For those unaware of the context, there's recently been a huge growth on fundamentalist "christian" religious churches in Brazil. They have their own parliamentary representatives and push the hate speech agenda pretty hard - mainly against other religions, gay people and "communism".

In a recent episode, a 10-year old was attacked with stones for wearing typical Candomblé clothes (an afro-brazilian religion). They've also been asking the "flock" to not buy products from companies that advertise for a gay public, and communism in all its forms (some of the leaders consider the government giving money to poor people, be it through social programs or straight cash, "communist depravity").

This specific project gained a lot of steam after Facebook's pride celebration - all the rainbow pictures pushed some folks too hard...

Pretty crazy Twilight Zone/Black Mirror material.

I read about this in a piece on the concurrent rise in gaybashing. It's sad to see regressions like this.

I don't think these alternate social networks will ever displace Facebook, but instead become the preferred niches. Facebook becomes the bland Starbucks you can find everyone at, even if there's a trendier coffee shop a block away you'd rather go to most days.

Perhaps over time communities like this will lead to a restoration of the "long tail" of online communities. I've found myself less than comforted by the homogenization of communities that can result on one-size-fits-all places like Facebook or Twitter.

> I don't think these alternate social networks will ever displace Facebook

I think they could. The facebook model rules out certain kinds of very common social interaction. There are certain things you only say or share when you're pretty sure of some privacy (or otherwise drunk). I would argue that there's definitely a need for a network that enables those kinds of interactions even if the demand isn't obvious yet.

That being said, I'm not sure "Christian Facebook" encourages or supports those use cases. I'd like to see more discretion-oriented (end-to-end encryption, read-receipts, retracting sent messages, etc.) features on a service that aims to serve Christian use cases.

Also, there are probably many nuances and facets of socialization that have yet to be created, discovered, exaggerated, detailed, organized, etc. Just because most people limit themselves to the physical world of body language, sensory percepts, the electronic-intellectual world of thumbs up, upvotes and personalized walls of media subtypes; that doesn't mean that's the end to socialization.

I think there is a lot of potential for creativity to be expressed, to come up with new ways to communicate.

The surrealists did automatic drawing with one another, and some folks at Google combined vast quantities of depersonalized data and individuated constructions of layered learning, to create surrealistic like images.

If it's just solitary use cases, then we are in agreement. Some social networks remove entire interactions away from typical hubs like Facebook, such as in South Korea, where couples' social networks are popular places to share the gooey romantic talk that would annoy anyone else.

But if you want to reconnect with old friends or announce that you just got a book published or something, you'll still probably post to Facebook.

I agree. Facebook as the new 'white pages' makes a lot of sense.

Then again, I could see facebook being disrupted by a family of special-purpose tools and sites the meet all the same needs. It happened to newspapers when classifieds, opinion pieces, sports news, and various other use cases each went to different internet sites.

I just realized I don't even shudder at the quality of BBC's "journalism" anymore.

Phariseesbook

> Gay material is also banned from the social media platform.

I guess my gay religious friends aren't welcome there.

This was my first thought as well. Also, christian religions that openly accept homosexuals are banned? That seems more like this is for a subset of Christians and not all Christians.

Christians tend to be the most vocal critics of Christians. The diversity of beliefs among the various Christian sects is vast, and many of them are deeply incompatible with each other, both on a strictly logical "my belief X contradicts your belief Y" level and on the level of how people interact. It is impossible to have a platform like this which pleases all Christians, so it has to pick some subset to cater to.

No True Scotsman, etc.

I am not willing to condemn my 100% accepting religious friends because of that guy who shouts at traffic with a megaphone on the weekends.

Nor should you, my point was that any given Christian will have a pretty unique definition of what defines a Christian, who is or isn't "really" Christian, etc.

My Lutheran friends have claimed that Catholics aren't Christian; my Methodist ones have made the same claim about Lutherans; and while none of them have come out and said it, I'm sure there's at least a few who believe that 'practicing' gays can't be Christian either.

