Marla Parker writes to The Westerly Sun:
This is in response to the April 22 letter to The Sun by Chris Irwin in which she charges the National Organization for Marriage and the Rev. Raymond Suriani with “bullying.” I ask “who’s bullying whom?”
It is Ms. Irwin’s baseless complaint to the IRS against the Rev. Suriani that constitutes bullying.
She contacted the IRS alleging that the Rev. Suriani engaged in political lobbying when he reminded his parishioners of church teaching on homosexuality and marriage, and encouraged them to exercise their right as American citizens by contacting their senator, whose duty is to represent them and their views at the Statehouse.
This harassment leveled against the Rev. Suriani is a typical intimidation tactic designed to silence all those who disagree with the gay agenda, and it is just the tip of the iceberg. In Sweden and Canada, ministers were jailed for quoting from the Bible and preaching against homosexual behavior once marriage was redefined there.
The redefinition of marriage impacts personal lives well beyond same-sex couples. One’s choice of a partner does not concern me, but when they come to our legislatures and courts and force the rest of us to recognize and accept their relationship as identical to that of a man and a woman, it affects everyone.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), an outspoken defender of traditional marriage, warned that " if that issue is injected into this bill, the bill will fail and the coalition that helped put it together will fall apart."
The former is overwhelmingly done by libertarians who have taken the curious position that the failure by the state to expand a right is the same as the affirmative denial of that right, and by liberals who do not understand what rights actually are. The latter is a position taken by libertarians who believe the state’s role in marriage reaching back centuries is part of the nanny state, and conservatives who either legitimately want to preserve marriage from the barbarians or who like sounding good to their more left-wing friends.
A Michigan high school canceled a speech by former Sen. Rick Santorum after teachers became outraged over his opposition to gay marriage and threatened to stage protests and a possible work stoppage.
Orson Scott Card is one of the best-selling science fiction writers alive. He is also a devout Mormon who opposes same-sex marriage. A group of pro-gay comics fans is up in arms over the fact that DC has hired Card to write a new Superman series. The Guardian is making it sound like a huge deal:
Documents uncovered from a Freedom of Information Act request show the Obama administration's Department of Justice enjoys a close relationship with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an organization that brands principled opposition to homosexuality “hate.”
The legal watchdog Judicial Watch filed the request to see what effect SPLC's designation of “hate groups” had on the government. The two-dozen pages of e-mails it received reveal views of DOJ employees that border on adulation.
Now that anti-right, anti-hate SPLC is implicated in providing targets for a politically motivated mass shooter will the national media turn on the SPLC the way they did on Sarah Palin?"
