Tag: Newsweek

The War Against Christianity: Newsweek, Liberals, and Reality

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics1 Comment

WashingtonPrayingAs we begin this New Year, I have been researching the status of Christianity in America.

Recently, Fox New’s Todd Starnes wrote the following opinion piece about a recent issue of Newsweek attacking American Christianity…

Newsweek is launching the New Year with an old school attack on the Bible and Christians. It was just the sort of holiday hit piece that we’ve come to expect from these anti-Christian pinhead.

I imagine the Yuletide season must bring about near celebrations in the hallways of Newsweek as writers giddily try to find new ways to defile the followers of Christ.

This year’s winner was Kurt Eichenwald – and he certainly spun quite a yarn – one truly worthy to be published in a magazine. Mr. Eichenwald is known around literary circles as a man of words – and he certainly used most of them in his verbose essay.

I’m not sure why, but the folks over at Newsweek seem to hold a mighty big grudge against Christians. Maybe somebody spiked their Kool-Aid during Vacation Bible School? Who knows?

“The Bible – So Misunderstood it’s a Sin,” was the title of his treatise – of such import that editors demanded it grace the cover of the magazine. 

At first glance, I thought Mr. Eichenwald’s essay was a failed attempt at satire. However, by the end of the first paragraph, I realized it was meant to be a scholarly work. By the end of the second paragraph I was overcome by the fumes from this steaming pile of stink.

Newsweek’s 16-page diatribe portrays Evangelical Christians as homophobic, right-wing fundamentalist hypocrites who believe an unbelievable Bible. And just in case the reader misses the writer’s subtle nuance, the essay was illustrated with images of snake handlers, Pat Robertson and the Westboro Baptist Church.

That’s because in the minds of Newsweek’s esteemed editors, most evangelical Christians spend their weekends dancing with snakes and picketing gay nightclubs. Merry Christmas, America.

“They wave their Bibles at passersby, screaming their condemnation of homosexuals,” Eichenwald wrote. “They fall on their knees, worshipping at the base of granite monuments to the Ten Commandments while demanding prayer in school. They appeal to God to save America from their political opponents, mostly Democrats. They gather in football stadiums by the thousands to pray for the country’s salvation.”

I’m not sure why, but the folks over at Newsweek seem to hold a mighty big grudge against Christians. Maybe somebody spiked their Kool-Aid during Vacation Bible School? Who knows?

“These are God’s frauds, cafeteria Christians who pick and choose which Bible verses they heed with less care than they exercise in selecting side orders for lunch,” Newsweek’s writer blathered. “They are joined by religious rationalizers – fundamentalists who, unable to find Scripture supporting their biases and beliefs, twist phrase and modify translations to prove they are honoring the Bible’s words.”

As if Newsweek was trying to honor the Bible.  The magazine goes on to advance theories that some of the New Testament books are forgeries and it calls I Timothy “one of the most virulently anti-woman books of the New Testament.”

That statement then leads to a virulently anti-woman attack on Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin – because nothing says “Merry Christmas” to liberals like bashing the Baby Jesus and Sarah Palin.

Get a load of this subheadline: “Sarah Palin is sinning right now.”

…The news magazines do this all the time – attacking Christians during the Christmas and Easter seasons. It’s a free country. We have a free press. They can write whatever they choose.But the national news magazines never seem to target Islam. When was the last time Newsweek or Time published an attack piece on Muhammad during Ramadan?

I wonder if Newsweek would have the courage to publish “The Koran: So Misunderstood It’s a Sin”? 

I wonder if Newsweek would allow a feminist to weigh in on what the Islamic holy book says about women?  Perhaps Newsweek could illustrate their story with cartoons of Muhammad – or maybe photographs of jihadists beading Christians in the name of Allah?

But we all know that won’t happen, right Newsweek?

The day after this Newsweek article came out, gallup.com published the following illuminating information…

About three in four Americans interviewed in 2014 name a Christian faith when asked for their religious preference, including 50% who are Protestants or another non-Catholic Christian religion, 24% who are Catholic and 2% who are Mormon.

