"I feel like I don't live in America."

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
-Seven Weinberg

I'm reading a book right now called The End of Faith where Sam Harris makes an argument against religious moderates. He says that even though the moderates mean well, their constant repeating of "not all of [religion] is violent" prevents us from having a dialogue about the central cause of all religious terrorism: religion.

While moderation in religion may seem a reasonable position to stake out, in light of all that we have (and have not) learned about the universe, it offers no bulwark against religious extremism and religious violence. From the perspective of those seeking to live by the letter of texts, the religious moderate is nothing more than a failed fundamentalist. He is, in all likelihood, going to wind up in hell with the rest of the unbelievers. The problem that religious moderation poses for all of us is that it does not permit anything very critical to be said about religious literalism. We cannot say that fundamentalists are crazy, because they are merely practicing their freedom of belief; we cannot even say that they are mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivaled. All we can say, as religious moderates, is that we don't like the personal and social costs that a full embrace of scripture imposes on us. This is not a new form of faith, or even a new species of scriptural exegesis; it is simply a capitulation to a variety of all-too-human interests that have nothing, in principle, to do with God. Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance--and it has no bona fides, in religious terms, to put it on a par with fundamentalism. The texts themselves are unequivocal: they are perfect in all their parts. By their light, religious moderation appears to be nothing more than an unwillingness to fully submit to God's law. By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally. Unless the core dogmas of faith are called into question--i.e., that we know there is a God, and that we know what he wants from us--religious moderation will do nothing to lead us out of the wilderness.

I think this is the biggest problem we have with the gay marriage issue. There are even religious moderates, all over the place, who are otherwise perfectly moral and sane, who do not believe gays should be allowed to marry. Many religious people who support same sex marriage, or at least the hollow equivalent of civil unions, at the very least sympathize with where the gay marriage opponents are coming from; and this really does prevent us from criticizing anti-gay bigots to the fullest extent. There is no excuse to opposing gay marriage. That worldview really shouldn't be tolerated. An opinion's worth should be weighed with how much logical validity it contains, and in logical terms, the ideas of these people make absolutely no sense. There is no valid argument against same sex marriage. If a bad idea makes no sense, then it should be thrown out and laughed at like the disgrace it is, not blasted on the airwaves as if it holds just as much weight as logical facts. If every opinion was equal, we would be teaching creationism and flat earth theory in public schools. America's public discourse is an embarrassment.

Here's what I mean: these are the opinions of people who oppose same sex marriage. This is their reaction to Prop 8 getting overturned. I can't even wrap my head around this. I can't possibly comprehend how any person could ever believe this shit.

From a Mormon forum:

• May the Lord have mercy on us. He spared Sodom & Gomorrah (edited to add: for awhile), so perhaps He will spare California. I almost wouldn't mind if He didn't.
• This is a camel's nose in the tent type situation. When the disintegration of the family is complete, except for those few peculiar die-hard religious nuts, at least many of us can look back and say that we fought to preserve the family. We know that in this dispensation there won't be another absolute apostasy. I would have hated to have been a prophet at the end of a previous dispensation when the entire world rejected your message and turned from God. The tares will separate from the wheat all on their own. Just make sure you stay wheat.

From the president of the American Family Association::

• It's also extremely problematic that Judge Walker is a practicing homosexual himself. He should have recused himself from this case, because his judgment is clearly compromised by his own sexual proclivity. The fundamental issue here is whether homosexual conduct, with all its physical and psychological risks [lol], should be promoted and endorsed by society. That's why the people and elected officials accountable to the people should be setting marriage policy, not a black-robed tyrant whose own lifestyle choices make it impossible to believe he could be impartial. His situation is no different than a judge who owns a porn studio being asked to rule on an anti-pornography statute. He'd have to recuse himself on conflict of interest grounds, and Judge Walker should have done that.

Yes, because only straight people should be allowed to decide the fates of gay people. Gay people can't be judges because they're not like us normies.

From Bishop Harry Jackson. Supporting gay rights makes you... racist?

• This is a travesty of justice. The majority of Californians -- and two-thirds of black voters in California -- have just had their core civil right to vote for marriage stripped from them by an openly gay federal judge who has misread history and the Constitution to impose his San Francisco views on the American people. The implicit comparison Judge Walker made between racism and marriage is particularly offensive to me and to all of us who remember the reality of Jim Crow.

And the best one of all, from MSNBC:

• Luke Otterstad, 24, of Sacramento, outside the courthouse with his fiance, Nadia Shayka, 22, wearing T-shirts that read "bride" and "groom": "I'm very upset. I feel like I don't live in America."

An America that recognizes equal rights for all of its citizens is not an America I want to live in.