When is it ever about "all Christians"? The whole point of Christianity letting people read the Bible is that it became many-flavored. But you want everyone to be your kind of Christian? Well, how Christian of you. :P

Forming any group based on a shared trait is now unPC? A group is defined by those it excludes along with those it includes. You are criticizing a group of people for wanting to be with like-minded people.

PS. as an atheist I'm not welcome "there" either and I don't give a crap. Gay people don't give a crap either. But their flag is used by sophists to steer policy. And you are echoing those political efforts.

An interesting point, but it depends on the definition of the word.

I have an black friend who was said to be, "Not black enough." What does that even mean? Isn't there a fairly concrete definition of black? I get that it's the subculture that crops up around another definition of the word.

I mean go look at the definition. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Christian 7. a person who believes in Jesus Christ; adherent of Christianity.

Then we get to 8. a person who exemplifies in his or her life the teachings of Christ.

I'm using definition 7. not definition 8. Meaning the broad reaching, hey you think Jesus Christ did all that shit that happened in the Bible? OK cool you "pass". You are Christian.

Definition 8 is somewhat of a problem. Especially within the ranks of Christians. 8 really means, are you saved, baptized, Catechized, practicing, etc. in accordance with the dictates of our church. It's VERY exclusive.

Just an FYI if you use def 7 you don't exclude anyone who claims to be Christian, even Mormons who are most commonly excluded from Christianity by other Christians, for their belief in the Book of Mormon which is considered an expansion to the Bible.

How strict is their definition of Christian? Do you have to affirm the Athanasian Creed and indivisibility and coeternity of the Trinity as part of the signup process?

"thousands!"

Putting Perl and TempleOS together is slightly hilarious.

Please don't give the pageview for this bottom feeder level of "journalism".

Be fruitfull and multiply, and if civil war ensues thus, plausibel deny.

Heretic 4.2

there's thousands of us. thousands!

The article seems to be lacking a lot of context about several of the projects it addresses... I don't think it makes sense to namedrop TempleOS as the christian version of linux as much as a project that is very influenced by a particular mental illness.

quotes from the TempleOS charter:

* God said 640x480 16 color graphics is a covenant like circumcision.

* God said to use a single audio voice -- a single frequency with waveforms and, maybe, amplitude envelope.

(it's linked in the original, but just in case:

http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Doc/Charter.html

seems he thinks Jesus was a Commodore 64. I'm not into judging people's religions but I will say that's definitely an unusual interpretation of the relevant texts.)

I can't tell if that's a joke or a legitimately held belief. Reading the rest of the charter (and vaguely from memory), it seems like the developer believed God literally told him about this OS.

Also, the KJV-only perspective is misguided given the textual scholarship that renders KJV as somewhat outdated.

Are there good reasons to think that this is supposed to be serious? It all looks very tongue-in-cheek to me.

>Are there good reasons to thing that this is supposed to be serious?

Yes. The lone author is supposedly schizophrenic.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/gods-lonely-programmer

If this is all just a joke it's a very elaborate one.

Yeah, I can't wait for some of the more conservative Christians looking to find a "sin-free" operating system to dig around and start reading some of Terry's more... colorful writings.

> I can't wait for some of the more conservative Christians looking to find a "sin-free" operating system to dig around and start reading some of Terry's more... colorful writings.

Wait for what? That's more or less me and I've read some of his writings. He looks like a man who struggles with mental illness. What kind of cartoon characters are you imagining people like me behave like?

He tends to swear a fair amount, and go off on racist tangents. I realize that it's due to his mental illness, but I was just smiling at the disconnect between someone looking for a nice, sin-free operating system coming across a comment like "Fucken nXXXXr. I judge you, pig. I'm fucken Moses. Suck my mother fucken dick."

I'm really sorry if this comes across as making fun of someone's mental illness; that's not my goal.

> I'm really sorry if this comes across as making fun of someone's mental illness

On the contrary, I got that point, but it seemed like you expected some sort of Hollywood caricature of how conservative Christians behave. A mature Christian would not be surprised by contradiction or hypocrisy, especially if mental illness is involved. Being a good person is not a requirement to be a Christian. In fact, the people with the most obvious problems tend to be the most eager admit their failings and work on their issues. Christ actually had the harshest things to say to the self-righteous.

