Gay Marriage Illinois
In a narrow vote in Illinois, gay marriage will now become legal. It’s the 15th state so far, and more are working toward that goal. The opposition, Rep. Tom Morrison, stated “natural marriage” between a man and woman was the only way to go for him. Then he questioned why the state would care about these matters, and even went on to comment that “Real marriage is the building block of human civilization.” I guess he hasn’t realized yet that his cousin, son, daughter, nephew, niece, neighbor, or good friend could be gay.
The White House made this statement:
“As president, I have always believed that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally under the law. Over time, I also came to believe that same-sex couples should be able to get married like anyone else,” he said in the statement. “So tonight, Michelle and I are overjoyed for all the committed couples in Illinois whose love will now be as legal as ours – and for their friends and family who have long wanted nothing more than to see their loved ones treated fairly and equally under the law.”
As a side note, I think when history is told many years from now, Obama’s handling of gay marriage will go down as clever. In a positive way. I don’t think he’s ever said or done anything by accident, and I think he was waiting for the shift in public opinion to recognize gays and gay marriage. Which seems to be happening according to all the polls. If Obama or any president had pushed the issue of gay marriage too hard, too fast, or too soon it could have been a huge disaster and we might not be seeing positive results like this right now.
Christian Filibuster in Hawaii on Gay Marriage
While Illinois has been passing gay marriage, huge debates have been going on in Hawaii on the same topic. Over 5,000 conservative Christians have signed up to testify in opposition, each receiving two minutes to speak to a committee of thirty. They’ve allegedly been encouraged to waste time, and according to Zack Ford at Think Progress this is somewhat the equivalent of a “Citizen’s Filibuster.” There are a few interesting things going on behind the scenes, too, and these so-called Christians tend to play nasty and cheat a little when it comes to saving the world from anything LGBT related.
And according to emails sent out by the Hawaii Christian Coalition, religious leaders are encouraging their congregations to cheat the legislative system by offering testimony by proxy. Civil Beat obtained copies of the identical emails from the Hawaii Christian Coalition and from a senior pastor at New Hope Metro Church, explicitly instructing the faithful to provide false witness.
But even better, it’s also been alleged these good ethical Christians are using a form of sockpuppetry to get what they want. Allegedly, some of these good Christians are testifying more than once with sock names and bogus registration numbers. Evidently, they’ll stoop to any level in order to save the world from all that is gay and evil, these good Christians.
You can read more here. I don’t know much about the state of Hawaii other than what I’ve been told by friends who have been there. I know it’s all hearsay, but everything I did hear came from gay people who said there wasn’t much of a gay lifestyle there. I could be wrong about this. If I am, please feel free to comment.
It should be interesting to see how this turns out. If public opinion polls are correct, gay marriage will be passed in Hawaii eventually regardless of these religious fanatics and maybe then they’ll see it’s not the end of the world as they know it and they can focus on more spiritual issues and repent for the lies they’ve told and the way they’ve treated innocent people in the name of Christianity.