I know what my family is worth.

Some time back I presented you with Reverend Bob Larson and his $9.95 online demon test:

Taking the Demon Test® may be the most important spiritual decision you make. This Test is the result of more than 30 years of research and thousands of hours in personal ministry with troubled souls. Through this [...]]]>

Get back, Mr. Demon!

Some time back I presented you with Reverend Bob Larson and his $9.95 online demon test:

Taking the Demon Test® may be the most important spiritual decision you make. This Test is the result of more than 30 years of research and thousands of hours in personal ministry with troubled souls. Through this vast experience we have been able to design this test so that we may quickly determine an individual’s spiritual condition.

I promised if I could get just one of you to sponsor me in the next AIDS/LifeCycle for $10 (or more), I would take the Demon Test® and report back on it.

So here’s the result: I don’t have a demon. Seriously. Rob Tisinai, confirmed homosexual, gay blogger, not a Believer an any conventional sort of diety, one of the officially designated “homomafioso of Queer, Incorporated who oversee the image of Faggotry love.” And I don’t have a demon.

The test, obviously, is a fraud. Also, it shows how sadly mundane the Rev. Larson is. You can see a screenshot of the questions here, but a bunch of them sound like they come out of a standard psychological exam:

1)  Do you sometimes exhibit uncontrollable outbursts of anger or violence?

7)  Have ever attempted or contemplated suicide?

Others are more cliche:

2)  Have you experimented with two or more forms of the occult?

13) Have you asked Satan to take your life in exchange for something?

And a few are just funny:

6)  Do you commit immoral or illegal acts, contrary to your customary values?

See it only counts if they’re contrary to your customary values. But If your values usually tend toward the immoral and illegal, then apparently you’re fine.

I answered the questions honestly and came back at “low risk for demonic oppression/possession.” I experimented a bit, and realized that to get a high-risk diagnosis, I’d have to be so effed-up that I wouldn’t be capable of clicking a mouse. I began to suspect the test is rigged to reassure people that they’re okay. Where’s the angle in that? I wondered. But if the best advertising is word-of-mouth, then you might want to let people brag: I don’t have a demon; the test told me so. I’m not sure about you. And that’s when I realized:

This test was written by a demon.

Perhaps I’m too much under the influence of slacktivist and C.S. Lewis, but I think one of the best strategies for ruining a soul and sending it to Hell would be to make a person smugly secure of their own salvation. Especially if you’re pushing them into a hateful and intolerant attitude. And here the trifecta: Especially if their hateful and intolerant attitude is the very thing makes them smugly secure of their salvation.

Larson’s test isn’t really hateful, but smug security does appear to be its goal. So I wondered: What would a real demon test look like, one that tried to expose the damnation strategy I outlined above? Here’s what I came up with:

• Do you focus your outrage on sins that don’t tempt you?

• Does condemning others enhance your feeling of virtue?

• Do you call opponents liars when they merely are wrong?

• Do you more quickly credit stories of evil than of good in those you don’t like?

• Do you condemn whole populations for what a few members do?

• Do you casually harm others in the name of God’s love?

• Do you treasure moral preeminence over moral humility?

• Do you identify the flaws of human nature with the character of your enemy, instead of seeing them as common to us all?

• Do you take delicious and gluttonous pride in chastity and self-denial?

• Do you believe in a flawed and fallen human condition while claiming certainty in your moral beliefs?

• Do you feel more ire than compassion at the failings of others?

If you answered yes to a few of those questions, then you may have a demon. If you answered no to all of those questions, then you certainly have a demon. It’s better to know your demons and wrestle them than to pay $10 for assurance they aren’t there.

Which takes me back to where I started. If you like my version of the Demon Test better, then please help support AIDS research and prevention by donating $10 — or 100, or 1000, or even just 1 — to my AIDS/LifeCycle effort. It’s an extraordinary event, a week of 2000 regular people bicycling 540 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles, in a huge tented community of love and support.

And I ought to admit one selfish thing: I spend a lot of time blogging in a state of high moral dudgeon, but I’m a better man the week of the LifeCycle than any other week of the year, and writing this test has only fortified my grasp of how much a guy like me needs experiences like that.

In states where same-sex couples have been allowed to marry, what harm has been brought to individuals or society at large?

