As Rana said, if the moniker of bigot is an uncomfortable one, feel free to cease and desist with narrow minded remarks. You think that it is reasonable to talk of denying or even revoking civil liberties for Americans of whom you do not approve. That is decidedly not reasonable. I would call that the basest kind of prejudice, one that has a caustic effect in our democracy.

“Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing.” — Pogo

To me, someone who keeps coming up with multiple reasons — no, let’s call them what they are, excuses — to deny civil rights to a group of people appears to have a vested interest in that group’s continued inequality. A person who thought well of that group but who had reservations about the legal changes would be willing to rethink his or her position upon hearing counter arguments.

But that’s not what you’re doing. You keep throwing arguments at the wall in the hopes that one of them will stick.

Why?

If marriage becomes a civil right for everyone, what harm does it to you?

Really, honestly — what harm?

So far you have made NO convincing case that harm exists; indeed you keep groping around for a new angle to persuade us of something that you’re just assuming — with no evidence.

You assume that gay marriage = a bad thing, with no evidence. You insist on repeating this, despite arguments to the contrary. You kick and scream when people point out the errors in your assertions, rather than pausing to wonder if perhaps they might have a point.

I don’t think you are a demon. I think you are a person who has formed a prejudice against gay people, and one who refuses to contemplate the possibility that the assumptions that go along with that prejudice are in error.

In short, I think you are a bigot. You hold erroneous, damaging beliefs about a group of people that has done you no harm, simply because their biology is not the same as yours. That’s a textbook definition of bigotry.

I don’t throw out that term lightly, or to make you look bad, or to insult you. I do it so your behavior is correctly identified for what it is.

Again, if you don’t like the label, change the behavior. No one can make you a bigot except yourself.

This isn’t about whether you disagree with me, and it’s silly that you keep acting as if it is. I could care less about you personally. I have no stake in pleasing or insulting you. But the views you hold are damaging, hurtful ones, ones that have real consequences for real families, and I will not let them go unchallenged.

I’m defending the civil rights of a minority group. What are you doing?

You know, if you two weren’t so fast and loose with the perjoratives, we probably could have had a reasonable thread here. As it is, you demonize those who disagree with you.

Food for thought.

In fact, he and Joe Biden both opposed Proposition 8 — which makes his position a lot more complex than you’d like to caricature it as.

Again, he’s not my god, my messiah, my savior, or any of those things, and I am under no obligation to march in lockstep with him, or to treat his every utterance like the word of an infallible god. He’s a human being, complicated and flawed, and he’s willing to support a number of my other policy positions, and I deemed him a better political match and more thoughtful candidate than McCain. That’s it. That’s all. Do I approve of his weak defense of civil rights for gays and lesbians? No. But that weak broth is better than the foul brew you’re offering.

Don’t like being called a bigot? Don’t be one.

And do grow up. I know I’m younger than you, and it pains me to see a grown man stamping his feet like a child.

As to President Elect Obama’s position on gay marriage, I would say the same things to him that I am saying to you. As a matter of fact, I already have voiced my discontent with his position on gay marriage on Barack Obama’s website blog section. There were plenty of people within the civil rights movement who thought that it was best not to rock the boat. There were others who knew that the time for boat rocking was long overdue. Without the latter, the former would likely still be at the back of the bus and we would not have a President Elect named Barack Obama.

As for defining Obama as a bigot, I would if he summarized a justification for the denial of rights that was as homophobic as some of yours have been. I suspect that his views were tempered more by expediency than deep seated conviction. This election cycle played host to a small but vocal minority that was intent on inciting an irrational sense of fear toward the GLBT community on the issue of gay marriage. As we can see by posts in this thread, it has not abated from that crowd.

I am going to continue to rock the boat every time I perceive that we are withholding liberties or rights from any citizen. The constitution applies to all, not just those currently in favor. Do not mistake resolve for anger. They are very different.

You don’t just disagree with Barack Obama, you define him as a bigot. Along with me and most of the rest of the United States.

Logic is hard!

In other news, Eharmony was successfully sued because they did not offer same-sex dating services. Next up, churches, no doubt.

I don’t hate Barack Obama, and on this issue, I think he’s wrong. He’s not my god; I’m free to disagree with the man.

Don’t injure yourself on the meaning of the word irony…

My church (UU) believes that “gay marriage” and “straight marriage” are the same thing: marriage.

Liberal Quaker churches believe this already, as well. As do some liberal Baptist churches, and others.

What has not happened is that laws based in a narrow-minded, and, yes, bigoted view of humanity have been expanded to grant more rights to more people and more churches, instead of to a limited, homophobic few.

Government establishment of religion — which this is, this giving of full legal status to some churches’ marriages but not to other churches’ — is, last time I looked, a First Amendment violation.

As for the “tradition” of marriage being ineluctably one of one-man, one-woman, that is so historically inaccurate, it’s not even funny. In some societies, men married pre-pubescent children. In others, men married several women. In some cultures in native America, men did marry other men (they were called berdaches).

The “marriage” that you are so worried about the government redefining is ONE form of social and spiritual contract from among a range of options. It is not some timeless ideal that wafted down from on high. No one is asking you to participate in, perform, or approve of a marriage between gay people. What they are asking for is for gays and lesbians and the churches and families that love and care for them be given the same legal recognition — which currently goes by the word “marriage” — as homophobic straight people and their families and churches.

I’m not casting an aspersion when I call your views those of a bigot. I am stating a fact.

I also realize that I’m unlikely to change either your attitude or your views by stating so. But your defending the denial of full civil rights to a group of people who want nothing more than to live their lives and raise their families and love their beloveds in peace, while claiming that the people who call you bigot are the insulting, hateful ones, is too egregious an irony to not respond to.