These data are based on 173,490 interviews conducted from Jan. 2 through Dec. 21 as part of Gallup Daily tracking.

The proportion of Americans identifying as Protestant dropped by one percentage point from 2013 to 2014, while the Catholic and Mormon percentages stayed essentially the same.

About 6% of Americans identify with a non-Christian religion, including 2% who are Jewish, less than 1% who are Muslim and 3% who identify with other non-Christian religions. This leaves 16% who say they don’t have a religious preference, along with another 3% who don’t answer the question. This combined 19% without a formal religious identity is up one point from 2013.

The slight erosion of Americans’ identification as Protestant and concomitantly slight increase in the percentage with no religious preference exemplifies general trends in religious identity over the past decades. In the 1950s, Gallup surveys showed that up to 71% of Americans identified as Protestant, and small percentages had no religious identity. Then, as now, however, well more than 90% of Americans who express a religious preference identify themselves as Christians.

…More than half (53%) of Americans in 2014 report attending religious services at least monthly, including 41% who attend weekly or almost every week. Only one in five say they never attend religious services. These numbers reflect a slight shift to less frequent attendance compared with 2013.

Religious service attendance varies widely across segments of the U.S. population, including significant differences among specific religious groups. Mormons report the highest attendance of any of the major religious groups, with 75% attending weekly or almost every week. Protestants are next on the attendance list, followed by Muslims and Catholics. Attendance among Jews and those who identify with other non-Christian religions is significantly lower than that for Christians and Muslims. As would be expected, few of those who have no religious preference report attending services frequently.

After over 4 and 1/2 years of writing this daily blog, it still continues to amaze me how Liberals, now controlled by the ideology of the Far Left, desperately want to convince America that a) They are America’s largest Political Ideology and b) American Christianity is fading away into the sunset.

Praise God, they continue to be wrong on both counts.

America is still a nation comprised of a Conservative Majority, who go about their daily lives, trying to provide for their families and worshiping the God of their Fathers, in Spirit and in Truth.

Why does the Far Left, including President Barack Hussein Obama, continue to minimize and lie about this resolute fact?

To be blunt, Darkness fears the Light. Tyranny and oppression cannot thrive where there is Freedom of Religion. Our Founders knew that all too well.

For America to prosper and to remain free, we must, once again, anchor ourselves on the same Solid Rock as our Forefathers did.

We must stand for what is right, and speak out in righteous indignation against that which is wrong.

For, by doing that, we will preserve this Shining City Upon a Hill for our children and grandchildren.

After all…cockroaches run for cover when the light is turned on.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

Obama/Lincoln: Fore Score and Several Mulligans Ago…

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

obamalincolnEver since Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) became president, Liberal pundits have desperately attempted to compare The Manchurian President to Abraham Lincoln.

Back on November 14, 2008, Evan Thomas, an Obama sycophant,  posted an article for Newsweek/The Daily Beast, titled “Obama’s Lincoln”, in which he wrote

It is the season to compare Barack Obama to Abraham Lincoln. Two thin men from rude beginnings, relatively new to Washington but wise to the world, bring the nation together to face a crisis. Both are superb rhetoricians, both geniuses at stagecraft and timing. Obama, like Lincoln and unlike most modern politicians, even writes his own speeches, or at least drafts the really important ones—by hand, on yellow legal paper—such as his remarkably honest speech on race during the Reverend Wright imbroglio last spring.

…During the Civil War, Lincoln was able to brilliantly manage his team of rivals. His secretary of state, William Seward, came into office thinking “he would actually be controlling Lincoln,” notes Goodwin, but Lincoln was able to sit Seward down, remind him who was president—and ultimately make him his close friend. Lincoln, in some ways, had it easier than Obama will. Cabinet secretaries in the 1860s could not step out on the White House lawn and hold press conferences with cable-TV networks. But Goodwin, who has spoken with Obama about her book, thinks he has absorbed the deeper meaning of Lincoln’s leadership style. “I think he’s got a temperamental set of qualities that have some resemblance to Lincoln’s emotional intelligence,” Goodwin tells NEWSWEEK.