I already knocked apart a portion of her answer here. Now I’d like to deal with this bit:

I think we’re in the early stages of seeing my primary [...]]]> Maggie Gallagher, founder of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), has answered the question:

In states where same-sex couples have been allowed to marry, what harm has been brought to individuals or society at large?

I already knocked apart a portion of her answer here. Now I’d like to deal with this bit:

I think we’re in the early stages of seeing my primary concern, which is a transformation of the public understanding of marriage and the separation of it from its roots in the natural family…Gay marriage is not just adding a couple of people onto an existing institution. It requires re-norming the whole institution and making it serve new purposes, instead of its classic purpose across time and culture and history, which is to bring together male and female so children have a mom and a dad.

In other words, same-sex marriage will obscure the purpose of marriage. She hits this theme a lot, and I’ve previously pointed out the problems that arise when you talk about the purpose of marriage. So now let me hit something else — let me point out that her answer suggests this isn’t about marriage at all. It’s about gays.

See, in 2009 over 110,000 women aged 55 and older got married. That accounted for 5.1% of all marriages that year. The birth rate of women in this group is so small that the Census Bureau and the CDC don’t even report it. For these women, “the” purpose of marriage is not procreation, not about bringing together moms and dads. And by the way, when women in this group do conceive, it’s generally through an egg donor, so even that is contrary to Maggie’s repugnant, repetitive rhetoric about marriage uniting children with “their own mother and father” (that is, repugnant to adoptive parents, at least, who apparently cannot count their children as “their own”).

Now, that 5.1% figure is a bit higher than the 4.1% of adults willing to tell the government they’re gay or bisexual (which itself is different from the fraction who actually are gay or bisexual, but we’re concerned here with people willing to go on the record, as marriage requires).

So this is what Maggie needs to resolve:  We’ve got two groups, both of whom wish to marry, neither of whom can conceive on their own. According to Maggie that’s a bad combination. Yet she’s willing to let them marry as long as they’re not same-sex couples. At this point it takes some real tap dancing to avoid the idea that it’s really just all about gays.

Still, I invite Maggie to explain.

A preemptory note: Our opponents have two common responses to this:

• It would be a terrible invasion of privacy to investigate the fertility of an opposite-sex couple before granting a marriage license! If you hear this, then ask: “So if we could somehow know their fertility, you’d be fine with denying them marriage?” You’ll likely get back something about not wanting to deal in hypotheticals (which are entirely within the realm of possibility!), and that means they’re not willing to follow their reasoning to its logical conclusion.

• We don’t define laws according to the exceptions. In other words, opposite-sex infertile couples are merely “exceptions” that the law can’t be bothered to address. To begin with, what a dismissive insult! Can you imagine telling a heartbroken couple who has struggled and failed to conceive: We would take away your marriage rights but we simply can’t be bothered. Further, it’s not true; the law carves out exceptions constantly — consider killing as murder vs. self-defense. But most of all, if we don’t base laws on exceptions, then why do our opponents spend millions trying to rob one small exception — one small group of couples — of their marriage rights simply because they cannot conceive on their own?

So be ready for those responses. You’re likely to hear them, and they’re easy to deal with.

Here’s another way of seeing how ridicu-ludicrous Maggie’s statement is. She warns us away from making marriage “serve new purposes.” Presumably she means something other than just uniting two people of the same sex — something more than “just adding a couple of people onto an existing institution.” No, Maggie’s new purposes consist of that which goes beyond marriage’s “classic purpose…which is to bring together male and female so children have a mom and a dad.”

Do you believe that? If so, then imagine this conversation between Maggie and a new NOM intern:

Intern:  Hey Maggie, get this: in 2009, more than 30,000 women aged 65 and older got married.

Maggie:  No, that can’t be. That’s ridiculous. I should fire you.

Intern:  Fire — wait — what?

Maggie:   You’re trying to fool me into believing that 30,000 elderly women thought they could procreate!

Intern:  But I didn’t — wait — what?

Maggie:  Because that’s the only reason they would marry.

Intern:  The only — wait — what?

Maggie:  Why else would they marry?

Intern:  Um…because that’s what people in love do? When they want to build a life together? As one?

Maggie:  Nonsense. That would be an entirely new purpose for marriage!

Intern:  It would?

Maggie:  It’s so obvious, only a fool would need that explained.

Intern:  Can you explain it?

Maggie:  Oh…

Intern:  Oh…what?

Maggie:  Oh…you are so fired!

