Tom Toles for March 19, 2013

Only about 2% of voters even care about pushing for homosexuals to get married and half of those are cartoonists.

It must be frightening to see ones bigotry become a thing of the past.

Tom draws a great elephant. (IMHO)

Saywhat: My opinion also.Churches, especially conservative ones, cry crocodile tears about “government interference”, yet continue to have their ministers sign off on civil documents for marriage. Let’s call them ALL civil unions, OFFICIALLY, and let churches call it “marriage”!

BTW: Congrats to Senator Portman. I know this was a hard personal decision. Unfortunately, “gay” is not usually an obviously visible minority.

Yes. The Republicans are trying to figure out how to get the votes of their missing demographic groups — without changing a single policy.

No law has been found requiring couples to get a marriage license in the first place. If two people wish to start a relationship, what is there to stop them? The statist thinking has gotten so pervasive in society now people think relationships are not based on commitment, trust, partnership, but rather if they have a piece of paper signed by some bureaucrat.

A well done and well thought out cartoon. Good job.

Divorce lawyers love ALL marriages; that’s from where their incomes derive. Duh!

81 percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 29 support same sex unions, but support dips to 44 percent among those 65 and older.“There is something like an emerging consensus,” conservative George Will recently said. “Quite literally, the opposition to gay marriage is dying. It’s old people.”

While we’re generally on the topic, it seems that Michelle Shocked has gone off the deep end about teh gays:http://tinyurl.com/btvhb22Profoundly sad, and whatta way to ruin a career.

Okay Sodomite Posters,go back through recorded history of governments on this earth, and make up your List of nations that Legalized Sodomy!(it will be a very Short List)Now Morality is being labelled “bigotry”….and God is keeping count. God created Man and God set the rules for our way of life in order to enjoy God’s blessings of health and sanity and sometimes even wisdom, along with moral love for family and spouses and children and for country and for God’s representatives giving us God’s words and will and warnings.Sodom was a Warning. Disobedience is not moral and does not improve individuals or nations. Civil laws should be made on the Foundation of God’s revealed Law in the Bible.Nations that do that have been blessed by God….read history.Satan, the Devil, Lucifer, by whatever name you use…is the inspiration for using civil laws to do the Devil’s wicked works.This will be true until God ends mankind’s power to ruleanywhere on earth….sooner than most people think.We obey self and Satan or We obey God who Loves us and offers us eternal life when we trust in God’s only Saviour, His Son, Jesus Christ. God bless posters with true wisdom.

edinbaltimore said….“conservative churches cry crocodile tears…and sign off on civil documents for marriage…”-ed….Romans chapter 13 gives God’s basis for churches expecting civil laws and rulers to heed God’s principles for laws…..in the USA more than any other nation, we have the foundation of government based directly on the principles God’s Bible teaches. Of course we Christians expect this government to respect moral and biblical principles in all the civil laws, and particularly laws for marriage…an institution set up by God in the garden of Eden with His marriage of Adam and Eve. That is the model for moral marriage.

58% of Americans now favor same sex marriage. In bold response, GOP is now willing to accept their votes, ‘So long as they don’t expect nothing for it.’

How about two consenting adults have marriage, and let the church call it a relgiously sanctified union?

Not everyone is in a church, even aethiests are “married”.

Jesus did say “Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and to God that which is God’s”. So, churches SHOULD pay taxes as part of society. As to marriage, except for small (at the time) religious groups, marriage was a means to solemnify in the eyes of the “Church”, and therefore the world, the union of two monarchies and other lords/ladies for secular purposes. This later became a means for the wealthy merchant class to extend their base. The peasants/serfs/etc. did not usually marry, but lived together, hence the term “common law” marriage, a relationship, while not blessed by the “Church”, was recognized as legal by the state. If the Catholic Church had not been the pre-eminent power in Europe then “marriage” as such would not dominate today. If the Crusades had totally backfired, and Muslims captured Rome, we would be complaining about not having monogamy. (If we would even have a way to complain!"

I notice Disgusted quoted Romans. When did Paul become the founder of Christianity? Otherwise we would all be Paulists, or maybe Levites.

Robert Landers: In most of the world, marriage must be the result of a ceremony by the state. Religious services are optional and duplicates. Even in the US, religious services end with “by the power invested in me by the state of …” not religious authority at all. That part is already settled law. The only remaining issue is one of equal justice under law which cannot occur unless the law is just and its administration and enforcement is equal.

Though anecdotal . . . my impression of ‘the youth’ on this matter is that they are neither ‘pro’ nor ‘anti’ same-sex marriage . . . so much as apathetic. Doesn’t register. Elders arguing about it is to them like a dog down the street always barking at birds. Irrelevant background noise.

especially gay divorce lawyers

For those arguing that the US Constitution is Biblically based, all I can say is if that was the case, the US would be a theocratic monarchy instead of a democratic republic.The nations that followed the Hebrew God were all monarchies, the rulers anointed by God and not chosen by the people. For centuries, monarchs used divine right to claim absolute power and to deny their citizens any political say.The idea of a democratic republic comes from pagan European societies of Greece and Rome. Washinton was called the Cincinnatus of America, a Roman ruler who lived 500 years before Jesus was born, not the Moses or David of America.

lol! I love graphs and charts, but I’m on a campaign to get people to resize them!You should add a:width=“320”or whatever width in pixels you want, these GoComics divs are about 360 wide. The code should look like below – remove the one space after the first < and the one before the last >< img src=“http://www.statista.com/graphic/1/226171/views-on-gay-rights-by-age-groups-in-the-us.jpg” width=“380” >and it will come out as:

But to respond, I think I should have clarified. My impression of the ‘youth’ opinion on this, is that they accept same-sex relationships as ordinary. My (albeit limited) experience with the ‘youth’ is that they don’t see what the fuss is about.

Well done TT.

Here in San Francisco, one of the morning radio guys (gay, but incidentally; the station is “gay-friendly” but not “gay radio”) was wondering where all the straight people who actively support marriage equality were 10 years ago. The generational shift is part of it, of course, but not all of it.

As I look back, I recall the attitude of (many) of those who vocally support it only now was “I don’t think gay marriage should be illegal, and some day it’ll be legal, but probably no time soon.” One newspaper columnist wrote (only about 7 years or so ago) “I don’t expect to see it in my lifetime.”

But then, of course, it started happening. Somebody PUSHED the issue. I give credit to then-S.F. Mayor Gavin Newsome, who just threw open the doors and started performing same-sex marriages, because HE believed he could do so under California law. Maybe he was right and maybe he was wrong (even if Prop. 8 is ultimately upheld, those marriages he performed are still legal; Prop. 8 said NOTHING about what to do with them), but it shifted the logjam.

Newsome caught a lot of flak even from SUPPORTERS of marriage equality for doing this at the time, because he was “moving too fast” and making it a hot-button issue. But if he hadn’t, we might (would probably) still be debating whether we SHOULD change the laws, rather than actually getting them changed.

“Perfect. Except now you can not read the numbers or the legend any more.”Ok, how about this? Chart is clickable!click to expand

I didn’t want you to delete yours! I was just being finicky!I like charts, because sometimes a picture is worth a hundred words . . . as your chart is . . .

Did a gay couple break into your house and steal your marriage certificate?

That isn’t even as good as “separate, but equal.”

To an Unknown God:

Acts 17:22-31 (NIV):

22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

For a different perspective on our Christian theology and “myths”, read The Sins of Scripture by retired Episcopal Archbishop Spong.