to be running a school system." Then much like Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals (Vintage, reprint, 1989) does for leftists, Thoburn offers a blueprint for infiltrating and crippling the local school boards to do just that.

It seems clear that our mad dad has read the book and believes this. To the vast majority of us, the questions are why do they think this way and what can one do to deal with them?

A key insight that recurs in the findings of those who study such folk is quoted from Mel and Norma Gabler, the self-identified first couple of conservatism. These delightful folk have asked fellow Christians to pray for the deaths of local school-board members. A peek into Norma's mind reveals a critical element of this group. She said, "Too many of today's textbooks leave students to make up their own minds. Now that is not fair to our children: What some textbooks are doing is giving students ideas, and ideas will never do them as much good as facts."

That's right. Independent thinking is the mark of this educational beast. If you keep this in mind for this set, much becomes clear.

Dr. Berliner commented:

In addition, whole-language teachers believe that children should choose their own books on the basis of their own interests‚—a well-established motivational strategy. This practice, of course, is unacceptable to the Christian Right for the same reason; parents lose control of what their children read.

...whole-language educators believe that the development of language occurs through the processes students choose and the decisions they make. Reading is not so much taught as learned; it is an act of volition. Thus language development is a process of personal "empowerment" of the students. This too is unacceptable because the Christian Right prefers an obedient, not an empowered, child.

To most of us, that seems as irrational as it is self-evident to these folk. Dr. Berliner states that "their world allows no politics, no negotiation, and their views are often irreconcilable with those held by most of the educational community."

He concludes that educators and parents need to keep in mind that they want to destroy public education. "All who are interested in the preservation of our public schools must be polite to the Christian Right and respectful of their concerns – some of which are shared by all of us," he said. "But we must also be extraordinarily vigilant to prevent them from gaining control of the public's common schools."

At the least, mainstream parents need to speak up about what should be taught. Berliner suggested, "If we find their demands unreasonable, a proper response is to remind these adamant school critics that by law and by tradition, public schools cannot accommodate narrow sectarian beliefs. If the schools now operate in ways that are unacceptable to these people, they should be told to remove their children from the public schools."

Huffy in Ottawa

Perhaps we in the United States could use some more theater in Congress. The Canadians have seen prancing, pouting, girning and high dudgeon in many forms this week. It looks like the same-sex marriage bill is secondary, tertiary or even lower compared with the slights in Parliament.

The Canoe version has lots of detail and color.

As far as we're concerned here the point is, "The same-sex bill, over strenuous Conservative objections, now is expected to pass handily as early as Monday with the combined support of most Liberals, NDP and Bloc MPs." Getting there though would be normal politics here, but apparently insults never to be forgotten up there.

Oddly enough to us, the worst seems to be when the bloc voting against the Conservatives to pass the big supplementary budget called for a vote when the Tories had skipped town. Here was a huge vote and the party had pledged to block the bloc, which included the Bloc (from Quebec). Enough Tories slipped out Thursday early for the weekend that the combined other parties used a rule that limited debate to an hour, and then won by five votes.

Tory Leader Stephen Harper is seething. Again, downtown this seems like legislative business. If you want your guys to vote, make sure they hang around the hall. He calls it treachery and worse.

Next, this nefarious group of voting lawmakers extended the current session to deal with the same-sex-marriage bill. They have the votes unless a lot of them drown over the weekend.

In a sharp tweak of irony, Toronto's huge gay-pride parade and celebration is this Sunday. Harper won't attend.

Oh, Really, Reilly?

Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly continues showing his intent to destroy his credibility and any shot at governor in the next election. His latest was announcing that the 1913 law aimed at keeping peace with segregationist/antimiscegenation states was not dusted off for same-sex marriages.

Excuse me for a moment, while I stop snickering.

The law (207:11) forbids solemnizing marriages that would not be valid in another state. It was passed to keep black/white couples from the South from sneaking into the Bay State then returning home married.