Personally, I don’t believe this conversation would ever happen. I don’t think Maggie, confronted with a 65-year-old bride, would find herself baffled. She wouldn’t investigate whether this woman thinks she can conceive. And Maggie’s head wouldn’t explode at the prospect of a new purpose for marriage. I bet Maggie would congratulate this woman on having another go at happiness.

As long as she’s marrying a man.

Maggie also offered this as a harm of same-sex marriage:

You see the idea and the ideal that children need a mother and father beginning to be redefined as the equivalent of a racist or mean or hateful idea. That’s on top of the problem of the silencing or the — which I’ve already talked about — the way religious institutions and religious people who in good conscience can’t treat same-sex unions as marriages begin to be treated as pariahs.

As you recall, I’ve written already how Maggie herself shares responsibility for this quandary. At that time, I promised to write more on it, but others anticipated me by pointing out the circular nature of her argument: Legalizing same-sex marriage is bad because it makes people who are opposed to same-sex marriage officially bad. So let me take a moment and extend that a bit.

First, Maggie is wrong in her circular argument. Legalizing same-sex marriage doesn’t mean the government is calling opponents bigots; after all, the government hires Jewish military chaplains, but that doesn’t mean it’s designating as “bigots” anyone who thinks Christ is the only path to salvation. As I’ve written before, compare these two statements:

If the statement on the left is correct, then so is the one on the right. Government neutrality is not an accusation of “bigotry.”

But there’s another response to Maggie’s argument. Suppose you spin it around like a hula hoop and turn it against her. During NOM’s ill-fated bus tour across the country, Brian Brown staked NOM’s worth on the character of its supporters. These are the same supporters who have a hard time commenting on NOM’s blog without speaking of abomination and perverts. So if we hijack NOM’s reasoning, we can say that same-sex marriage must be legalized; anything else would reinforce the idea of gays as abominable perverts who shall surely be put to death.

But of course that’s ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as Maggie’s notion that we must ban same-sex marriage to keep people from saying mean things about its opponents.

Just one thing was missing: Barney should made it clear that studies showing kids do best with a married mother and father are always comparing two-parent [...]]]> If you’ve ever wanted to see an anti-gay on TV being held responsible what he’s saying — and the implications of what he’s saying — you’re going to love this.

Just one thing was missing: Barney should made it clear that studies showing kids do best with a married mother and father are always comparing two-parent homes to single-parent homes. These studies, so the loved by the anti-gays, don’t examine or compare same-sex parenting.

That’s a quibble, though. Enjoy.

In states where same-sex couples have been allowed to marry, what harm has been brought to individuals or society at large?

Maggie names a few issues, but for now I want to focus on this one:

You see the idea and the ideal that children need [...]]]> Andrew Sullivan has another video in the Ask Maggie Gallagher Anything series. In this one, she is asked:

In states where same-sex couples have been allowed to marry, what harm has been brought to individuals or society at large?

Maggie names a few issues, but for now I want to focus on this one:

You see the idea and the ideal that children need a mother and father beginning to be redefined as the equivalent of a racist or mean or hateful idea. That’s on top of the problem of the silencing or the — which I’ve already talked about — the way religious institutions and religious people who in good conscience can’t treat same-sex unions as marriages begin to be treated as pariahs.

This is Maggie’s persecution theme, one that our opponents are pushing like crazy, one that I think they’ll use in their next strategy:  Overturn marriage equality in the courts as a violation of their religious freedom. But I want to tell Maggie this:

If people are calling you a bigot and equating you with racists, the problem may not be with same-sex marriage, but with the quality of your crusade against it.

So here, Maggie: these tips may help you and the National Organization for Marriage and the rest of your allies in your quest for gentle and civil treatment.

• Don’t denigrate same-sex parenting with studies that didn’t examine same-sex parents.

• Don’t pretend people are denounced merely for opposing same-sex marriage, when in fact they’re calling gays and lesbians immoral, depraved, America-hating creatures comparable to murderers and rapists, who reduce their children to trophies and cannot love their partners.

• Don’t invite speakers onstage to say gays are “worthy to death.”

• Don’t use your website to promote the message that same-sex marriage represents the modern day evil works of Satan.

• Don’t use bizarre and horrifying contortions of logic to argue that giving marriage to same-sex couples will obscure its connection to children, but giving it to infertile opposite-sex couples will not.

• Don’t raise money by lying to your own supporters about same-sex marriage.

