Homosexuality is no threat to Liberty - Big Government is.

Is homosexuality a threat to liberty, as Bryan Fischer declared at the Values Voter Summit on Saturday?

No.

When the U.S. Supreme Court declared sodomy laws unconstitutional in Lawrence v Texas, it was a great advance for liberty. When people like Fischer, Sally Kern and Peter LaBarbera say that homosexuality as such is a threat to freedom, people just roll their eyes. Yes, you could say that some homosexuals advocate some things that infringe some people's freedoms, just as you could say the same thing about all too many other people these days, including religious conservatives. That doesn't make homosexuality a threat to liberty any more than being a Christian is a threat to liberty - even though some Christians do advocate infringing some people's rights for religious reasons. And that's true not just on the religious right, but also on the religious left.

I don't support Mitt Romney, but I do thank him for what he said about Fischer at the Summit. And I find it very interesting that a gathering of social conservatives picked Ron Paul in their straw poll for president over someone more obviously representative of their social goals, such as Rick Santorum. I certainly don't think the formerly Libertarian Paul could be counted on to support Fischer's views regarding homosexuality.

I personally find it unconscionable that people such as Kern, Fischer and LaBarbera continue to flog these straw men when it is so obvious that the number one threat to freedom today is a government that is out of control and too big at all levels. And I'm not just saying that because I'm Gay. It is clear to me that these people see a smaller government restricted to protecting individual rights as a threat to their power to impose their religious agenda by means of government force.

And I can and do condemn them for that.

The Morality of Steve Jobs

If you think you're going to be upset by this, don't read it. I, like many of you, think that what Westboro Baptist does is ghastly. But when I read that Margie Phelps said that Westboro was going to picket Jobs' funeral because he "served himself, not God", I thought she had summed up perfectly the thing that unites all those who are opposed to genuine human progress and the thing that makes it possible: the individual human mind, which functions by means of reason and a code that upholds the value of the individual's own life.