Why is it that Christian conservatives so often believe that "Feedom" only means "Feedom to do things of which I approve"?

@1 - Because they're just passing along God's word to us Godless heathens.

Because they have God on speed-dial, they are absolutely certain they know what God wants you to do, and they're absolutely certain that you are NOT CURRENTLY IN COMPLIANCE with God's plan for you.

Of course, they all of them, to a person, completely overlook Luke 6:42, from right there in their own book: "Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye."

Buncha "experts" on Christianity running amok. If they were able to truly grok the message that Jesus had for them, their smug self-righteous lives would be upended. And they can't have that.

Notice that the same kooks that run around in a panic about Obama's seeekrit Muslim plan to implement 'Sharia Law' are the same god damned kooks that want to use Biblical justification to outlaw contraception and butt-sex.

It's like their world is divided into one crazy and oppressive Old Testament version of Coke vs. another crazy Old Testament version of Pepsi. And they're oblivious that there is literally no sane distinction between the two extremes.

@5: ...you do realize that Darwin didn't invent evolution by natural selection any more than Newton invented universal gravitation, I'm sure.

I hope conservative homophobes like Santorum don't stop calling what they believe "family values" because it's become a really convenient warning bell; I know if I hear the phrase "family values" that it's going to be followed by something truly awful, something nobody would accept if it weren't wrapped in the warm, fuzzy gauze of false concern for the well-being of children.

I hate what conservatives have done with the word "family." Instead of signifying love and unity, on a political level it is shorthand for bigotry and exclusion. Any politician espousing family values really means "families who value rejecting their gay sons, daughters, cousins, aunts, uncles, and siblings," and any group with the word "family" in its name (Focus on the Family, Family Research Council) is likely to be an anti-gay hate group. The religious right is doing more damage to "family" than we gays ever could.

They can have my dildo when they pry it from my cold, dead vagina.

Rick Santorum is the only patriot left who can stem the march to homosexuality. Gayness will explode exponentially unless Barack Hussein Obama is stopped.

Fuck yes, Jen! I think it's about damn time we stopped letting the Right get away with their bigoted doublespeak take on the phrase "family values". We should call it out for what it is every time anyone in the MSM uses it. Every time.

@11

Sounds like a heckuva party! Sign me up!

@11

For the homosplosion, that is.

@LB-- Your blundering attempts to make everyone else around you as clueless as yourself fail once more.

(Just because it happened to you doesn't mean you can do it to others.)

"Family values" has always been the code word used by fundy-mentals for anti-gay.

Re: Sullivan:

Gushy backer of wacky old Republican homophobe gets all frothy over ditzy youngish Republican homophobe. Oi, the cognitive dissonance....

Look - you hate Santorum, I hate Santorum - but he doesn't have a chance in hell of being president. So lets lay-off spreading all this information about him till later - because the longer he sticks around in the primaries the better.

As a social conservative, I know I'm swimming with the sharks here. But to give you a little insight into how we think, let me ask a quick question about "freedom": Societal freedom doesn't mean you're free to do anything, right? You're not free to murder, for example.

Consensual sex between two people of the same sex done in private is one thing... what's done privately, by definition, is not known to the general public. But pushing legislation that elevates such dangerous behavior* into the mainstream [and even goes so far as to make it a crime to say anything against such a practice] forces people to take sides. Yet the average gay activist wants to deny the "other side" from legally existing and from exercising its constitutional right to free speech against what it considers to be a sexual perversion.

Another "freedom" issue is the redefinition of marriage to allow for "gay" marriage. Interesting, because now pedophiles want the same privilege. When and where will this stop? Pretty soon people will be marrying their toasters! C'mon! Let's use our heads, folks! Jesus affirmed the classic definition of marriage in Matthew 19: He answered, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate" [vv. 4-6]. We "religious" social conservatives understand that marriage is to be between a man and a woman... period! No matter what the majority may want, there are some God-given laws that should never be changed. One of those has to do with the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman.

So, those are my two cents worth. As a Baptist, I'm not a fan of Santorum's faith; but I sure can support his moral stance. The U.S. may be too far gone, morally speaking, to appreciate that stance, but he'll get my vote if he somehow wins the Republican nomination. Obama is a "moral nightmare!"