In other words, the Westboro fools are pretty much the opposite of how a Christian is taught to be. In fact, I'd be surprised if some of them don't have mental health issues of their own.

I encourage you to read up on Christian theology a bit more, then. And maybe make friends (or a better friends) out of more evangelicals so you can understand them a bit better.

I once worked for a company where due to a customer's religious sensitivities we had to change the name of a service from 'demon' to 'daemon' and remove an icon featuring a cartoonish devil.

No big deal, just amusing.

That's a common theme for some of the FreeBSD folks.

Superstitious Users and the FreeBSD Logo: http://halfblog.net/2011/12/04/daemon-worship/

And the HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3310063

Isn't "daemon" the traditional spelling for those kinds of services, anyway?

Sure. But I guess that was the joke.

> No big deal, just amusing.

Interestingly, there's a passage in the book of Romans about this sort of thing. That's pretty much the right attitude. The relationship with the person is more important than bickering over whether 'demon' is a big deal or not.

> I don't think it makes sense to namedrop TempleOS as the christian version of linux as much as a project that is very influenced by a particular mental illness.

Especially as a) there is at least one "Christian Linux" distro, and b) TempleOS has very, very little in common with linux. Furthermore, in intent, I think it was very much a "Temple Operating System" and not a suitable comparison to an extremely versatile computational platform.

Where was it namedropped as a "Christian version of Linux"? Or are you using Linux as a metonym for any free OS in general, in which case that's just wrong.

At least it's honest. You know exactly what it's all about.

Unlike what we have now where you are publicly shamed for your religious beliefs and the people doing the shaming not only deny it, but somehow think it's morally correct.

Some religions are genocidal (probably most of them, if they take their holy books literally). Aren't some political positions sufficiently horrible that it is morally correct to shame people for them? That such a political position is a religious belief should not change how we treat it.

Imagine Bob is a horrible anti-gay bigot.

What are our objectives? Changing Bob's mind? Protecting the victims of Bob's bigotry? Making sure Bob doesn't misuse (if it is misuse, it won't always be) our platform / software project / mail list to spread those bigoted views?

Shaming Bob doesn't seem to be the most effective way of doing that. If anything, shaming and ostrasizing may just mKe his views stronger.

I guess shaming does let people know that we strongly think that Bob is weong amd that the targets of Bob's bigotry are welcome on our platform / project / mailing list. But then a little rainbow banner would do that too.

To someone who believes in God you cannot choose your god anymore than you can change your race or sexual orientation.

There are clear lines to draw around justice issues like violations of human rights, suffrage, freedom of speech, etc.

But you're painting with a very broad brush if you think it's morally correct to persecute people for believing in a different (or no or any) God. I would even call it closed minded.

I wouldn't attack or persecute people just for believing in any god or none - only when, in the name of their beliefs, they want to harm others (usually, though by no means always, the weak and the minority). I think most antireligous folk would say the same.

Hm. Yet people change religion all the time. Claiming 'no true scotsman' isn't fair. That leaves, people choose God.

And we can't call it coincidence that people of one culture mostly choose the same God. Gotta be learned, right? So I'm not buying that line at all.

> Yet people change religion all the time.

And people always believe they have God down this time. Someone wouldn't say, "Yeah, I really had God figured out ten years ago but then I converted to East Southern Pentecostal Community Catholicism. That was a bad choice."

> That leaves, people choose God.

The way Christians look at it, God is revealed, not chosen. If you choose your own God, then your God tends to look suspiciously like an idealized version of yourself (or what you wish you were). In other words, to the extent you choose God, you probably have it wrong. That being said, you can't judge people for seeking earnestly.

> And we can't call it coincidence that people of one culture mostly choose the same God.

One culture? Which culture? We're talking about a Brazilian social network. Is that the same culture as the mountains of Kentucky or the streets of Rome?

