2016 June 26th
Yesterday, June 25th, was the date for our town’s
Gay Pride Parade. I sent an observer and she reported back that it went off
without a hitch; there was no Pastor Kevin Swanson prancing about screaming
“kill the homosexuals” although he and other like-minded “Christian” pastors
have had their Pay Pal funding cut off and they are furious about that. I mean
it is about the money isn’t it?
Last year this parade was held on June 27th; here
is my comment from that occasion:
(2015) June 27th
In downtown Traverse City today there was a Gay Pride
parade. There were hundreds of marchers. Not all of them were gay, there were
many sympathizers too, and many not in the parade, standing along the way, applauded
those who marched. Michigan has a law against gay marriage but Governor Snyder
has agreed that SCOTUS’ decision is now the law of the land and ordered the
authorities to “fully comply” with the ruling…and then there is Texas!
Texas Governor Abbott ordered officials there to “prioritize
religious objections” in complying with the law. This means that if you work
for the state office that issues marriage licenses and you object to gay
couples getting married you can claim your religious beliefs compel you not to
comply with that request. Keep in mind that the “religious” clerk who makes
this claim may not have been in a church since he was six years old, even so, Governor
Abbott allows him to hide his bigotry behind a phony religious mask. (I wonder
if Viet-Nam war protestors were encouraged by the then Texas Governor to
exercise the same religious privilege. Want to bet?)
Texas has no shortage of public officials outraged over the
SCOTUS decision on gay marriage. No less than a sitting US Senator, Ted Cruz,
has remarked about the effect of “five unelected Judges on the Supreme Court
nullifying the wishes of 300 million Americans.” Most any high school kid could
tell the Senator that the federal constitution which he claims to revere, and
which he has sworn to uphold, specifically requires that the Justices of the
Supreme Court be appointed by the President of the United States. You would
suppose that a graduate of Harvard Law School would know at least as much about
the Constitution of the United States as a high school kid. Can you skip the
course in Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School? Probably not but maybe Cruz
snoozed through the lectures on the selection of Supreme Court justices.
Then there are Cruz’s comments about this decision being in
opposition to the “wishes of 300 million Americans.” That’s demonstrably “horse
hockey”; most polls show that slightly better than 60 percent of the population
support gay marriage and an equal number say that states have no right to
prohibit it. One Republican panelist, S.E. Cupp, was in full support of the
SCOTUS decision; she claims that the Republican Party will be a “relic” if they
don’t update their rhetoric. I’m afraid it’s too late for that Ms. Cupp.
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