Rainbow scare

Don't let the cold Midwestern winter get you down. If you're looking for some hot air, just talk to someone about gay marriage because someone's bound to be full of it.\nPolitical careers are coming to an end here! I'd like to think that if heads were to roll for either A) torture at Abu Ghraib or B) gay marriage, we would pick A. But no, the idea of treating homosexuals the same way as anyone else seems to be political suicide.\nWe have so many other issues that pose a greater threat to society. What happened to make same-sex unions trump everything else?\nIt started in the city by the bay. Mayor Gavin Newsom didn't do any favors by permitting gay weddings in San Francisco last year. He should have known that, as part of the executive branch of government, it is not his job to interpret the law. With marriage certificates for same-sex couples numbering in the thousands, he could not have picked a more flamboyant way to draw attention to gay rights.\nAfter an act like that, it was easy to make conservative Americans feel like cornered animals, and the GOP saw an opportunity to capitalize on it. Like Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon leading the hunt for commies, the Republicans blitzed the media with press conferences and speeches to create a rainbow scare.\nYou can make people afraid of anything if you flood the media with the right disinformation. Some conservatives have even said gay marriage would cause more children born out of wedlock -- because we all know that since homosexuals can't reproduce, they tend to trick heterosexuals into extraneous reproduction, steal the babies and raise them to be gay. Heck, they stole my baby once!\nThese fear tactics might sound like a farce, but they work. Even black churches, traditionally in the Democrats' camp, are now switching over to the Republicans' side. Last week in Los Angeles, more than 100 black ministers gathered at the Crenshaw Christian Center for a regional summit to build support for banning gay marriage.\nBut the issue of same-sex unions is one of equal rights for all people, a principle that black ministers have centered themselves around since the days of Martin Luther King Jr. For black churches to support this inequality is a direct contradiction of everything they once stood for.\nThese ministers are the latest to join the rest of religious America in falling for the smokescreen of the rainbow scare. They really believe gay marriage threatens to push their families' way of life to the brink of extinction and that they have to fight for their very survival.\nNever mind the fact that issues like divorce and teen pregnancy have a far greater impact on family lifestyle than gay marriage; religious America is so fixated on the fleck of sawdust in homosexuals' eyes, it refuses to acknowledge the plank in its own. I've got a memo from Jesus for you, America. It said something about the first stone: I think he wants you to put it down.\nLet's face it, Jesus would want everyone to clean up their own acts before they tried to decide how homosexuals can or can't live their lives. We have an attorney general who tried to help the president find a legal loophole for torturing prisoners in Iraq. Our rates for teen pregnancy and gun-related homicides are substantially higher than those of most developed nations. \nIn short, gay marriage wouldn't destroy our society's moral fabric any more than we already have.\nWhat we really need to do is stem this rainbow scare right now, before we see a House Un-Heterosexual Activities Committee and another era of blacklisting.