To be clear, I'm arguing that people should be free to earnestly search for God (or confirm lack thereof) in their own way. Claiming people choose God presupposes He (or she or them) is already a mental construct.

Pentecostal Catholicism would make for some interesting services.

What if someone believes in a God who they think is telling them they need to go out and murder people, right now?

Shaming only works if you can convince the shamed that they are actually wrong instead of being persecuted.

The martyr complex is alive and quite well.

I'm talking about someone religious that may not agree with gay marriage because of their religious beliefs, but treats everyone equally (gay, straight, or trans).

They are bullied and tormented by other people in the community and on social media, and it's accepted If it wasn't accepted, the people doing the bullying would lose their jobs. But I have never seen it happen.

I have seen people lose their jobs for disagreeing with the gay marriage ruling...and I'm not even talking about using pejoratives or using any sort of the same bullying tactics.

I would like a world with true equality. Not just equality for the few.

This sort of behavior is not progressive. It's regressive. It's a digital version of mob mentality and is the very reason we have a democratic process with a court system and a judge/jury.

Emotion clouds judgement, intelligence, and facts. The politicians know this and use it to their full advantage to get you to vote for them and create an us vs. them mentality.

Until we change this behavior, there will never be peace.

> I'm talking about someone religious that may not agree with gay marriage because of their religious beliefs, but treats everyone equally (gay, straight, or trans).

Your "not agree with" is hiding a lot. If someone is trying to make it illegal for one group to marry (and legal for another group) then how is that treating everyone equally?

It's not treating everyone equally, which is why it is cognitive dissonance on full display. All of the religious arguments against gay marriage are fine and dandy for marriage within, and as defined by, that religion, but once they are extended to civil matters their arguments fall to pieces. The GP is arguing for this split/dual nature of "equality." To paraphrase: "I want to be free to criticize and make illegal the lifestyle choices of others, but I myself want to be free from repercussion and public criticism."

Good thing saner minds have prevailed on the particular topic of gay marriage in the US. Also, I would love to see any hard evidence there is, that someone making lucid and noninflammatory arguments against legalizing civil gay marriages was actually fired from any job.

Brendan Eich. He didn't even have to open his mouth.

Since these arguments are inherently over nits, a couple of points:

- He didn't have to open his mouth, since he had already opened his wallet. Money is a language of its own nature.

- Importantly, he wasn't fired because of what he did. He stepped down of his own accord.

- To say that there is wrong doing in Brendan Eich's case is to go full blown hypocrite: one cannot expect freedom from public backlash due to political donations. Especially when those political donations are ones that are restrictive and critical of the dignity and freedom of others. Yes, that he was forced to resign sucks...but admittedly, I can only muster a "too bad." Public people should expect public scrutiny.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat...

This is my big problem with the whole thing - how the left framed this issue. Instead of a debate between two conflicting but legitimate viewpoints, you framed it as one legitimate side and one completely illegitimate, hateful, bigoted, evil side.

There was absolutely no reason to do this - you were going to win anyway. The divisiveness does nothing for national unity. People on HN easily forget that about half the country isn't happy about this, and those people are going to be around for a long time.

Drawing comparisons between my arguments and the political spectrum at large does nothing for your Swiss cheese argument against Brendan Eich's treatment. Why shouldn't he be subject to public criticism for his public campaign donations? Don't want criticism? Don't donate to causes that are going to cause strife between you and your resident demographic.

I don't actually think that everyone that opposes civil recognition of gay marriage is "hateful, bigoted, and evil." I merely think they are short-sighted and often eerily reminiscent of 1960s era pro-Jim Crow rhetoric. Re-read your post and think "black people" and "Jim Crow" and then come back to me about "national unity". No rights are being removed from those that oppose gay marriage... the only blow to "national unity" is one where gay marriage is disallowed.

Resist change all you want, but for the foreseeable future, the Overton window isn't moving back to a place where disallowing gay marriage is going to be palatable.

EDIT: There are some arguments where "the other side" might not be worth it's weight. Gay marriage and acceptance of equal rights for LGBT people is one of them. See "False Balance" and "Argument to Moderation" on Wikipedia.

