I know that this has been the party line for a long, long, LONG time. However, I think that we give religious beliefs undue respect. I hope the time is coming soon when we can honorably challenge religious belief in the same way we have challenged the equally strong beliefs that the world is flat and that the stars/planets revolve around the earth. Just because people believe something strongly doesn’t make it right or worthy of respect. (The trick is to respect the people while not particularly respecting their beliefs.)

The momks had reading and writing.

And later came the Gutenberg Bible. Gutenberg invented a printing press making copies bacame faster.

All of these inovations and things brought reading and writing on a larger and more varied scale closer to more and more people as time went on.

As we get progress in our rights, it comes partly because of people with cool and rational heads are able to make our case and our cause better understood by more of the mom-gay population and also because of the many progay clergy saying that gays are your “brothers and sisters” as well and all are deserving of civil rights, of fulfillment, of advancement in every part of life, of security and freedom from discrimination.

I saw many gay and progay clergy time and time again on the steps of the MA statehouse in Boston, all holding progay marriage placards and signs. So many times, I traveled from Maryland to Massachusetts for progay marriage rallies at the statehouse and I saw the progay clergy there each and every time.

I have seen again and again the good the progay clergy do. Something so often very lacking in the prevailing negative tone and undertandable and persistent chanting about hate, hate, hate.

Don’t get me wrong, the hate is very real, but the good is often forgotten in a place like here unless someone (like myself who has been a first-hand witness to the acts of true Christian decency and good) is there to remind people that yes the good in God exists and it exists in Massachusetts and it exists in California where I have also been.

I talked to a young man in San Francisco and his girlfriend. Their church like mine has a very active feed the hungry program and this young couple WERE GOING TO VOTE NO ON PROP 8 and showed me where the No on Prop 8 headquarters was located.

There are many very good and very progay and gay religious people who do a lot of good for society. I am a liberal Democrat gay who tried atheism and found atheism unhappy, empty and lacking. I am a guy who has friends, family, a house, a car, all kinds of things, good money but still feeling a void, a hunger inside that those things aren’t filling. That is why I go to a nice church. I am much more settled and content within now.

I have found that there is good and bad religion. It can be used to build up or to tear down and oppress.

Fortunately our church is one that builds up people and encourages them to do great things with their lives and to help those less fortunate.

There are churches that actively promote things like gay rights and gay marriage like Metropolitan Community Church (founded by a gay pastor for gay people and their allies) Unitarian Universalist Church is very progay rights and progay marriage, (I know because I went to one that had an openly gay minister whom everyone liked, I delivered Equality Maryland’s civil marriage/civil rights signs to another one that always kept plenty on hand in case one got “stolen” or vandalized)
There are liberal Episcopalian churches like mine that has had a gay Episcopal priest and great female priests, one permanent and one current interum that have gay couples as well as young liberal-minded straight couples with kids.

And when their predictions of doom are proven false, when the average citizens realizes that gay people marrying is supporting this institution, while str8 people are destroying it with their infidelity and greed. Ultimately the leadership of these conservative churches will be exposed for all to see and understand.

The same kind of mentality that gave the world a thousand year dark ages, with zero social and economic progress, while the church combined with kings and emperors murdered 50 million Muslims during the crusades.

Does anyone think that this history has something to do with how Muslim culture has evolved, and buried in that culture is a hatred of the west that made it easy for maniacs like Bin Laden to give us 9/11.

And then ‘they’ – the successors of who committed monstrous crimes during the middle ages, talk about moral values.

Hmmm – that is a perversion if there ever was one.

People whose religion always has to have someone to hate.

And whose final destination will be God’s re-education center. Perhaps He will pardon the average person of this mentality, but for their leaders – whose real belief is only in their arrogance and power, look out baby – it is hot down there.

So we will win. And if we trample on a few bigots on the way, like getting a CEO or two fired, too bad. Lets see how they like it for a change.

Keep up the momentum, we cannot let this energy peter out.

I continue to plea for this community to get behind the anti-religion movement. We can kill to bird-brained bimboista bigoted buffoons with one stone (sorry Bud, couldn’t resist).

You will know they are Kristianists by their HATE.

Bud Burgoon-Clark
2nd class citizen in California
for AWHILE