On November 10th, after ‘”Baracky Claus” was re-elected, the following conversation occurred on the NBC Nightly News.

LESTER HOLT [anchor]: Finally tonight, days after our nation’s 44th president was re-elected to a second term, this weekend the spotlight turns to America’s 16th president – at the movies at least. Abraham Lincoln getting the big screen treatment courtesy of Steven Spielberg.

KEVIN TIBBLES [correspondent]: The film has been a decade-long labor of love for director Steven Spielberg.

STEVEN SPIELBERG: Lincoln advocated things we hold dear today. He advocated that government can be a positive force for the good of all people.

TIBBLES: No coincidence, perhaps, the film opens the week America’s 21st century President won re-election in difficult times fraught with partisan bickering. Times in which many ask what would Lincoln do?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Well, in Lincoln you had a president who was very eager to unify the country, dealing with a congress that had all sorts of acrimonious factions. Somehow Lincoln had the genius to get everyone to work together.

The Lincoln lie continues… 

The Weekly Standard Reports

President Barack Obama will deliver this year’s State of the Union Address on February 12, which is the same day as Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.

“Our nation continues to face immense challenges, and the American people expect us to work together in the new year to find meaningful solutions,” House speaker John Boehner writes in a letter to Obama, inviting him to deliver the address. “This will require a willingness to seek common ground as well as presidential leadership. For that reason, the Congress and the Nation would welcome an opportunity to hear your plan and specific solutions for addressing America’s great challenges. Therefore, it is my privilege to invite you to speak before a Joint Session of Congress on February 12, 2013 in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol Building.”

It’s been reported that Obama has accepted Boehner’s invitation to speak on Lincoln’s birthday.

And, if that wasn’t enough…

Per CNN

What do the 16th president, a civil rights leader, and Michelle Obama’s grandmother have in common? Their Bibles will be used in the second inauguration of President Barack Obama.

The Presidential Inaugural Committee made the announcement on Thursday that Obama will take the oath of office on the Robinson family Bible on Sunday and on the Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. Bibles on Monday.

The 20th Amendment designated Jan. 20 as Inauguration Day. But traditionally, when inauguration falls on a Sunday, the president takes the oath privately on Jan. 20 and in a public ceremony on Jan. 21.

“President Obama is honored to use these Bibles at the swearing-in ceremonies,” said Steve Kerrigan, President and CEO of the Presidential Inaugural Committee. “On the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, this historic moment is a reflection of the extraordinary progress we’ve made as a nation.”

The first lady’s father Fraser Robinson III gifted the Bible to his mother LaVaughn Delores Robinson for Mother’s Day in 1958. The King Bible was the civil rights leader’s “traveling bible,” the holy book he used as he prepared for sermons and speeches on the road. And the Lincoln Bible, on loan from the Library of Congress, was originally purchased by William Thomas Carroll, clerk of the Supreme Court, for use during Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861.

Obama took the oath on the same Lincoln Bible at his first inauguration in 2009.

That’s nice, because just like Lincoln, Obama is facing a divided nation.

Sean Hannity said on his radio program recently;

People that are fed up with a power hungry, radicalized, abusive federal government intruding into every aspect of our lives.People are going to say they’re fed up, and states are going to want more liberty and more freedom. They’re not going to want to tax their citizens to death anymore. If this pattern continues and gets worse and worse and worse, I can see at some point the states saying, ‘Forget it. I don’t want to be a part of this union anymore.’

The Great One, Mark Levin, is less than enamored with Obama and his Administration, also:

…We have evidence over one decade after another of how the very same people pushing for gun control against law-abiding American citizens support radical left-wing judges who are soft on criminals, support weakened sentencing rules, decriminalizing this and that. Since when was Obama strong on fighting crime? Since when has Obama supported law enforcement? But here he is, you know, ‘we have to stop gun violence.’ No, we have to stop violent criminals.