My footnote was cut off from my previous comment, so here goes:

* One study reported that the average life span of the American homosexual male is 42 years. Another study that came out in 2O1O reported that the American homosexual male is 4O times more likely to contract HIV than the American heterosexual male.

Bill. This is America. Your religious objections are irrelevant in matters of civil rights. You don't get to make other people pay a price for your religious beliefs.

@19: You ARE swimming with the sharks, and you shall be devoured. Allow me to spill a little chum into the water with you and me.
You are quite right that freedoms are not absolute; my preferred way to put it is that one's rights end where the rights of others begin.
As such, one's private sexuality is no business of any government agencies unless it infringes upon the freedoms of the general public. This is clearly not the case; you have no right for your delicate sensibilities to remain unbruised. You claim that homosexuality is dangerous (an assertion that I shall disembowel further down), and yet the government allows and encourages many practices that are KNOWN to be dangerous, such as gun ownership, driving cars, drinking alcohol, having heterosexual sexual relations, and hunting bears.
I defy you to point to one proposed or enacted law that would ban scum like you from expressing your opinion that homosexuality is immoral. There have been none; you are at this point simply making shit up.
Homosexuals want the right to be married to the consenting and unrelated partner of their choice. This is not a right that zoophiles or pedophiles can request because the objects of their affections are incapable of giving informed consent. Hopefully this puts your ludicrous and deliberately misinformed fears to rest.
And now to the issue of Scripture. I remind you that the lay rabbi known as Jesus of Nazareth is now nothing but dust. Working within your ideological framework, which like all other religions has NO place in government (Thomas Jefferson was quite clear on this, as was the Treaty of Tripoli), I would remind you that the passage you cite suggests marriage as between one man and one woman, but that elsewhere in the Christian bible, polygyny is explicitly allowed (Exodus 21:10). Clearly, the definition of marriage you cite is not the only one endorsed by the Bible!
@20: You mean Cameron, Playfair, and Wellum (1994)?
That study's been debunked over and over again. Not only was researcher bias an issue (since Cameron is chairman of the Family Research Institute, an organization that publicly admits that it is against homosexuality), but the methodology was fatally flawed. Their data were obtained solely from newspaper obituaries, which do not come close to being representative of the general population. Additionally, the proportion of male to female homosexuals in the obituaries studied was substantially different from the proportion claimed for the general population. A study doesn't mean anything unless it has decent methodology, and bringing up such bad science as a talking point only loses credibility for yourself.
Paul Cameron has also been rebuked by the American, Nebraska, and Canadian Psychological Associations and by the American Sociological Associations for his misrepresentations and ethics violations. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. (All this is sourced here.)

The long and short of it is that you have no evidence whatsoever supporting your position, and have taken a stance based entirely on xenophobia and personal opinion. As is the case with most shark attacks, the chondrichthyan takes one bite and departs with a certain bad taste in its mouth. I have no stomach for your irrational hatred.

@20-21, to add to venomlash somewhat mean-spirited but otherwise quite exact critique of your viewpoint, Rev. Bil: you are allowed to believe in a definition of marriage that implies only people of opposite sexes can be truly married to each other. If this is your faith, if this is your interpretation of what your god wants you to do, of course you're allowed to do that; and if everybody else in your congregation wants the same, you are of course entitled to it.

I don't think there is a single gay rights activist -- certainly not Dan Savage -- who would deny you the right to believe in this definition and act accordingly.

But you are going beyond this. You're suggesting that civil marriage -- not religious marriage -- should follow the same rules. You're suggesting that the laws of a country that prides itself in accepting all religions and religious beliefs, including atheism, and all kinds of religious marriages (which are different ceremonies in different religions -- if you're married in the Baptist church, it doesn't follow that you're married to a Muslim or to a Zoroastrian; for them, you may still be single), should be based on the same definitions that your own religion uses for its concept of marriage.

Why should this be the case? And why should the Baptist definition of religious marriage (plus the ceremony) be preferred over that of any other religion? In fact, since civil marriage is a civil ceremony involving certain rights (very much like other civil ceremonies, say naturalization with respect to citizenship rights), why should any religious definition of marriage have anything to do with it -- just as religious notions of beloging to a 'community of the faithful' don't with naturalization and citizenship rights?