It has not been used for decades until Gov. Mitt Romney discovered it and made it clear that Justices of the Peace, town clerks and others here were disobeying this law if they married out-of-state homosexual couples.

Reilly claimed (Globe here and the print edition of the Herald has a short on it) that the law was applied equally to het and gay couples. Previously he had announced a few times that he would continue to enforce it, pulling the public-servant, it's-the-law-of-the-land ploy.

To many here, the point is that this is a lame law, a vestige of racist hate, now used to keep peace with anti-gay states' legislature and governors. An attorney general with guts, one worthy of being governor, would say as much and ask our lawmakers to toss this turkey.

In an afternoon addendum, the coverage at 365gay.com provides more details on Reilly's filing in reaction to a GLAD suit for couples from Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

The background was that Superior Court Justice Carol Ball upheld the law, although she was troubled by the state suddenly finding reason to enforce it. She rules that nothing in it said it was to be enforced only on homosexuals.

Reilly's filing admitted that there was a greater likelihood that it would be applied to same-sex couples attempting to marry in Massachusetts. "The Registrar has made every effort to do so in a manner that treats same-sex and opposite-sex out-of-state marriage applicants evenhandedly," he wrote.

Perhaps such lawyers will always try to twist the truth in spirals to gain political advantage. One can hope that the court does not let them get away with it.

Manly in Manchester-by-the-Sea

The very Republican, very wealthy Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, constituent meeting got its thrill last night. The first state legislator to kick the anti-same-sex-marriage amendment when it's down was Rep. Bradford Hill.

To show the tenor of the Eastern half of the state, at least, the meeting cheered and applauded when he said he would no longer support the amendment proposed to go on the ballot next year. It needs a second majority vote of the combined legislature to do so.

Someone, maybe Marry in Massachusetts, should begin keeping score. We predict that this is the spark that signals many small (and pretty meaningless) explosions. Senators and Representatives surely are wondering how they can gain advantage here. Salient points include:

• When self-identified religious voters, particularly in exurban and blue-collar communities complained about same-sex marriage, a slim majority of legislators voted for the first passage of the amendment.
• When same-sex marriage proved positive for over a year, the confused and haters have dropped a bit.
• Several anti-gay or anti-same-sex marriage legislators got dumped in the last election, replaced with equality-minded folk.
• Polls show a growing majority of voters are happy with same-sex marriage, or at least don't want to strip existing rights from any group.
• The recalcitrant queers-are-bad group has fewer fellow travelers.
• The anti folk recently turned tail and now support a simple overturning of same-sex marriage and not civil union version. (Not coincidentally this would be much easier to get on the ballot, but not until 2008, by which time, all but the hardest heads will see that same-sex marriage threatens nothing.)

Today's Boston Globe has the fullest coverage of Rep. Hill's reversal. He's left himself the option of supporting the second amendment. That gives him plenty of time to suss the political points to gain by scampering this way or that.

A second prediction – an average of one politician a week announcing a new, firm, morally based position on this...subject to change, of course.

Ridge Runners for Children

Blood lost and the kid won last week in poor, rural Clay County, West Virginia. The state Supreme Court of Appeals handed a 5-year-old boy to the psychological parent, a lesbian, over the biological grandparents.

In a fit of sensibility and reason, the court decided that what served the child's interest superseded any other in the case. You can find the local news coverage here and the fundamentalist Christian take on it here.

The brief recap is:

1. Lesbian partners Tina Burch and Christina Smarr were raising the latter's son Zachary as a couple.
2. In June 2002, they were in a car wreck in which Christina died and from which Tina was hospitalized.
3. Christina's parents grabbed Zach.
4. A family court judge ruled on the advice of the child's court representative that Tina should have custody.
5. The grandparents appealed to circuit court, where the judge ruled that Tina has no standing (no civil unions or same-sex marriage protection in the Mountain State).
6. The state's high court issued Tina a temporary injunction of custody.
7. Although Tina gets Zach, this does not necessarily grant other non-married West Virginians standing in child-custody disputes.