Now, there’s a fury in me — I’m just being honest with you — that I’m trying to contain. Biden, the moron Senator from Delaware, taking his train back and forth and back and forth on Amtrak. Oh wow, what a guy. Anyway, so they may do by executive fiat — I’m trying to read between the lines — a national gun database. Now, why would we need a national gun database? Well, listen, we need to know who has the weapons, at all times, and how many weapons they have and what weapons they have. How come? Why? The guy that killed all those people in Newtown, Connecticut, we know who he was and we know who had the weapons, his mother. So what does this national database have to do with anything? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Oh, okay, but we need one anyway, right? To prevent what exactly? To prevent what?

So, here we are, 150 years after Lincoln, standing on a precipice, looking down into the abyss of a divided nation, with a poor imitation of Abraham Lincoln sitting in the Oval Office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

There is no comparison between Abraham Lincoln and Barack Hussein Obama.

Abraham Lincoln actually loved America.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

Ryan Re-energizes Republican Base

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

Paul Ryan, the Vice-Presidential pick of the presumed Republican Nominee for President, Mitt Romney, sure does have everyone’s attention, including that of Niall Feguson.

Who’s he? well…

Per his website:

Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford.

Here is an excerpt of a 4-page piece  he has written for Newsweek, appearing on thedailybeast.com:

I first met Paul Ryan in April 2010. I had been invited to a dinner in Washington where the U.S. fiscal crisis was going to be the topic of discussion. So crucial did this subject seem to me that I expected the dinner to happen in one of the city’s biggest hotel ballrooms. It was actually held in the host’s home. Three congressmen showed up—a sign of how successful the president’s fiscal version of “don’t ask, don’t tell” (about the debt) had been. Ryan blew me away. I have wanted to see him in the White House ever since.

It remains to be seen if the American public is ready to embrace the radical overhaul of the nation’s finances that Ryan proposes. The public mood is deeply ambivalent. The president’s approval rating is down to 49 percent. The Gallup Economic Confidence Index is at minus 28 (down from minus 13 in May). But Obama is still narrowly ahead of Romney in the polls as far as the popular vote is concerned (50.8 to 48.2) and comfortably ahead in the Electoral College. The pollsters say that Paul Ryan’s nomination is not a game changer; indeed, he is a high-risk choice for Romney because so many people feel nervous about the reforms Ryan proposes.

But one thing is clear. Ryan psychs Obama out. This has been apparent ever since the White House went on the offensive against Ryan in the spring of last year. And the reason he psychs him out is that, unlike Obama, Ryan has a plan—as opposed to a narrative—for this country.

Mitt Romney is not the best candidate for the presidency I can imagine. But he was clearly the best of the Republican contenders for the nomination. He brings to the presidency precisely the kind of experience—both in the business world and in executive office—that Barack Obama manifestly lacked four years ago. (If only Obama had worked at Bain Capital for a few years, instead of as a community organizer in Chicago, he might understand exactly why the private sector is not “doing fine” right now.) And by picking Ryan as his running mate, Romney has given the first real sign that—unlike Obama—he is a courageous leader who will not duck the challenges America faces.

The voters now face a stark choice. They can let Barack Obama’s rambling, solipsistic narrative continue until they find themselves living in some American version of Europe, with low growth, high unemployment, even higher debt—and real geopolitical decline.

Or they can opt for real change: the kind of change that will end four years of economic underperformance, stop the terrifying accumulation of debt, and reestablish a secure fiscal foundation for American national security.

I’ve said it before: it’s a choice between les États Unis and the Republic of the Battle Hymn.

I was a good loser four years ago. But this year, fired up by the rise of Ryan, I want badly to win.

So do us commoners, Niall.

I like what I’m seeing out of Ryan, so far. He’s definitely got Obama nervous, as yahoo.com reports:

Romney’s choice of Ryan as his running mate has put a spotlight on the Wisconsin congressman’s best-known achievement – a budget plan that would slash Medicare’s projected costs by converting it to a program that provides limited subsidies to buy coverage.

But on the campaign trail, Ryan has moved away from his plan to emphasize less contentious proposals by Romney.

