Four of the five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, and depression—were on full display today at the March for Marriage, a rally outside the U.S. Capitol organized by the National Organization for Marriage and other co-sponsors. NOM President Brian Brown had promised attendees the chance to be a part of “showing that there still exists in this country deep and wide support for the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman," but, judging by photos of the event that revealed a shallow and thin crowd that seemed to gradually disperse as the two and a half hours of repetitive speeches wore on, the rally may have shown just the opposite....News reports show that religion was the primary justification given by the attendees for their opposition to equality. But it's just one type of religion. Polls show convincingly that majorities of (lay) Catholics, Jews, mainline Protestants, as well as religiously unaffiliated folks all support marriage equality.
It’s in the constant invocation of persecution, which positively soaked the day’s proceedings, that bargaining comes into play. Many of the speakers seem to be wagering that if they can just convince people...that, in the most religious First World country in the world, Christians are more oppressed than LGBTQ people, they will finally see how mean and hurtful this marriage equality stuff really is. According to Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, things are basically as bad now as they were for the early Christians in pagan Rome....
And on the same day the Presbyterians voted overwhelmingly to allow same sex marriages.
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