In the three to two decision, Judge Robin Davis wrote:

Thus, there unquestionably exists a relationship of significant duration between Tina (Burch) and (the child) in which Tina (Burch) has provided for the physical, psychological, financial and emotional needs of (the child) and such that the child regards Tina (Burch) as a parental figure in his life...To reunite Tina (Burch) and (the child) through a formal custodial arrangement would be to secure the familial environment to which the child has become accustomed and to accord parental status to the adult he already views in this capacity...(praising the grandparents' efforts to keep Zach) because too many people love this little boy. Oh, that all of the children whose fates we must decide would be so fortunate as to be too loved.

Perhaps a deciding factor was that the biological father supported Tina's claims from the initial court filings. The filing to the high court contains the particulars of the case, the state laws, and the standard for review.

By the bye, this is another of those no-will issues. The dead mom was intestate and there was no custody arrangement.

Typically you can contractually arrange for your child(ren) to go to a friend or more distant relative. In this case, the lawyer for the grandparents, Stephen Crampton, defines the high court's application of the best-interest-of-the-child laws as taking "advantage of a loophole." "This court took the opportunity to drive their truck through the loophole which the legislature left, and establish new law that I believe decimates the traditional family and elevates same-sex parenting and custody to a new level previously unknown in this state."

However, he admits defeat and probably won't appeal. There doesn't seem to be any federal issue involved.

It is ironic though that such self-described pro-family sorts would sacrifice the child to keep a lesbian from having rights to continue to raise him.

Note: Crampton is chief council for the American Family Association’s Center for Law and Policy, the Tupelo, Mississippi-based anti-everything folk.

Conservatives Shocked, Shocked

In Ottawa, the Tories got set on their heels yesterday. They expressed outrage that the other major parties –– Liberals, Bloc Québécois and the New Democrats –– played politics. They were shocked, shocked to find them voting together to pass the budget.

According to the Globe and Mail (free registration with valid email addresss required), Conservative Party Leader Stephen Harper raged, "The Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc are now in a coalition, and I guess we've seen this coming for some days. So I guess what it should remind Canadians is that when push comes to shove, the Liberals will make a deal with anybody. It doesn't matter if it's with socialists, or the separatists or any bunch of crooks they can find."

That's the way to win the hearts and votes of your fellow parliamentarians, eh?

The short of the budget vote is that the momentum and likely the votes are there to pass countrywide same-sex marriage in Canada next week. We'll have to see what the Tories try, but pouting won't cut it.

Note: There's a lot more to the budget part. It had party-specific amendment and some politicking worthy of Massachusetts. You can get the running account of what's behind the scenes at the vote here.

Poor Brian, Poor David

If you have the stomach, head over to Massresistance Watch, where coverage of the whines and bile of the Article 8 people get full coverage.

It seems Brian Camenker is trying the GOP-style duplicity. He spews hate and disrespect, and then complains when citizens call him on it in the local newspaper. Also, a hate post suddenly vanished from Massresistance's blog. The good guy at the Watch site has it for your viewing.

This is like a Monty Python skit. The bad kid slapping a classmate in the back of the head. Then he says, "I never did, never did." Well in this case, the good folk of Lexington noticed and called them on it.

Crews Flew

I just got a good tip from J.P. at MIT, the squamous Ron Crews has left the state. The former head hater (executive director) at the Massachusetts Family Institute and failed politician will spread his compassion to soldiers.

He moved to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to give solace and succor to the Screaming Eagles and their Army chums there. As an Army Reserves military chaplain, he said, "My burden and passion for years has been serving soldiers and their families as a chaplain and this will give me an opportunity to pursue that full time. My wife and I, after praying about it and talking about it, felt like this was the next step for us. We believe MFI has a good leadership and the right direction."