Talk of shrinking the health program for the elderly could lose votes in the November 6 election in the hotly contested state of Florida, home to the highest concentration of retirees in the country.

“Their plan would put Medicare on track to be ended as we know it,” President Barack Obama said to a crowd of about 2,300 at a campaign event on Saturday in Windham, New Hampshire.

“You’d think they’d avoid talking about Medicare given the fact that both of them have proposed to voucherize the Medicare system. I guess they figure the best defense is to try to go on offense,” Obama said.

Polls show Romney and Obama running neck-and-neck in Florida, where the cliffhanger 2000 presidential election was decided.

Republicans accuse Obama of cutting $716 billion from Medicare to pay for the healthcare overhaul law that the Democratic president signed in 2010.

But Ryan’s plan also would cut that money from Medicare, even as he proposes repealing the broader healthcare law. Romney says he would keep those funds for Medicare.

Ryan talked on Saturday about his grandmother who had Alzheimer’s disease and moved in with him and his mother when he was in high school.

“Medicare was there for our family, for my grandma when we needed it then. And Medicare is there for my mom, when she needs it now. And we have to keep that guarantee,” he said.

“But in order to make sure that we can guarantee that promise for my mom’s generation, for those baby boomers who are retiring every day, we must reform it for my generation.”

Medicare benefits nearly 50 million elderly and disabled Americans, but its financing will be squeezed by the growing numbers of retirees.

Concerns about the program’s future have become the top healthcare issue in the 2012 election, surpassing worries about Obama’s controversial healthcare law, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found earlier this week.

Joseph Bulla, 62, a Romney supporter at The Villages, said he liked Ryan’s voucher plan for Medicare. “It will give us a chance to choose what we want instead of being dictated to,” he said.

With Obama’s VP Joe Biden, sent home to Delaware to keep him from destroying Obama’s re-election bid by spewing forth more gaffes over the weekend, the nation is wondering what ol’ Scooter is going to do.

He says that he’s going to keep crazy Uncle Joe. But then again, Michael Corleone reassured Fredo, too.

If he doesn’t dump him, the Vice-presidential Debate will be the biggest massacre America has witnessed, since Custer said,

Hey! would you look at all of those Indians!

Romney, Palin, and the State of the Republican Party

On By kingsjesterIn Politics6 Comments

Yesterday, I was observing and commenting on a discussion thread on my favorite Conservative website, whose subject was an article in the barely-read magazine Newsweek in which Former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin stated that she had not been invited by the Romney Campaign to speak at the Republican Convention.

Intrigued, I went to the source article. Here are some excerpts:

Romney never seemed quite comfortable with politicking in the Tea Party era. Even in the heat of the primary race, Romney seemed put off by the idea of courting the activists, complaining in February that he wasn’t about to “light my hair on fire to try to get support”—a remark that only underscored doubts about him within the base.

…[Herman] Cain believes that the grassroots will eventually rally around the Republican nominee. “Romney is not Ronald Reagan,” Cain says. “But Romney is not Barack Obama. The Tea Party people, the citizens-movement people, they get that.” (Cain plans to continue his role as emissary between the Romney camp and the Tea Party, and plans a unity rally in Tampa on the eve of the convention.)

…Palin shares much of these same reservations about Romney. “Romney has said before that he doesn’t want to have to light his hair on fire,” Palin said on Fox last week. “Well, there are a lot of his base supporters, independents, who are saying, ‘Well, light our hair on fire, then!’” Palin’s objections to Romney are not so much about the man himself—she speaks of him respectfully, as he does about her—but about who, and what, he represents. Romney was the choice of the party’s elites, whom Palin has regarded with open disdain ever since her rough treatment during the 2008 campaign. They are some of the same people who anonymously disparaged Palin as a clueless bumpkin, and some of them are now helping to run Romney’s campaign. When unnamed Romney aides tell reporters that Romney will likely go with a “safe” choice for vice president because of the 2008 “disaster,” Palin notices.

