Your self centered pity party about basic rights being denied is a bunch of crap you built up in trying to build a case. You have no case. You are some of the most privileged people on the face of the earth. Why don’t you start acting like it. Do you ask yourself how many hours of your life you have frittered away with this crap? When was the last time you helped someone in a truly substantial way?

I’m a member of the LDS Church myself. I served a mission in Spain, I pay my tithing, I read my scriptures daily and I try to do the best I can by my fellow man. No matter what is happening in my life, my faith brings me happiness and fulfillment, as faith from different churches does for other people as well. Yet Susan signs her name on the long list of people who try to slander us in the name of advancing a corrupt cause.

History lesson: The Mormons were chased out of Missouri by mobs in the mid 1800s. Their homes were burned down, their women raped, their men tarred and feathered. They went to Illinois and broke a swampland into fertile territory and built a temple. Mobs moved in after them there, and the same thing happened that went down in Missouri. Their leader was taken to court on trumped-up charges (of which he wasn’t legitimately convicted) and then shot by a mob and fell out of a prison window.

Then the Mormons trekked west to Salt Lake and did the same thing to the western desert that they’d done to the swamps. Because of Mormon settlers, the West became a land that could be used and cultivated (even my hometown of Las Vegas was originally settled by Mormons). And even then, lies spread to the government about their activities, and an army was sent to stomp them out. Countless men have been beaten and slain, women have been violated and homes have been destroyed in the name of blind hatred toward the Mormons, and just because now they stand up for preserving the sacred institution of marriage, WE’RE the ones doing something just as bad or worse to gays?

A more significant comparison to the Mormons and Prop 8 would be something like Israel and Gaza (though on an extremely small scale). We take a beating forever and the news outlets tell us it’s our lot to suffer it, and the moment we stand up for something, suddenly we’re the oppressors.

BH, thanks for creating this blog and calling for more common sense on the part of the American people.

Loving v Virginia seemed to find that right as “substantive Due Process.” “Substantive Due Process” is one for the more dubious projections of constitutional law. I don’t think you will find it anywhere else.

The long and short of it is, a man was forced out of his livelihood due to nothing other than his politics. And people celebrated. What if a preacher who opposed Prop 8 was un-ordained? Lost his congregation and was ousted from the church. Would the Left go to bat for him? Would the Right celebrate his demise?

Didn’t you and Walt Whitman give each other hand jobs? I thought I read that somewhere.

No, it doesn’t. As I posted on Mr. Bean’s “Blacklisted” thread, this issue is about whether interest groups have a right to redefine our fundamental social units to suit their personal preferences. “Why just two to a marriage? Why be so arbitrary with ages? Why even require that both spouses be human?

“Because the status we grant to marriage is not about our personal fulfillment. Our lifestyles can be for that if it is what we want to pursue above all else. So far, this institution works best for creating stable families from which the next generation will arrive as healthy and well balanced as possible. It also requires sacrifices from each of the sexes to accommodate the other in a way that uniquely tempers our characters. The fact that marriage is under attack from other directions and less strong than it has been in the past doesn’t change this fact. Those problems just suggest other battles that have to be fought to preserve the benefits of marriage.

“That doesn’t mean marriage is best for everyone or even tolerable for everyone. It is just a reason for according it a special social status. And if other kinds of relationships prove over the generations that they are as good or better, they would also deserve that status. But so far they have not.

“We can have the lifestyles we want. Nobody even has to approve of them to tolerate them. But we don’t get to rearrange social institutions to accommodate our preferred lifestyles or, to borrow from Mr. Bean, we have no real institutions at all. We will just have words.”