A long-term leader in trying to deny gays men and women marriage, civil unions or any benefits by law, Crews got skunked when he tried to unseat U.S. Rep. James McGovern last year.

Now if only he could take the whole MFI to the Bluegrass State. They already have a DoMA. So he could concentrate on punishing folk in different ways.

Oh-oh in Ottawa

While our own Congress festers, the Canadian Parliament is blooming. The majority in the United States is bending over for George/Dick, but even the leftwingers up North are petulent.

This will require monitoring throughout the day. The Globe and Mail (requires free registration) has a piece today that lets us know:

• The Tories will try to bring down the government if the Liberals insist on a countrywide same-sex-marriage law vote.
• Converstiave MPs got email yesterday from the party whip ordering them to be in the House of Commons Monday for voting.
• Canadians are loath to sit even an extra few days in legislative session (every few decades).
• The Liberals may or may not be able to get enough of their own votes to override the Tories.
• In what surely can't be an act of God (Can it?). three Conservatives have been absent, all with cancer treatments.
• A clandestine deal between the parties may be to pass the budgets, amend the marriage bill, and delay an vote on the latter until the fall.

So, today, Friday and Monday should have more.

Log Rolling for Liberty

That Welsh guy at Scratches, a.k.a. Uncle, riffs on my exhortation to ridicule the hate slingers. He branches into his picket line confrontations with them.

It's good reading, particularly because he touches on their motivation. For example:

If gay rights were taken away from these pathetic people as an issue, they'd claim some other object for their anxiety, and say that god called it wrong, evil or inferior. Their other motivation is to invent, or keep, someone lower on the food chain than they are. The deity gives you the biggest reason to dodge personal responsibility. Imagining there is a biped lower than you offers reinforcement for your delusions.

Yet, I have dwelt lately on why they are about it all. The Ann Coulter/Rush Limbaugh sorts you can figure. They aren't interested in anything true or reasonable. They are famous and rich because they use inflammatory lies. They brag about doing so to their dittoheads, as Rush calls them into their ears.

But the minions and fellow travelers...what is their motivation and thought process? They deny and ignore when they learn how dishonest their puppetmasters are. Who is studying these people? Do they belong in zoos? Is there a chance to replace the blind hate with compassion?

I may have to browse for shrinks and socialists who have insight.

Intestate Lurtsema Still in Play

The nebulous nature of well-to-do folk who die without wills continues in the Robert J. Lurtsema estate battle. The short of it is that the famous classical-music radio host seems to have promised his long-term, live-in honey the bulk of his estate. His siblings contested that and so far have prevailed.

Massachusetts marriage laws do not recognize common-law marriage in such cases. So the pseudo-widow has to beg, bargain or sue if the blood relatives want the cash.

You can read her petition for summary judgment to get her share in Northrup v. Brigham, et al. The appeals court judge (Patrick F. Brady) decided that her case was not strong enough under the commonwealth statutes. He ordered it remanded to the probate court to continue its hearings on her quantum meruit claim.

Note: For the inexpert of us, the 'Lectric Law Lexicon's Library defines this as:

QUANTUM MERUIT - As much as he has deserved. When a person employs another to do work for him, without any agreement as to his compensation, the law implies a promise from, the employer to the workman that he will pay him for his services, as much as be may deserve or merit. In such case the plaintiff may suggest in his declaration that the defendant promised to pay him as much as he reasonably deserved, and then aver that his trouble was worth such a sum of money, which the defendant has omitted to pay. This is called an assumpsit on a quantum meruit.

When there is an express contract for a stipulated amount and mode of compensation for services, the plaintiff cannot abandon the contract and resort to an action for a quantum meruit on an implied assumpsit.

In other words, she says they had a deal, orally but plainly. Her case is strengthened by the facts of how much professional work she did to advance his career, as well as caring for him in failing health, and moving in with him after his repeated requests.

Plain folk who just live together in what many states would consider common-law marriage are generally out of luck here in such cases.