• In fact, just don’t lie. Really. I’m not kidding. At all.

• Don’t refer to same-sex couples as sinful, unfortunate, dysfunctional people who can’t love each other – or their kids – the way straight couples can.

• Don’t congratulate someone for their courage in saying gays “shall surely be put to death.”

Maggie, when your conduct is cruel, insulting, irrational, and downright dishonest, people may start to wonder about your character. What else are they to do? This is not an ad hominem attack. That’s when people criticize the speaker instead of examining their arguments. No, this is opposite: people are criticizing you because they’ve examined your arguments.  The problem is not inherent to the issue. It’s not us, Maggie, it’s you.

And Maggie, if we are sometimes too quick to paint our opponents as hateful and bigoted when they don’t deserve it — well, that’s wrong, but you have to share in the responsibility. You’ve made yourself the most vocal and famous warrior against same-sex marriage. That makes it hard to distinguish you from those of our opponents with kinder, gentler, and truer hearts.

Okay. Take a breath. I have more to say on that video, but I wanted to give this a blog post all its own.

A friend has pointed [...]]]> I wrote yesterday that Barack Obama does not believe we are covered by the Equal Protection Clause, and that he would vote against us on the constitutionality of Prop 8. I’ll have to walk that back — though not as far you might like, and not for the reasons you might expect.

A friend has pointed out that when the 9th Circuit agreed that Prop 8 is unconstitutional, it did so because the proposition removed an existing right from California citizens. The Court declined to state that all bans on same-sex marriage violate the Constitution. From its decision:

Proposition 8 singles out same-sex couples for unequal treatment by taking away from them alone the right to marry, and this action amounts to a distinct constitutional violation because the Equal Protection Clause protects minority groups from being targeted for the deprivation of an existing right without a legitimate reason. Romer, 517 U.S. at 634-35.

And:

Withdrawing from a disfavored group the right to obtain a designation with significant societal consequences is different from declining to extend that designation in th first place

Finally:

We therefore need not and do not consider whether same-sex couples have a fundamental right to marry, or whether states that fail to afford the right to marry to gays and lesbians must do so. Further, we express no view on those questions.

In other words,taking Obama’s statement seriously, if he were on the Supreme Court he might very well vote to strike down Prop 8 based on the Equal Protection Clause — but also vote to uphold bans on same-sex marriage in states that have never offered its citizens that right.

Some people have told me none of this matters. Obama supports equality exactly the way we want him to, and is just making a careful political calculation when he talks about leaving it up to the states.

But there’s so much irony in that reply! After all, we knew (didn’t we?) that Barack Obama supported marriage equality in his heart of hearts. Our celebration yesterday came entirely from the fact that he said it publicly. Public statements matter — that’s the point of yesterday’s rejoicing. And that holds true, not just for Obama’s personal views on marriage equality, but for whether he thinks it’s okay for the states to decide this on their own, against us, if that’s what they want.

And for everyone who’s telling me what a great victory this is, despite the legalese? Yes. I know. I sent Obama $100.  I lifted a couple glasses in celebration. Well, three. Actually, four. And I wrote this:

Obama can claim another civil rights first. He hasn’t just broken the color barrier — he’s opened the yellow brick road. He’s giving back, repaying the fighters and activists of previous generations who made his own election possible, so that now, somewhere, in a tiny little no-name corner of the nation, a bright and talented gay kid has suddenly realized: I can be president.

Now I can think of one justifiable complaint: Damn it, Rob, can’t you let us have one whole day of unalloyed celebration before starting in on what’s wrong? And, yeah, I can see that.

Because the world truly did change yesterday.

How’s that for a cold bucket of water?

Yes, the president personally supports same-sex marriage, but according to ABC News (who broke the story):

The president stressed that this is a personal position, and that he still supports the concept of states’ [...]]]> Barack Obama thinks the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment should not protect same-sex couples.

How’s that for a cold bucket of water?

Yes, the president personally supports same-sex marriage, but according to ABC News (who broke the story):

The president stressed that this is a personal position, and that he still supports the concept of states’ deciding the issue on their own.

In other words, the president does not believe the 14th Amendment mandates equal treatment of same sex couples.