Why shouldn't he be treated that way? Because I'd like to think we live in a society full of reasonable adults that can say things like "I strongly disagree with this person's beliefs on issue X, but I otherwise can get along". But we don't, and I find it shameful and childish and potentially dangerous.

We don't live in such a society. Hence why "not supporting gay marriage" and "I am able to fully support people from all walks of life (e.g. all people are created equal)" are contradictory statements, full of cognitive dissonance. This is "shameful and childish and potentially dangerous" for someone who is trying to be the CEO of a company. The questions raised about his fitness for that role are fair ones. Considering his beliefs, I think he handled his ascendance with grace. [1] Frankly, I think he could have succeeded and supported the overall cause of Mozilla. Do I think what happened to him was unfair? No.

[1] https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/

Thanks, but no thanks. For one thing, your inference from individuals created equal to normative, dyadic special positive rights (marriage) is unsound. Dyadic (or polygamous -- why not?) rights are not individual rights. They do not attach to all pairs of individuals, and never did.

There's no cog-dis in my position under my definitions, which do not match your definitions. I'm a founder of Mozilla, which for over a decade admitted everyone, up to (me) co-founder or (again: me, but then Andreas Gal) CTO, or VP, or Distinguished Engineer level, all from various creeds or beliefs or "axiom" backgrounds -- so long as they left their baggage out of their Mozilla work.

That changed in the last few years. Now the culture-war dissidents are staying quiet, and living on borrowed time. This is not a matter of contradictions being punished on a logical basis, since there is no contradiction given their choice of axioms. It's about winners burning losers' cultural camps to the ground. In two word, consequentialism; totalitarianism.

Polygamous marriages change the core identity of marriage: that it is, as you say, a dyadic undertaking. That polygamous marriages might be legalized is a tenuous argument that is being spread up and down these forums. Sliding polygamous marriage in while the topic is about gay marriage is changing the subject at best, and dishonest at worst. Legalizing gay marriage is about equality, allowing polygamous marriages reinforces inequality between individuals. While we are at it, bestiality/pedophilia/etc. won't magically be next either for marriage: those acts are currently illegal because they create a dynamic of harm, as opposed to one of mutual support, between two individuals.

I would argue that the right to marry is not inherently a dyadic right. Before the latest law, certain people were categorically denied the sort of marriage they (as an individual) wanted because of a quality that they (as an individual) possessed and likely have no control over. Gay marriage changes nothing about the institution of marriage for any other person, and the administrative differences for the government are practically nil.

Accepting your definition of the "right to marry" as a "dyadic right", where do the basis for these sorts of rights come from, if not from the same source as the basis for "individual rights"? Where does the line between "all individuals are equal" and "these pairs of individuals cannot be considered the same as these other pairs of individuals" get drawn? How is the denial of marriage to an individual not a slight to the equality of that individual?

Lastly, I would venture to say that I am not a totalitarianist, nor a consequentialist. There is most definitely room for expression of contrasting opinions in the marketplace of ideas. I do apologize for the brashness above, but I fail to see what "culture" people like me are destroying when they are promoting equal application of rights. A culture whose identity is formed around restricting the abilities of others doesn't seem like much of a culture at all. (If it's being burned to the ground by criticism, it seems fair to say that that's a critical part of its identity.) To play the same sort of game that the polygamist argument relies on: these arguments sound an awful lot like the arguments for Jim Crow laws and against interracial marriage.

I wish you the best and apologies for any personal vitriol that my posts may seem to contain.

Too many notes - or words, to borrow from the Emperor in "Amadeus".

You assume dyadic marriage without stating the premise that justifies state regulation of dyads and prohibition of three or more. Self-expression is a nonsensical reason and in any case no grounds for state licensure. Plural marriage has been normative in certain times and places, and still is here and there.

When it comes to polygamy, you seem only too happy to restrict the asserted positive rights of others. I shall refrain from screeching "bigot!" or trying to get you fired.