Hesitating Bobby Lurtsema was not the only one who procrastinated until it was one breath too late. The ElderLaw folk think this case is important enough to keep updating it. They think she has a shot on her suit, as described here.

Canada's Turn to Play

Canada's Parliament displays more intricate and theatrical politics about same-sex marriage all the time. While the current session has not extended beyond the scheduled closing next week, pressures to pass the budget and countrywide same-sex marriage are high.

We U.S. North Americans can only look with envy at the governments who can toss an unpopular leader with a simply legislative vote. We get Shrub for four years at a time and impeachment is far too daunting. Meanwhile, the Conservatives in Ottawa make the usual threats of votes of confidence because Prime Minister Paul Martin is flat-out for the marriages. He doesn't have a majority of the 308 House of Commons members, but his coalition does. Meanwhile, all but four Conservatives are against same-sex marriage.

Can they not have noticed that one after another of the provinces, assemblies and courts, have legalized gay marriage (7 and 1 territory so far). It is like a mirror of the United States, where the people have largely enacted DoMA amendments or laws. Perhaps the Canadian brains are preserved better by the cold, as the chilly New England states favor gay rights, civil unions and same-sex marriage.

Martin says he is sick of fooling with the bill...and that he has the votes in his caucus to pass it today. He intends to bring it to a vote this session. The budget bills must pass first and then if necessary, the session must extend.

The Globe and Mail writes that "(s)ome Liberal MPs have said they want the issue brought to a vote, in part because they aren't eager to debate it with their constituents all summer, and in part because they don't want it lagging as an election issue next spring."

One ameliorating effort has failed so far. To placate Liberals who were critical of such marriages, an amendment proposed to exempt churches that will not perform same-sex marriages from losing their charitable tax status. That's a common bogeyman of the right here, even though U.S. discrimination statutes always include exemptions letting a broad range of religious groups be as bigoted as they want. Our only exceptions are for non-religious services and sales, and for where they take government money.

The Commons Speaker Peter Milliken (a Liberal) rejected the amendment.

CTV reports that the Conservatives are still pushing for extended civil unions, "something legal experts say will not pass constitutional muster." Also if C-38 loses in Parliament, the court rules that allow same-sex marriage stay in effect. One way or another, the Tories seem intent on losing this one, probably without grace or civility.

Maine Meanies Mayn't

There's another nine days for the reactionaries in Maine to collect 30,000 more signature in their effort to repeal the benign gay-right bill recently signed into law on March 31st. They need 50,519 verifiable voters to support a petition to put a recall on the November ballot. Otherwise, the law takes effect June 28th.

These jolly self-identified Christians have forced repeal of non-discrimination protection for sexual orientation before. In 1997, they squeaked in during the final days to bring in enough signatures to get the repeal on the ballot.

Back then, the voters didn't get how they were being uses. Polls say Mainers have lost their taste for pettiness and nastiness toward homosexual rights.

Of course, that doesn't make the law's supporters comfortable with the Christian Civic League's efforts. A vaguely chartered Maine Won't Discriminate group is trying to counter the haters. For the life of me, from their Website, I can't see what they are doing in the effort.

The Portland Press Herald has background and the status for the cons as of last week. Also, in the Talk2Action blog (great name, eh?), the June 15th post has an insightful and amusing coverage of the Camenker/Parker road show to Maine.

Ottawa Blessing and Curse

Wait. Wait. Wait. The Canadian Parliament – mostly – wants to vote on making same-sex marriage nationwide. The Liberal leaders are introducing a motion to extend this session another day or two to permit voting.

Government House Leader Tony Valeri says all the MPs have made up their minds after months of debate and a couple of years of watching one province after another legalize it.

Conservatives have been stalling and trying to knock back a vote to the fall in hopes of some magic changing the majority's mind.