She noticed, too, that when the Romney camp reined in Fehrnstrom after his “not a tax” goof, the man assigned to take on a more public role as Romney spokesman was Kevin Madden, best known in Palin’s sphere for his appearance on a CNN news panel just days before the 2008 election. The subject was the latest piece of leaked Palin gossip—her $150,000 “shopping spree” (for which Palin later reimbursed the Republican National Committee)—and the damage Palin was perceived to have done to the McCain campaign. “That’s an indication just how unseasoned Sarah Palin is as a national candidate,” Madden opined, before laughing about Palin’s lack of knowledge about issues and declaring that “people who have done this before” know enough to choose running mates “that are nationally vetted.”

Palin says that she doesn’t know Madden and will not comment about him personally. However, she adds: “I assume he didn’t do his homework and his disparaging remarks were due to him actually believing the BS reporting on my record and reputation that began the day I was tapped to run for VP. I’ll assume and hope he’s evolved since then, perhaps understanding now the leftist media’s agenda against candidates they oppose.”

The Romney camp will not comment on Palin, or on plans for the convention, but one adviser associated with the campaign suggested that Palin would be prohibited from speaking at the Republican convention by her contract with Fox News. “It’s true I’m prohibited from doing some things,” Palin says, “but this is the first I’ve heard anyone suggest that as an excuse, er, reason to stay away from engaging in the presidential race. I’m quite confident Fox’s top brass would never strip anyone of their First Amendment rights in this regard.” (Fox says her contract would not prohibit speaking at the convention if she sought permission.)

Palin is keeping the dates open in late August, just in case. In any event, she says, she plans to be politically active between now and November, starting with a Michigan Tea Party appearance, sponsored by Americans for Prosperity. “No matter the Romney campaign strategy,” she says, “I intend to do all I can to join others in motivating the grassroots made up of independents and constitutional conservatives who can replace Barack Obama at the ballot box.”

Palin’s admirers—and they are many, judging by Facebook and Twitter metrics, where her numbers are far greater than Romney’s—still hope for a rapprochement. “Palin is the female Ronald Reagan of our time,” says Kremer of the Tea Party Express. “There’s no one that excites the base, and energizes the base, the way that Sarah Palin does. There’s just not.”

As I write this post, that thread on the before-mentioned Conservative website sits at 1,807 comments and growing. The next closest thread on the site is at 592 comments.

How come?

Well, as I sit here at my computer in the Northwest Corner of the Magnolia State, I’ve had some rather pointed questions running through my mind:

If you want to become President of these United States, as Mitt Romney says that he does, why would you intentionally marginalize 40% of the country’s population in Conservatives, especially when you are in a virtual tie in head-to-head polls with the worst president in America’s collective memory?

Governor Romney, are you scared that Gov. Palin will upstage you at the Convention? Are you scared that Conservatives are actually going to expect you to stand for something? Have you ever lived anywhere in your adult life besides the Northeast Corridor?

Governor, you can continue to ignore Conservatives if you wish.  Just don’t compare yourself to Ronald Reagan.  Ronaldus Magnus united the party.

I, along with most Conservatives who love this country, plan on holding our noses and voting for you on November 6th, in spite of it all., so we can rid our nation of the Manchurian President.

So, would you please start attacking Obama as viciously as you attacked your fellow Republicans in the Primary?

Thanks.

Andrew Sullivan: Being Gay is like Being Black…or Something

On By kingsjesterIn Politics6 Comments

This week’s edition of Newsweek Magazine will feature a very “special” article in it by self-proclaimed Gay Conservative Andrew Sullivan (and if this guy is a “Conservative”, I’m a blonde 22-year-old Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader named Buffy).  In the article, Sullivan equates Obama’s Black Experience to being Gay:

Last week he did it—in a move whose consequences are simply impossible to judge. White House sources told me that after the interview with ABC News, the president felt as if a weight had been lifted off him. Yes, he was bounced into it by Joe Biden, the lovable Irish-Catholic rogue who couldn’t help but tell the truth about his own views on TV (only to be immediately knocked down by David Axelrod on Twitter). But Obama had been planning to endorse gay marriage before his reelection for a while. White House sources say that if Obama had been a state senator in New York last year when the Albany legislature legalized gay marriage, he’d have voted in favor. But no one asked. The “make news” reveal was scheduled for The View. In the end, scrambling to catch up with his veep, he turned to his fellow ESPN fan, Robin Roberts, a Christian African-American from Mississippi, to quell the sudden kerfuffle. Even this was calculated: to have this moment occur between two African-Americans would help Obama calm opposition within parts of the black community.

