Yea, sorry about that title, Mom.  And brother.  And sisters.  And nieces.  And nephews.  And grandma.  And grandpa.  And “1st” cousins 1-68 (no, I’m not joking).  My apologies to you all.

Y’all are a bunch of bigots.

This is why I don’t hang with you folks nearly as much as I’d like to.  That hurts me.  A lot.

But the rest of my family is much larger, even if they don’t know it.  Regardless, at times likes like….and by times like this….I mean times like this….

Here are just a few of the attempts to get me to see reason.

“Are you a member or not? Do you want gays to get married in the temple? Please follow the brotheren’s [sic] council [sic] on Proposition 8. This is a important gospel principal [sic].” G., e-mail.

“No unclean thing can enter the house of the Lord. Gays are unclean because of the Scriptures. You have to be hot or cold about it or the Lord will spat you out.” T., e-mail.

“Were you listening in church when the letter was read from the First Presidency about supporting proposition eight?” R.Y., e-mail.

“Get with Prop 8 or your [sic] a homo.” Anonymous.

……ya’ll annoy the ever-living shit out of me.

O.k. those are arguments this guy got, and not me personally, but the point stands rather firm.

In order for me personally to properly address this situation, I need to share an anecdote, some scientific research, and then one of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis, author of The Narnia Chronicles and hardcore Christian.

I. THE ANECDOTE

So I didn’t get the emails or the forwards, but I did hear the argument that gays would “sue” to get access to get married in “The Temple” if they weren’t specifically prohibited from marrying.  I’ve had 2 sisters and 1 brother get married in “The Temple”.   You know how many of those marriages I was at?  0.  Nada.  When a family member, who’s an ordained Elder BTW, can’t even get access, it’s insane to think someone is going to go through all the hoops necessary to gain access only to try and break the rules.

There is no court in the country that is going to order a religion to allow someone to do something against their rules, on their property, in their building, with their sacred rites.  It’s absolutely ridiculous to think it’s even possible, but that’s exactly what a few million people were told, and believed absolutely.

There’s only one reason to look down on another group, and cause them such pain.  And it’s not self-preservation.

II. THE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

“Aggressive adolescents showed a specific and very strong activation of the amygdala and ventral striatum (an area that responds to feeling rewarded) when watching pain inflicted on others, which suggested that they enjoyed watching pain,” researcher Jean Decety, a professor in psychology and psychiatry at the University of Chicago, said in a university news release. “Unlike the control group, the youth with conduct disorder did not activate the area of the brain involved in self-regulation (the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction).”

III. THE C.S. LEWIS QUOTE

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

————–

In other words….

Y’all need to back to fuck up, and take a moment to check yourself. I don’t recall a lot of sermons from El Christo about hating the fags and making laws against them.  Even in that crazy whacked out part when he appears to the “jewish indians” in the New World for a few days.

UPDATE: Olbermann puts it a bit more eloquently.   Oh, and Keith.  I don’t know if you were just playing at being ignorant, but at the beginning of your rant, you say you don’t know why they were pushing so hard to take these rights away….if you read the paragraphs above, that part should be cleared up.

To put it in simplistic Donny Darko terms, they were motivated by Fear, not Love.

What’s the saying, “inasmuch as ye have done this to the least of these my brethren, it is as if ye have done it unto me.”  Riiight.  Don’t y’all understand how this stuff works yet?

Oh, and Keith, this “not voting to display my impartiality, but I would vote if it *really* mattered” bullshit is just that.  Essentially what you’ve just done is recommend a whole bunch of people do something that you yourself felt beneath you.  C’mon dude, don’t lose that big head in the clouds.  You’ve already started plumping up nicely, don’t make that fat head thing literal.