Yes, but that Jesus fellow is apparently coming back real soon to rapture the True Christians™ away. So, there’s that to look forward to.

As for Focus doing layoffs. Maybe this is an approach we haven’t thought of? Run them out of business!

Brian – I was addicted to fivethirtyeight during the run up to the election. I want to take that man to Vegas with me…

Also, you may have heard about boycotts. Since the list of pro- and against-prop 8 contributors are public, many businesses have been exposed as bigots and are being boycotted, and some people have lost their jobs (the artistic director of the California Music Theatre in Sacramento was forced to resign after it was revealed he donated $1,000 to the yes on 8 campaign, even though “he loves his lesbian sister,” and a traditional gay restaurant and hangout in West Hollywood, El Coyote, is being boycotted and picketed after it was found out that its co-owner and manager had donated $100 to yes on 8 )

Well, the mormons and the religious right are mighty pissed and they’re being quite vocal about it. Apparently, they don’t think it’s fair that people who believe in fairness should be able to choose not to patronize these businesses, and “the gays” are the ones being intolerant and bigoted.

Of course, they must be expecting that we forgot all about how THEY have been threatening boycotts of businesses that contributed to no on 8, just as they’ve been for years launching mostly unsuccessful boycotts of large companies (Disney, Ford…) whenever they would inaugurate some outlandish gay-agenda policy such as domestic partnership, a blatant attack on the very fabric of society.

I think I agree with you about Prop 8 and the minority vote. Nate Silver, who runs fivethirtyeight.com and has been the most accurate of the pollsters, recently said this:

But the notion that Prop 8 passed because of the Obama turnout surge is silly. Exit polls suggest that first-time voters — the vast majority of whom were driven to turn out by Obama (he won 83 percent [!] of their votes) — voted against Prop 8 by a 62–38 margin. More experienced voters voted for the measure 56–44, however, providing for its passage.

Now, it’s true that if new voters had voted against Prop 8 at the same rates that they voted for Obama, the measure probably would have failed. But that does not mean that the new voters were harmful on balance — they were helpful on balance. If California’s electorate had been the same as it was in 2004, Prop 8 would have passed by a wider margin.

All of which leads me to the (tentative) conclusion that age really was the big line in the sand as far as passage of this abomination was concerned. I don’t discount the pervasiveness of fear and ignorance in any community, no matter what their history might be, especially when the fears are being propagated by the biggest scam artists in human history – churches. But it really does seem as if, a generation from now, this matter will be resolved once and for all.

I would also like to echo Sarah’s sentiment. To hell with fundies. If one can truly be intolerant of intolerance, then I’ve managed to square that circle. I have always subscribed to the axiom that says your freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose. Well, fundies, you can believe any crazy-ass shit you and your fellow rubes like, and its no big deal to me. But you can’t be satisfied with that, can you? Fucksticks like Tony Perkins will not rest until they’ve succeeded in propping themselves up in convenient positions of power and influence by whipping up phantom fears and ignorant bigotries so easily riled in the minds of the credulous sheep who listen to them. They know nothing of love or compassion, for all of their pious, hypocritical blathering about morality and values. They are most assuredly not doing unto others as they would have others do unto themselves. Whenever it comes to religious idiots railing about the moral failings of others, I have always found the “he who smelt it dealt it” principle to be richly applicable as the inevitable hypocritical revelation about a preacher caught tea-bagging a male prostitute comes to light.

One can only hope that as older members of our population die off, their ignorance dies with them, and when we are the grumpy curmudgeons uncomfortable with something outside our life experience, we have the courage to accept it with open minds and open hearts.

I have to agree with Sarah, that I am also bigoted when it comes to religions that are “socially acceptable” but are cultish in their ways. Mormonism, Scientology, JW, and then radicals like FLDS and the Westboro Baptist Church. Obviously there are others, but I figured I’d just start with that.

I think this country is at a crossroads, and is too scared to choose a path. We respect the freedom of religion, but we also need to re-establish the separation of church and state. It seems that this has become a blurred line. We need to achieve a true separation of church and state, as far as funding (looking in your direction, faith-based initiatives). We’re never going to get fundie pastors to stop preaching the word of the Republican Party on Sundays but we owe it to ourselves to work to stop the government from preaching the word of God with taxpayer money.

Make no mistake, we have to work hard and wage an information campaign to fight the indoctrination. But, I think this nation will eventually become more sane. It’s happened throughout history. We start with bigotry, but then the next generation decides it’s no big deal and we need to fix it. Then there’s some backlash (religious or otherwise). Then the bigoted assholes die off and we mature a bit as a nation.

I can’t wait for these conservative, religious, fuckwit, asshole old folks to die off so we can get back to human rights as a priority.

I’m counting on the baby boomers to remember their youths and their voracious appetite for freedom and “free love” and help us young’uns enact legislation to protect those values.

You know what the difference between me and the LDS church is? I would never use my scorn as a springboard to take away the rights of Mormons, then hide behind lame excuses like “protecting children” or “traditional Christianity”.

Either way, I still thinking blaming the voter is a bad idea on so many levels. We need to reach out to them. There was a time they thought prop 8 was bad (based on polling data), so I would think they could be swayed back by putting their fears to rest without blaming them for “voting wrong.”

It’s the same way that Obama reached out to W voters through an information campaign instead of telling them they are dumb for voting for him twice.