Is that important? Remember Judge Walker overturning Proposition 8. Remember the heroic effort by Ted Olson and David Boies, the liberal/conservative dream team.  And most of all, remember their stirring federal argument, now making a long journey to the US Supreme Court:

There is no rational justification for this unique pattern of discrimination.  Proposition 8, and the irrational pattern of California’s regulation of marriage which it promulgates, advances no legitimate state interest.  All it does is label gay and lesbian persons as different, inferior, unequal, and disfavored.  And it brands their relationships as not the same, and less-approved than those enjoyed by opposite sex couples.  It stigmatizes gays and lesbians, classifies them as outcasts, and causes needless pain, isolation and humiliation.

If Barack Obama, a professor of Constitutional Law, were on the Supreme Court, he would vote against us.

Obama supports same-sex marriage, but he sees no Constitutional mandate. He thinks we should be treated equally, but he sees no Constitutional mandate. When it comes to this groundbreaking case, Barack Obama — believe it or not — is on the side of Maggie Gallagher, Brian Brown, and the National Organization for Marriage.

But is that important? I really don’t know. We’ve won a huge cultural victory today. I don’t regret my $100 Obama campaign donation and I don’t regret the two margaritas I had in celebration (though I had to stop blogging for a bit as I wondered how I got to the point where two margaritas were enough to make me tipsy).

No sitting president has ever done what Barack Obama has done. And his personal support for same-sex marriage, along with his view that DOMA is unconstitutional — presumably based on a Full Faith and Credit argument, rather than the 14th amendment — brings us oh-my-god-this-close to full equality, and sends a public game-changing message that likely won’t be diluted by Constitutional nitpicking. But in the midst of our celebration, we should still remember:

Barack Obama thinks the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment should not protect same-sex couples.

And now it’s time for a last margarita.

My heart sings. It does. In 1980 there was not one openly gay person in my 1600-student high school. In 1989, Denmark was the first nation to [...]]]> I just sent $100 to President Obama’s campaign fund. Yes, this GayTM has reopened. I guess this means I won’t get yelled at by any more clueless Democratic campaign workers.

My heart sings. It does. In 1980 there was not one openly gay person in my 1600-student high school. In 1989, Denmark was the first nation to introduce civil unions (not even marriage!), and I thought, That will never, never, never happen here. I doubt 20-somethings today can even comprehend what that world was like. And twenty years from now it will boggle kids’ minds to imagine a presidential election with no serious candidate standing up for marriage equality.

Because that time is over!

But a part of me leans back, crosses my arms, frowns, and says: Mm hmm.

I’ve been thinking that the president’s “evolution” resembles the way a lot of people come out. At first, your feelings are secret. You even deny them out loud. But folks start to suspect –your closest friends wonder, and the idea ripples out beyond your inner circle. Still you deny it, and your friends play along, and they get used to the notion, and it’s not even scandalous. They discuss it. They wonder why you don’t just come out with it. They start to view the whole thing as a character flaw — not because of what you’re hiding, but because you keep hiding it! At some point, events catch up with you, and with a hurried epiphany you realize the costs of hiding are worse than the costs of being open. So finally, at long last, to everyone’s relief — even the relief of those who don’t like the fact — you come out of that damn closet.

Is that what happened with Obama? Or perhaps this was all staged. Obama knows that endorsing something will solidify a part of the country against it. (Would those Republican New York State Senators have been able to vote for a marriage equality law that Obama campaigned for?) So Obama, canny politician, deliberately minimized the blowback. He deliberately let it become an open secret, deliberately drained it of its shock value, deliberately let Biden and Duncan force the issue, and finally deliberately announced it after everybody figured it was coming anyway.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. It’s happened Obama can claim another civil rights first. He hasn’t just broken the color barrier — he’s opened the yellow brick road.  He’s giving back, repaying the fighters and activists of previous generations who made his own election possible, so that now, somewhere, in a tiny little no-name corner of the nation, a bright and talented gay kid has suddenly realized: I can be president.

At times like this you have to look up from the ground you’re walking on, set your gaze on the horizon, and keep your eyes on the prize. We’re the ones holding [...]]]> North Carolina tears at the heart, especially since we know that most voters actually opposed what they didn’t realize what they were voting for.

At times like this you have to look up from the ground you’re walking on, set your gaze on the horizon, and keep your eyes on the prize. We’re the ones holding America to its own highest standard, the ones bringing America closer to the vision expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the ones who someday will claim victory through the power of that vision.

And if yesterday has made you forget what that feels like, let me offer you again this short video I made after we won equality in Iowa.