The interview, by coincidence, came the day after North Carolina voted emphatically to ban all rights for gay couples in the state constitution. For gay Americans and their families, the emotional darkness of Tuesday night became a canvas on which Obama could paint a widening dawn. But I didn’t expect it. Like many others, I braced myself for disappointment. And yet when I watched the interview, the tears came flooding down. The moment reminded me of my own wedding day. I had figured it out in my head, but not my heart. And I was utterly unprepared for how psychologically transformative the moment would be. To have the president of the United States affirm my humanity—and the humanity of all gay Americans—was, unexpectedly, a watershed. He shifted the mainstream in one interview. And last week, a range of Democratic leaders—from Harry Reid to Steny Hoyer—backed the president, who moved an entire party behind a position that only a few years ago was regarded as simply preposterous. And in response, Mitt Romney could only stutter.

…This is the gay experience: the discovery in adulthood of a community not like your own home and the struggle to belong in both places, without displacement, without alienation. It is easier today than ever. But it is never truly without emotional scar tissue. Obama learned to be black the way gays learn to be gay. And in Obama’s marriage to a professional, determined, charismatic black woman, he created a kind of family he never had before, without ever leaving his real family behind. He did the hard work of integration and managed to create a space in America for people who did not have the space to be themselves before. And then as president, he constitutionally represented us all.

I have always sensed that he intuitively understands gays and our predicament—because it so mirrors his own. And he knows how the love and sacrifice of marriage can heal, integrate, and rebuild a soul. The point of the gay-rights movement, after all, is not about helping people be gay. It is about creating the space for people to be themselves. This has been Obama’s life’s work. And he just enlarged the space in this world for so many others, trapped in different cages of identity, yearning to be released and returned to the families they love and the dignity they deserve.

Back on December 31, 2004, Dr. Thomas Sowell, the respected Black Economist, wrote the following in an article titled, “Gay marriage ‘rights'”, published at townhall.com:

Of all the phony arguments for gay marriage, the phoniest is the argument that it is a matter of equal rights.Marriage is not a right extended to individuals by the government. It is a restriction on the rights they already have.

People who are simply living together can make whatever arrangements they want, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual. They can divide up their worldly belongings 50-50 or 90-10 or whatever other way they want. They can make their union temporary or permanent or subject to cancellation at any time.

…The time is long overdue to stop word games about equal rights from leading to special privileges — for anybody — and gay marriage is as good an issue on which to do so as anything else.

Incidentally, it is not even clear how many homosexuals actually want marriage, even though gay activists are pushing it.

What the activists really want is the stamp of acceptance on homosexuality, as a means of spreading that lifestyle, which has become a death style in the era of AIDS.

…There is no limit to what people will do if you let them get away with it. That our schools, which are painfully failing to educate our children to the standards in other countries, have time for promoting homosexuality is truly staggering.

Every special interest group has an incentive to take something away from society as a whole. Some will be content just to siphon off a share of the taxpayers’ money for themselves. Others, however, want to dismantle a part of the structure of values that make a society viable.

They may not want to bring down the whole structure, just get rid of the part that cramps their style. But when innumerable groups start dismantling pieces of the structure that they don’t like, we can be headed for the kinds of social collapses seen both in history and in other parts of the world in our own times.

I have no desire to destroy somebody’s happiness.  

That being said, I don’t want 5% of America to have the “right” to re-define a word that has meant one thing since time immemorial, simply because they believe that it brings to their lifestyle the label of “normalcy”.