Special-pleading from unstated and unjustified assumptions gets us nowhere. Post-Obergefell America must define the common good of marriage clearly to exclude or admit polygamy. I see no reason why, given self-expression and ersatz-dignity arguments used by the majority, three or more should be outlawed.

The alternative is to end state regulation of marriage, and deal with normal consequences such as offspring and estate succession (not to mention hospital and jail visitation, which should not have been yoked to marriage in the first place) via contract law.

(I'm not taking your anti-SSM=anti-miscegenation pattern matching bait - see Jonathan Rauch here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/24/opposing-ga... - and yes, I'm aware of Rauch's work in full, no need to cite his lame attempt to draw a line in the sand against polygamy. As for what camps might be burned to the ground: florists, bakers, colleges, the list grows - open your eyes.)

I personally don't care whether plural marriage is legal or illegal. Seeing as the looming threat of plural marriage appears to be your strongest argument against gay marriage and state regulation of marriage as a whole, really makes me think you have no good arguments outside of ones that justify your personal beliefs.

My "unstated and unjustified assumptions" amount to the current state of affairs in the West: governments regulate marriage, marriage regulation currently restricts this covenant to pairs, and there is a non-negligible amount of people that are being denied this covenant because of natural qualities that they (likely) cannot change. Point blank: is this discrimination? I don't care about what implications it has for plural marriage, I am talking strictly about SSM.

And, for all your talk about premises, justifications and strict logic, you're fantastically excluding the middle ground, jumping to "no regulation of marriage," thus ignoring reality to play consequentialist. The state regulates marriage at the moment, so let's operate within that ballpark, no? Maybe one day we can live in a "paradise" where contracts are the only things binding us to one another, but until that day...

If you can handwave away the pattern matching for interracial marriage, then it's no less fair to handwave away the polygamist argument.

How will the cultures of "florists, bakers, colleges" burn to the ground? What the hell does that have to do with gay marriage being legalized? We are obviously coming from a different set of beliefs... if I could "open my eyes" to see what horrors gay marriage will bring, we wouldn't being having this discussion.

I'm not arguing against SSM here, I'm arguing against your just-so story about magical marriage of only ever dyads. You have not made a single clear statement of the common good of marriage, just "it's that way [dyadic] so it has to be that way."

You do realize this argument works against SSM, as well as against polygamy, right?

Being cagey or agnostic about the next step after SSM ("mmmaybe I do support polygamy, but one step at a time!") does not answer the question: why should the state regulate marriage, to what ends?

If your eyes are still closed, read @JVLast's piece (and no ad hominem arguments against him or TWS, which I do not endorse in general). He is not the only one to point out the shifting goal posts and bad-faith argumentation (in the style of Alinsky, or Marx).

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/you-will-be-assimilat...

Masha Gesson among many others is at least honest about what's going on in this multi-stage operation. I appreciate honest radicals. Just-so stories and assertions, not so much.

Fair point. I had never heard of the concept of "just-so stories." Discarding everything and creating a new framework from the ground-up would be great, and perhaps the best way of doing things. It appears that "just-so stories" are the quick retort and dismissal for arguments from evolution and nature. ("Humans, great apes, etc. naturally form bond pairs" statements and the like.) Despite this, I think that we both accept that the state should regulate contract agreements for the benefit of both parties involved (e.g. ensuring enforcement, reducing exploitative contracts, unless you go full-on anarcho-capitalist). If we want to call a type of contract, between two parties, for a specific purpose (financial interdependence, possibly rearing children, etc.), a certain "m-word," then why is it absurd for the state to regulate this special type of contract, but not any other contract? The state regulating contracts has benefits (that I think we both accept), the state regulating marriage shares many of those same common goods, such as ensuring fulfillment, ensuring an absence of duress, and the like.

As for the question of "why dyadic?" but not poly... the complexities built into poly marriage are intrinsically different than one-one marriage. Our current legal system isn't ready to handle poly marriage, to bite the bullet that you've offered me. It is hard to separate out the impacts of polygamy from other cultural impacts, but some speculate that polygamy has some unique negative impacts on childrearing. [1]

I would still ask that my question from above be answered. Given our current frameworks and regulations, was the denial of the civil acknowledgement of SSM a form of discrimination?

