Yeas for Gays!

There was an article in the paper yesterday about a recent Republican rally held at Patriots Park. Senator Roy Ashburn, local politician/youth minister Chad Vegas (aka The Book Burner Dude) and several other prominent Republicans held the rally in support of the constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Now, the fact that a rally like this was held in Bakersfield is no surprise. What is surprising however is that the number of protestors who showed up superceded the number of supporters.

According to The Californian, “fewer than 20 supporters” attended while as many as 80 protestors were on hand. Senator Ashburn and the other speakers were visibly annoyed as they tried in vain to speak over the singing and shouting crowd. Dang! I wish I could have been there, I would have loved to have seen it. Vegas, in an attempt to be funny (I guess) commented that they were not trying to take away the right to marry by stating “It’s just with the opposite sex.” (Yuck, yuck – that’s a good one Chad.)

The pictures in the paper showed one of Ashburn and Vegas trying to stay cool and another one of the mob decked out with catchy signs. The slogans I liked the best were “I’m GAY and NICE!” and “Jesus would be ashamed of you.” Of course, the ever popular "Hate is not a family value" poster dominated the scene.

Now if all of this doesn’t seem crazy enough for ya, go ahead and take a seat, cuz it gets better. According to the article one of the speakers said that “America’s economy will collapse if gay marriage is allowed because the population will decrease and there won’t be enough people to pay taxes.” Let us all pause for a moment and try to wrap our minds around how completely asinine this logic is. After you have stopped spinning you might want to take another moment before reading this next quote. The Rev. Lou Sheldon of Anaheim, CA said that “Gay marriage laws in Scandinavia have caused a rise in wife beating because men have become bisexual, which makes them beat their wives.” Yes he did. He really said that.

Now, me being the concerned citizen that I am and worried about all the wives who will become beaten if this law doesn’t pass, called my best friend Flo who just happens to have a P.h.D. in Sociology. After she got me to calm down and stop crying she informed me that this statement, besides being illogical, stupid and scary it is also just plain WRONG! (Whew – that’s a relief.)

I’d be fascinated to find out exactly which homophobic scholarly journal the good Reverend is getting his facts from.

(This post is dedicated to Enrique. Run to me you hoochie girl! Hold me! jajajajaja!)