Silver Lining in a Dark Wake

Gay marriage has failed here in my home state of Maine, and I grope for a silver lining in the wake of a dark debacle of bigotry. This sad lapse underscores the danger of a group whose minds are straitjacketed by a vulgar version of a narrow interpretation of a single faith.

Somehow, despite all reasonable evidence, the adamant flocks cling to their notion of God as a heterosexual Father who will vengefully burn gays in hellfire--and anyone else who doesn’t believe and obey HIM.

How to engage with people like this? As long as they stay hermetically sealed in their unassailable dogma, thick-headed as burls, they will drag us all down. They are muscle-brained oxen in human form, and just as readily put in a yoke by whip-tongued preachers.

Their blind arrogance, adrift from the solid ground of justification, is perhaps the greatest threat to humanity’s survival. Fanatics, at the heart, are creatures of intense fear, and their fear leads them to hurt, condemn, oppress and make war against anyone who is a threat; that is, anyone who isn’t kneeling next to them in obeisance to illusion.

They even embrace the “triumph” that the entire world will and should incinerate, preferably in their lifetime. Armageddon is good. They kneel down and beg for this horrible ultimate punishment. It means that Jesus is coming to whisk them to their precious heaven, while the rest of us, the heathens--gay, lesbian, bi and straight--Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Daoist, Jainist, Liberal Christian, atheist, agnostic--fry in an eternal oven.

Secretly, I suspect, many of them are happy about the torture of everyone outside the clique. We deserve it, those of us who refuse to lay down our philosophy and join in the irrational reverence of the God of Bronze Age goat herders. Verily, we have earned our reward, those of us who think that partaking of the Tree of Knowledge is a good thing, as opposed to a damning sin.

Yes, they have their victory today, by a 4% margin. But it could be worse. At least we were not voting whether black people should be slaves.

How sad it must have been for antebellum abolitionists, incessantly fighting, always losing to sick denial; and having to look each new day at humans chained up, flogged to ribbons, degraded and branded, stuffed into ships shoulder to shoulder, crammed in like abused chattel.

Yes, it could be worse. But it still needs to get better.

Marc Mutty and the Catholic Diocese of Portland should be particularly ashamed. They embody the anchor of ignorance.

However, the following passage from today's Bangor Daily News is very disturbing, and from the pro-gay-marriage side:

In a defiant speech to several hundred lingering supporters, No on 1 campaign manager Jesse Connolly pledged that his side “will not quit until we know where every single one of these votes lives.” ("Gay Marriage Repealed in Maine")

Connolly, justifiably upset, makes a stupid threat here, or what could be so interpreted. Although I'm liberal through and through, I can't condone this sort of invidious remark. Connolly should apologize to the Yes on 1 Campaign forthwith.

OWL