However, in a delightful wrinkle worthy of New England spite and hate, a priest in Canada is putting the hex on Prime Minister Paul Martin. Following interviews with numerous media:

Father Francis Geremia, a Roman Catholic priest, told his congregation on Saturday that Martin is doing the devil's work on the same-sex marriage bill the Liberal government is trying to pass in Parliament.

He repeated the charge in a telephone interview with The Canadian Press on Monday, saying Martin no longer deserves the sacrament of communion because of Bill C-38.

Martin has said that as a Roman Catholic, he struggled with the issue, but that it's a matter of human rights that he must uphold.

But Geremia says: "you cannot have two faces: either you serve God or you serve the devil."

I guess the assumption is that subtlety is lost on politicians.

Godzilla vs Mothra

That piece on the anti-same-sex anything types in the Times gnaws on me. It is honestly easier and far, far more pleasant to pretend that there can be reconciliation with those who presently profess such intense hatred for homosexuals that they would sacrifice rights, fairness and reason to punish them.

I guess I know better. The Article 8/Mass Resistance folk and their counterparts outside of Massachusetts are not rational and continue to deny how emotional they are.

Those chilling catchphrase:

• It's only common sense (as in marriage = one man/one woman).
• No one wants to discriminate (except let's make sure we deny these gays anything).
• I'm only trying to be reasonable (and any other position deserves my disdain and slander).
• I hate the sin but love the sinner (as long as I can make his or her life miserable and inferior to mine).

keep coming from the mouths, publications and Web pages of the anti-gay-right folk. It may be that they tell themselves and each other these things so often that they actually eventually believe they are being rational.

Having run around similar bushes many times, I suppose it is safest to look to the antidotes to the antis. In such struggles as the 1960s civil-rights times, two things worked in concert with the force of law.

1. Continuing to out-campaign and outvote the clods.
2. Bring ridicule to bear.

The first is the most obvious. At least here in Massachusetts, the Dark Side is a shrinking minority. There are more among the public and legislature who are in favor of equal rights. There is no reason for it not to continue that way, so long as the pressure from the positive side stays strong and remembers that the anti folk are unrelenting.

For the second, we should not forget how important culture is to perceived reality. From my own experiences in the South in the 60s and 70s, I found that nothing startled a racist out of his hateful little world than finding his rants laughed at by his peers. When a bigot in a bar or church picnic finds others making fun of his hate speech, that makes him think and shut up like nothing else.

We nice folk were raised not to make fun of people. The exception should always be for the hateful. Don't ignore them. Don't start a fight. Ridicule them. Let others around know how wrong and just how stupid they are being. A snicker is often more powerful than a punch.

This is like politicians with voter polls. When the culture, the people, move beyond the basest minds and emotions, we can get past the lowest of us. They are dirty. We need to leave them in the dust.

As the Black folk used to say down South, it's time to tear the rag off the bush.

Mainstream Mitt Mangler

The Boston Globe's Eileen McNamara got in the swing today. Her column today agrees that Gov. Mitt Romney's same-sex-marriage games are just that.

She notes that Mitt engineered and endorsed the civil-union-instead-of-marriage amendment stumbling toward the Constitutional Convention next year (or not). She adds that he delivered the necessary 15 Republican votes to pass it the first of two times to get it going.

Now that it might be more favorable to his POTUS shot to appear solidly against any gay partnerships, he suddenly jumps on the new petition circulating to get a DoMA law on the Massachusetts books. As of last week, the amendment he pitched so hard becomes "muddled" and "confusing" in his newspeak.

As McNamara puts it:

You can bet the governor won't be mentioning his role in winning passage of the marriage-lite amendment as he barnstorms the country in his delusional quest for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. Romney's record might be rife with ambiguity; his sales pitch to social conservatives is full of faux clarity on everything from gay rights to abortion and stem cell research.

She also agrees with the bunch of us that the commonwealth's voters want the legislature to get on with business. Same-sex married happened. It works. There's no problem. Do something real.