This implies that your faith shouldn't accept as married some people who are legally married. But that is already the case in many faiths. As I pointed out, if you're married, your marriage is probably not accepted as valid by many a religion in the world.

That's my $0.02. I hope it makes sense to you.

Faith, family and ECONOMIC freedom: freedom of corporations to be free from regulation, recognized as person, spend unlimited sums on elections, never face increased taxes and be able to write their own rules. For CIVIL LIBERTY freedom, Santorum believes in a heavy handed state that regulates not just same sex marriage, but also birth control, medical practice, law enforcement and much, much more. In Santorums world, the ranking is corporations are superior to the state, and the state is superior to individuals, especially gays and women.

For all those that say Santorum is harmless, keep him around to prolong the primaries:
Think about this: Vice President Santorum. Sec. of HHS or Education or Interior Santorum. If he gets traction, if he has enough delegates going into the convention, he gets something. Unless people are acting NOW to prevent this, you can expect it to happen.

Family values used to include banning interracial marriage.

"One study reported that the average life span of the American homosexual male is 42 years. "

No it didn't.

@ 19: You do get the concept of SEPERATION of (you nutjob) CHURCH and STATE, right? Well, then you enjoy your religious views and shut the fuck up about my non-religious views. You can't deprive a goup of people of their equal rights simply because your religion says it's the right thing to do, just like I can't tell you to go down on your wife because I think it's the right thing to do.

Rev. Bill. Patriots always swim in sharks, because sharks (in this case MarxoFascist liberals) are would be totalitarians who want to force anyone and everyone to be gay. The purpose is clear, without strong families - which homosexuality undermines - fascism and socialism can never advance.

it's that simple.

@29: That's why Soviet Russia encouraged women not to have children, and why Nazi Germany encouraged everyone to be gay.

Oh, wait.

@29: Cool story, bro.

So...I'd just like to say..not all religious people are anti gay marriage. I'm a devout jew, and our Torah is what Christians like to call the Old Testament. There are some jews out there who don't believe in gay marriage, and there are some jews (like me) who do, and advocate strongly for it.

I would like to apologize on behalf of all bigoted people who blame their religion. There is space for both religion and common sense, and that is why some religions, (for example, Christianity and Judaism) reform their traditions and practices and re-examine scripture all the time.

So, Rev. Bill, stop blaming scripture for your homophobia. It's tacky.

So...I'd just like to say..not all religious people are anti gay marriage. I'm a devout jew, and our Torah is what Christians like to call the Old Testament. There are some jews out there who don't believe in gay marriage, and there are some jews (like me) who do, and advocate strongly for it.

I would like to apologize on behalf of all bigoted people who blame their religion. There is space for both religion and common sense, and that is why some religions, (for example, Christianity and Judaism) reform their traditions and practices and re-examine scripture all the time.

So, Rev. Bill, stop blaming scripture for your homophobia. It's tacky.

You can all keep your long noses out of my bedroom and MY reproductive choices.

Looove the bad cop/good cop smack-down from the venomlash & ankylosaur brain-trust.

You guys rock.

@19 I'm a little late to this party, but I would like to point out a few things:

First, lesbians are far less likely to contract HIV than straight people. By your logic, only lesbians should be allowed to get married.

My second point is that using the bible to argue with people who do not believe in the bible is an exercise in futility. If I argued the superiority of Islam over Christianity by citing passages in the Koran where it is stated that Islam is the one true religion, would that change your mind? Also, we live in the United States of America, so if you want to pass a law or make policy changes, you're going to have to come up with an argument other than "my religion says so."

I had a useful comment to make, but then I had a vision of recent letter-writer NAIF voting for Mr S while having the biggest climax of his life in the voting booth, and now I need to go bleach my brain.

If masturbation was going to undermine the fabric of society, it would have happened a long assed time ago.

I think someone should ask Romney is he believes as all Mormon's do that in the future he will become a God with all the powers to create that the God revealed in the Christian and Jewish scriptures has; with the ability to create his own universe and another Adam and Eve if he so desires. It would be a block buster question and one if Romney is honest he has to answer an unequivocal YES, he believes he will eventually become a God.