"I now support full marriage equality."

Louis Marinelli, activist for the National Organization for Marriage and founder of their 2010 "Summer of Marriage" bus tour, has announced today that he now supports full marriage equality. Gay rights blog Good As You has a detailed rundown of the story, including a spotlight on NOM's immediate efforts to discredit Marinelli's involvement in their organization.

"Lastly, I came to understand the difference between civil marriage and holy marriage as in the sacrament of the Catholic Church. Let me rephrase. I understood that but either willingly chose not to accept it or just didn’t see it. Regardless, I see it now and the significance of that is as follows: Once you understand the great difference between civil marriage and holy marriage, there is not one valid reason to forbid the former from same-sex couples, and all that is left to protect is the latter. Indeed Christians and Catholics alike are well within their right to demand that holy matrimony, a sacrament and service performed by the Church and recognized by the Church, remains between a man and a woman as their faith would dictate. However, that has nothing to do with civil marriage, performed and recognized by the State in accordance with state law."   Louis Marinelli

 Via Metafilter

Legalized Gay Marriage Pie Chart

A quick note on Republicans and racism

Apparently 46% Of Republicans In Mississippi Think Interracial Marriages Should Be Illegal 

From this PDF.

What's really strange is that a higher percentage of young conservatives in Mississippi think interracial marriage should be illegal.    (Age group 18-29 are 54% against interracial marriage)
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Tea Party Nation sent out an email to their followers recently lamenting the extinction of the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant)

Bill Maher:  "not all republicans are racist, but if you're a racist in america, you're probably a republican"

JD Curtis and the Klan

JD said "Heck, Klan members continue to run for office as Democrats, even to this day."  and gave a link to a man who had renounced the KKK decades ago.   
Well, because JD thinks old news is so exciting:   
Links between Arizona Republicans and the KKK


Oh, wait...   that was a few months ago...   I guess it's not such old news after all.


And let's not forget...
David Duke  
Texas Republican House Representative quotes KKK Grand Wizard 
Ku Klux Klan Joins Republican Party-aligned Institute on Religion and Democracy In Protesting Church Conference

 

JD

JD labeled this own anti-gay marriage screed "bigotry".  Does anyone disagree?

Irony

Talking with some Christian bloggers reminds me of this cartoon.

Hate comes to Orange County.

Muslims hold a fundraiser to raise money for the homeless and for women's shelters. Republicans show up to protest, chant "go back home!" and xenophobic slurs.  

If the Tea Party/Republican group had any legitimate reasons for protesting the fund-raiser, they certainly lost the high-ground a long time before they starting yelling "you rape your kids" at Muslim families. 

Someone on Reddit joked: "it's not that they hate muslims, they're just against helping the homeless and women."

Anti-progressive sock-puppets.

These astroturf libertarians are the real threat to internet democracy.

Via

And now the Air Force has been caught buying hundred of fake onlike identities.

After the Revolution

JD and his xenophobia strike again!

A common trait of xenophobes is the lack of fact-checking when something seems to confirm their xenophobic beliefs.  Check out this post by JD Curtis.  (http://treesforlunch.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-iman-of-ground-zero-victory.html)  This short post has gets everything wrong yet again.  But let's start here: hey JD, who's the future iman of Park51 (which JD calls the "Ground Zero Victory Hamasque")?

American Fascist.

"The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public. . ." 

– Former Vice President Henry A. Wallace, the New York Times, April 9, 1944

fas-cism n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership,together with belligerent nationalism." (The American Heritage Dictionary 1983) 

This was the generally accepted definition of fascism before the right and people like JD started rewriting its history)