My flippant attitude in past comments notwithstanding, I am terrified at the backlash that you continue to receive. Frankly, I didn't realize how all-pervasive it was, nor do I ever personally feel the need to get on Twitter to insult people (a la your link) or call for a third party's head (a la your personal story). Criticism and questioning for fitness of a particular role is one thing, but public evisceration is another. I can acknowledge and accept a opposing position whereby one seeks to abolish the civil institution of marriage altogether, for gay, straight, whatever, alike, which is what I'm coming to understand your position to be. But, I do find it hard to fathom how one can decide that "today's line" gets drawn before gay marriage, while also somehow respecting and acting fairly towards gay people in their day-to-day lives (which is where I thought your beliefs laid before this exchange). My sympathy ends there. Personally, I won't be one to crusade for the personal decimation that you seem to think I enjoy. I do believe that creating a culture whereby one is building up "pseudo-reasons" against gay marriage, like talking about looming bestiality and pedophilia, is as despicable as those that are using their sexuality to create misery for others. (Like the culturally vindictive lesbian woman in your article. By no means am I a prude: her path to children doesn't make me cringe, but her quote-on-quoted attitude does.)

Implicit self-righteousness regarding illumination aside, I break the TWS article into a couple of mish-mashes of fearmongering, mixed with some valid points about malicious intent amongst specific members of the SSM/LGBT movement:

- Statistics that attempt to minimize the weight that is, or should be, given to the "homosexual agenda," as this article would imply that there's such a coherent and unified front, by the mere fraction of LGQ people in the population. Civil rights are civil rights, no matter how great or small the magnitude.

- Statistics and quotes that attempt to criticize the way of life of LGQ people by implying that there is something wrong with less-than-monogamous relationships while married.

- Highlighting questionable behaviors and attitudes co-opted by people who also happen to be LGQ (people using impregnation as a tool of retribution are idiots regardless of orientation)

- Some really outright fearmongering about state interference in direct religious ceremonies. (Requiring that religiously affiliated employers give out birth control is pretty sane, thinking that somehow the state will turn to mandating that priests must marry gay people in a church/synagogue/etc. is not sane. What might be sane is to say that all marriage license clerks, regardless of religious affiliation, must adhere to the federal law. That's not a hindrance to whatever a particular religion's beliefs are.)

- Highlighting particular cases of activists that are pushing the cultural envelope for the definition of the "m-word". I don't understand the need for this here... the author doesn't exactly state why this person is doing a bad thing, but merely is preaching to a choir that must already think 3+ marriages are distasteful.

- The entire last page is one big "begging the question"...

The article doesn't answer what "culture" will explicitly be destroyed by the legalization of gay marriage. It speculates that cultural change may abound and be desired by the LGBT movement. The article is hypocritical in that it is seeking a "live-and-let-live" approach to be taken by LGBT supporters ("let the Catholic Charities adopt out to whomever they want"), while at the same time implying that LGBT people shouldn't be allowed to marry one another ("let two people get married if they want to get married"). There is bad faith on part of some of LGBT activists; some want far more than equality. Let's not kid ourselves though, bad faith on the part of some LGBT activists is no excuse for not working within the pre-existing legal and cultural frameworks that the West has, and striving for equality under those frameworks.

This is perhaps the biggest whopper of all: "Support for traditional marriage stems from many sources, including respect for natural law and the prudential concern that holding any line will become impossible once the core definition of marriage is tampered with." What is "traditional marriage"? What is "the core definition?" For this articles audience, presumably the "core definition" is that it's a man and a woman. These are the exact same arguments that you are criticizing me for, and they are a shift of the goal posts. How can one argue for the legalization of anything, if all one wants to do is point to this line that we supposedly must maintain? It's not fair to have to argue against a slippery slope.

[1] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1020925123016

Perl is also the 'duct tape of the internet', just like the Church has been to modern society for a millenium.