Of course, Mitt is all theater. Even his current state's polls don't matter a whit to Mitt. He is acting to the national audience.

Halloween Early for Antis

A scary and insightful cover story in today's New York Times Magazine deserves wide reading by all concerned with same-sex marriage. The piece What's Their Real Problem with Gay Marriage? (It's the Gay Part) by Russell Shorto.

Note: This is free and in HTML, but you need to register to see it. If you don't grab it in the next week, you'll have to pay to read it online.

It's not about fairness or compassion or equality or civil rights or reasoning or freedom. It's about the queers.

The anti-same-sex-marriage folk Shorto follows and interviews slice it this way and that. In the end, they will do whatever they can to prevent any semblance of equal rights for gay couples -- no medical visitation, no marriage, no tax breaks, no civil union, no, no, no. They delude themselves and accept glaring lies based on dishonest articles from their leaders. There are a lot of them (a loose affiliation of 60 million from 61 organizations) and they deal in self-righteousness not righteousness.

This piece is not a hatchet job and I suspect the subjects will read it feeling pretty smug. They may momentarily cringe when he calls them on the baseless studies they use, but they can pretend he's either ignorant or damned or both.

Shorto features the Arlington Group and how widely it separates itself from an America of tolerance and freedom. He notes how one of its leaders (Gary Bauer, American Values) revels in same-sex marriage as the new abortion. That is:

(C)onservatives see gay marriage as a culture-altering change being implemented by judicial fiat. But gay marriage is also the new abortion in that it is for groups like Bauer's a base-energizing and fund-raising issue of tremendous power.

While that's not news, the power of the article is how these folk reason away their hate.

Rather, their passion comes from their conviction that homosexuality is a sin, is immoral, harms children and spreads disease. Not only that, but they see homosexuality itself as a kind of disease, one that afflicts not only individuals but also society at large and that shares one of the prominent features of a disease: it seeks to spread itself.

It is scary stuff indeed, as he profiles Maryland hausfrau Laura Clark. Her current guerilla tasks involve locating Internet stories to back up the anti-gay campaign and email to the eager minions.

There are also some powerful statements from the "men of God." One is Laura's pastor, Brian Racer. Part of his reasoning is what appears in various forms from the antis.

''The Hebrew words for male and female are actually the words for the male and female genital parts,'' he told me. ''The male is the piercer; the female is the pierced. That is the way God designed it. It's unfortunate that homosexuals have taken the moniker 'gay,' because their lifestyle and its consequences are anything but. Look what has happened in the decades since the sexual revolution and acceptance of the gay lifestyle as normal. Viruses have mutated. S.T.D.'s have spread. It shows that when we try to change the natural course of things, what comes out of that is not joy or gayness.''

In that compact quote, you see this world in all of its slimy glory.

Shorto identifies major sources from the twisted or outright lying truths as these groups pass around to each other. The worst may by Hoover Institute research fellow Stanley Kurtz. For example, he takes Danish studies of young, gay, single men and says their behavior is that of same-sex married couples.

Worst perhaps is how the anti folk justify their efforts to prevent homosexuals from getting fair treatment and take away any gains so far. The core of the argument is that gay is a lifestyle only.

But, of course, the Christian activists aren't vague in their opposition. For them, the issue isn't one of civil rights, because the term implies something inherent in the individual -- being black, say, or a woman -- and they deny that homosexuality is inherent. It can't be, because that would mean God had created some people who are damned from birth, morally blackened. This really is the inescapable root of the whole issue, the key to understanding those working against gay marriage as well as the engine driving their vehicle in the larger culture war: the commitment, on the part of a growing number of people, to a variety of religious belief that is so thoroughgoing it permeates every facet of life and thought, that rejects the secular, pluralistic grounding of society and that answers all questions internally.

