Freedom 2 Marry: 12th Annual Week Long Initiative Crosses Blogosphere In Mass Dialouge And Contributions. SJR 15 Rears Its Ugly Head In Hoosier State!

*PLEASE NOTE THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED*

This week from Sunday through Saturday there is a cross blog initiative to petition for equal access under the law and the freedom to marry the partner of your choice, not the choice of the select few who assume that they speak not just to God but for him as well. [Queers United]

Now wait a minute, Bishops speak for God over there flock; doesn't that make you a hypocrite?

No because I don't claim to speak for God. That is what we call a messiah complex, or at best schizophrenia. There is a huge difference in being a Shepherd over a flock and a Leader of a political organization with religious overtones and presentation. One is true religion and spiritual practice the other is fundamentalism unleashed in all of its evil furry. I am proud to of had the opportunity for the former and abhor the latter on many different accounts.

As a Libertarian and an Independent Catholic, I believe that neither government nor the Church has the authority to regulate, license or restrict, personal relationships. As a caveat, I also as a Pastor, do not have to marry someone to other persons if I believe they are not ready for that encounter of ritual joining of two or more people and the unfurling of Sacramental grace on their lives together; but I don't have the historical authority to deny the relationship either, and that is where a lot of Pastors have gone cookie over their power structure that was inherited by Politicians contrition to the Church.

If the Pastor had a historical right to deny a relationship, Mary would not have been able to remain with Joseph, and both would have probably been stoned or beaten, by some accounts Joseph was beaten with a whip in Mary's place, because she told her story of meeting an angel and having the Word of God shoved inside of her uterus.

These truths that our Country were founded on are so profound that we have never been able to live up to them; but instead of continuing to press forward every year, we wait for a forty or eighty years and then make one strong push, then spend another twenty years trying to backslide to a more comfortable position. The basic creed and truth of These United States of America is Equality:

• We have never lived up to that ideal or truth;
• We have fought wars with ourselves to enforce it and preserve it;
• We have passed laws to bring it into common practice;

And yet through all of that We The People have still failed to attain it 230 plus years later.

• If we hold a truth to be self evident shouldn't it be visible in action not just words?
• Is it visible in any fashion and we just cant see it through our filters or biases?
• If all men are created equal than how can anybody deny another man's choice as to whom to love?

All humour and query aside, this debate is going to rage on for another decade or more, unless we come to some basic understandings as to what we believe as Americans regardless of religious or political affiliations, because our Country's collective life force, besides being on the line, needs to have the playing field leveled just a bit.

And now a message from our sponsor


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The economy is another place where we have failed to find equality, or at least equal access. Now because of piss poor decisions dating all the way back to almost 100 years we have found ourselves in yet another position of unstable policy, multiple trillion dollar debts, and absolute corruption by the powers that be (both Democrats and Republicans) because once again we failed to live up to what we wrote down over two centuries ago. The particulars are for another debate at another time, I only brought it up to show that the problem is systematic throughout this land not just one issue over here and another issue over there.

When one can be denied their very Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness over being attracted, not even having sex, just being attracted to a person of the same gender, identity or expression, than We as a People have failed to live up to our Country's creed and self evident truths.

So what is the answer?

The measure of an ideal is just that ideal, being able to measure the ideal out into a pragmatic application to the group dynamic will always leave some in dismay; however what we have done in this country is worse, we have allowed particular ideologies to take control of our truths and usurp them for the sake of power and money, and remain baffled when they fail and contagious when they just grab for *channeling Chris Crocker* more, more, more! power and oversight into our daily lives.

The debate on those issues have already shown themselves in the aftermath of Proposition Hate eer Eight in California last November, which comes up for judicial review on the fifth of March at the California State Supreme Court. Over the last several months the Christian and Conservative opposition, to allowing Equal Access Under The Law in California, by overturning a Supreme Court ruling, that allowed 18 thousand same sex couples to marry in less than 6 months with a ballot initiative, was finally dealt a landmark blow when the Courts forced them to release their donor list to the public so that an honest relay of information could take place and the public could find out who (read which Churches) influenced their vote and with how much money.

Get Involved In The Process And Make Your Voice Be Heard!

Statewide, Indiana Equality is reporting that, Indiana Family Institute's Eric Miller, Micah Clark and Company [Website][Veritas Rex] have managed to get House Joint Resolution 7 & 8/Senate Joint Resolution 15 reintroduced in the General Assembly three weeks ago as mainly authored by Representatives Eric Turner and Dave Cheatham and Senator Marlin Stutzman.

In two days on Wednesday, 11th of February, @ 9A the Indiana Senate Judiciary Committee was scheduled to hear testimony from opponents and proponents of the Senate Joint Resolution 15 (SJR-15). The hearing has been temporarily delayed but could still take place. Passage of SJR-15 by this committee will keep this harmful legislation in play. If approved by the electorate, SJR-15 will forever write discrimination into the Indiana Constitution, affecting thousands of Hoosier families.

Call the Indiana Senate switchboard: 1-800-382-9467. Ask the members of the Indiana Senate Judiciary Committee to vote NO on SJR-15. Afterward call your Representative @ 1-800-382-9842 and ask them to do the same on the following pieces of legislation: HJR 7 and 8. Last, enter into the conversation and forward along this information to your friends and family and tell three other people your story and sacrifice for all of us to be free to love any one we choose!

UPDATE: Indiana Equality (17th of February 2009) is reporting that the Indiana Senate Republican Caucus voted not to consider Senate Joint Resolution 15 during the 2009 session of the Indiana General Assembly. Proposals identical to SJR-15, were also introduced in the Indiana House of Representatives. Speaker B. Patrick Bauer has previously announced House Joint Resolutions 7 and 8 would not be considered during the current legislative session.