Two Unitarian Ministers in New York have recently been charged with a crime for marrying same-sex couples.
UUs believe in equality for ALL. We "honor the inherent worth and dignity of all people and of the world in which we live." Recognizing loving unions between two people, no matter what their sexual orientation, has taken place in our religous community for years.
Many people who are against same-sex marriages make arguments based on their religious beliefs. Well, why aren't our religious beliefs vaild? We do a heck of a lot of good in our communities. We live in peace with one another and with our neighbors. And, we strive to make the world a better place through tolerance, peace, liberty, and justice.
If your church doesn't like gays or gay marriage, so be it. I don't want you to change your beliefs for me. But, if you want me to respect for your beliefs--and support your right to have them, you must extend the same respect to me.
Our religious body has roots dating back to the early formation of the Christian religion, when many debates were taking place about the worth and dignity of people and whether Jesus was man or god. We have history too, and we have just as much of a right to practice our beliefs as you do.
Can't you see how hipocritical you are being? By denying us our beliefs, you deny yourselves yours.

So tomorrow is Florida's primary and Gainesville's mayoral election. I'm voting for Pegeen Hanrahan for mayor. I think we need a firey red-head in charge for a while. Hopefully, she'll help revitalize the East side while keeping urban sprawl at a minimum.
For the primary, since I am dismayed that John Edwards dropped out before I could vote for him, I am throwing my vote to Dennis Kucinich. Yes, he's far left, but he's got some good ideas, and I think his voice needs to be heard at the convention. I especially like his idea for a Department of Peace.
Peace is not easy, and it doesn't just happen. It takes work, and is often just as or more difficult than waging war. Remember, peace begins with you.

I feel the need to remind people to be aware of fallacies of reasoning this political year. For a good list see: http://staff.gc.maricopa.edu/~kshinema/FALLACIES.HTML

The two fallacies I see used most nowadays are the ad hominem attack (attack the person you're debating instead of the issue) and the slippery slope ("Gay marriage? What's next, legal polygamy?" The two are seperate issues and should not be lumped together.).

I encourage you to read any list of fallacies and call shenanigans on anyone you debate with this season who uses fallacies in support of their argument. Let's elevate our discussions to a higher plane of thinking.

I can't believe people want to change our beloved Constituition to deny rights to a group of people.
I have yet to hear any sound argument to support the assertion that a gay couple's desire to enter into a legally binding social contract would endanger my hetero marriage.
When are people going to wake up and realize that it is unwise to legislate morality? We can legislate ethics, yes, but not morality. Ethics conotates logic and fairness, while morality, more often than not, conotates religious ideals. What happened to seperation of church and state? By whose morals do you want to be governed? Yours? Mine? The Taliban's? (Okay, so that's a slippery slope argument and is invalid, but it demonstrates my point.)
By the way, I believe sexuality is dictated by biology as well as socio-psychology. Read this paper from a Cornell psychologist that discusses an interesting thoery on this issue: http://comp9.psych.cornell.edu/dbem/bio_correlations.htm

Last Friday, I managed to get through C-Span's "Washington Journal" phone lines to call Washington Times Editor-in-Cheif Wesley Pruden on his journalsitic dishonesty for using ellipses in the following quote to misrepresent and distort what John Kerry said during his testimony to the Senate after returning from Vietnam:

John Kerry's military record, lieutenant or not, has so far made him a sentimental favorite with many veterans, but it's a military record that won't withstand the scrutiny that's coming. His slander of the GIs he left behind in Vietnam is not yet well known.
    "They ... raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power," he told a Senate committee in 1971 when he was just home from the war, and "cut off limbs, [blew] up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."
    Miserable lies, and he never produced evidence or repudiated the lies. Americans tolerate a lot of hyperbole in election season, but stuff like this will unhorse even a Botox man.
    Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.
source: http://www.washtimes.com/national/pruden.htm

What Mr. Kerry was referring to was testimony from Veterans themselves in Detroit. John Kerry's actual testimony, without ellipses is:

I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command....
They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
Source: http://www.richmond.edu/~ebolt/history398/JohnKerryTestimony.html

Mr. Pruden, who responsibly admits that The Washington Times is a conservative paper, demonstrates partisan journalistism at its worst. Watch for his version of the quote to be picked up by the mainstream media and repeated by lazy or deadline-driven journalists who won't check the quote. I hope everyone, on both sides of the issues, looks more closely at what journalists say this year. If you read a quote, don't take it at face-value. Please look it up for yourself! Do the work that corporate journalsits won't. Just like any potentially dangerous product, WE must hold the press accountable for what they sell us.

Check out the 01/30/04 Wesley Pruden segment online at: http://www.c-span.org/homepage.asp?Cat=Series&Code=WJE&ShowVidNum=6&Rot_Cat_CD=WJ&Rot_HT=204&Rot_WD=&ShowVidDays=15&ShowVidDesc=