For those Baby Boomers among us who grew up with the idea of a free America that shares rights with all in an ever expanding embrace of liberty, these folk are aliens and monsters. We also heard and believed that we were supposed to be stronger and better as a nation than the bigoted and narrow nations who restricted their people. Democracy was supposed to be sharing freedom and rights.

Mitt Meet and Greet

In more of a plunk than splash, Gov. Mitt Romney was the main speaker at the Flag Day celebration of the Orange County, California, Republican Party. The local media apparently didn't notice. The Orange County Register led with the Iranian runoff and Disney raising theme-park tickets by $3. The LA Times didn't cover it either.

Hover, the Globe has a piece on it today. The byline, Michael Levenson, Globe Correspondent, indicates he was an underwhelmed, non-booster California sort. He included in his coverage:

Contrary to what some local Republicans said, however, (Mark Petracca, professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine) said Romney has yet to establish himself as a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination. ''I've not heard a single person talk about Romney," he said. ''Out here, people want to amend the Constitution to allow Arnold Schwarzenegger to run."

Because California's Republican primary is usually held relatively late in the season when the nominee is often all but certain -- he said Romney had little to gain here in the way of votes. ''It's dialing for dollars, not dialing for votes," Petracca said.

What I was most curious about didn't appear. It seems Mitt didn't try his anti-same-sex-marriage ploy last night. That may be wise in a state still divided and conflicted on the subject, even if SUV and BMW crowd at the hotel is not.

This is Romney's second trip this year to California to make himself known. Meanwhile. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill (Remote Diagnosis) Frist was in South Carolina flashing his grin and doing his similar PR.

No South, Later North

In California, a federal judge will make a homosexual couple appeal to the U.S. Circuit Court in an effort to overturn the state's DoMA law. Uptown in Canada, the sure-to-pass bill legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide was forced to a fall vote when the Conservative Party leader sidetracked it from a vote this session.

In Santa Ana, Central District Judge Gary Taylor refused to rule on a petition Thursday. Christopher Hammer and Arthur Smelt of Mission Viejo, joined by another dozen gay couples, won a March state-trial decision saying DoMA was unconstitutional. Lawyers for the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund claimed victory (or Orange Crush). Taylor used standard anti lingo in his non-ruling, writing:

The Court finds it is a legitimate interest to encourage the stability and legitimacy of what may reasonably be viewed as the optimal union for procreating and rearing children by both biological parents.

That's a set of code words usually reserved by anti-gay groups. It always brings to question whether the majority of married heterosexuals who are unable or unwilling to procreate have the right to wed by that standard. Think. Think. Think.

In Ottawa, the Conservative folk and such humorless groups as Defend Marriage Canada! are doing whatever they can to keep this winner from coming to a vote. The San Francisco Chronicle has details on the current efforts here.

Key stages include:

• An Ontario appeals court okayed same-sex marriage two years ago.
• Courts in British Columbia, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, and the Yukon Territory followed.
• The national government stopped appeals and formulated a uniform bill (C-38) permitting same-sex marriage.
• Thursday, the legislative committee considering it reported it favorably for a vote by the full congress.
• Conservative Leader Stephen Harper will try to forestall a vote by June 23, forcing the issue to wait until the fall session.

The Liberals were unable to cut a deal with the Conservatives, who had linked pushing off C-38 with passing the budget. The version that finally passes will probably end up with U.S.-style exemptions for religious groups.

Mitt Goes West

Bada bing. Mitt shares the stage tonight in California with Rush Limbaugh's favorite comedian, Paul Shanklin. They'll be at the Hyatt in Irvine (where Republicans are 60% of registered voters).

The head of the Republican Party of Orange County, Scott Baugh introduces our gubenatorial unit as, "We are thrilled to have Governor Mitt Romney joining us here in 'America's most Republican County.' Governor Romney knows how to get elected and knows how to govern in a 'blue state.'"

It's only $250 for the evening, assuming you can keep from bidding during the silent auction. Drinks start at 5:30 p.m. and dinner at 7.