Eye-Opening Perspectives for Heroic Hearts

Eye-Opening Perspectives for Heroic Hearts

Friday, January 15, 2016

Mark McKinnon Media Mastermind on the Republican's Marriage Stance

In an article titled Mark McKinnon: The freedom to marry is consistent with GOP values by Blake Jelley Southern Political Mentor Mark McKinnon Urges Modernity

by Winsip Custer CPW News Service

From: http://www.freedomtomarry.org/blog/entry/mark-mckinnon-the-freedom-to-marry-is-consistent-with-gop-values

Mark McKinnon
Photo courtesy Harvard
Kennedy School
     In an op-ed published this week by the San Antonio Express-News, Mark McKinnon, former adviser to President George W. Bush and Texas chair of Southerners for the Freedom to Marry, makes the Republican case for marriage.

     The op-ed is in response to a court brief filed in the Texas marriage case by state Republicans who claim that marriage for same-sex couples could lead to things like incest, pedophilia and polygamy. McKinnon dismisses the fear-mongering court brief, saying that the argument “doesn’t pass the laugh test” and making clear what the Texas marriage case is really about.

“The Texas marriage case is all about: freedom and family. It's about whether loving, committed gay couples can marry like my wife and I did and raise stable, loving families…Gay folks are our friends, family members, and co-workers. Most of us want to treat them with the same dignity and respect as anyone else. Discriminating against them does not fit with core Texas values. Nor does it help the tens of thousands of kids being raised by same-sex parents.”

McKinnon goes on to urge the Republican Party to modernize in order to stay relevant, making the case that marriage for same-sex couples is consistent with conservative values of individual liberty, freedom, and family.

Majorities of evangelicals and conservatives younger than 45 support the freedom to marry. They do so because it's consistent with their conservative values of individual liberty and stronger families. Whatever one's views on same-sex marriage, the reality is the politics have changed dramatically. Railing against gay people's dignity and freedom to marry hurts the GOP brand. The U.S. Supreme Court will be the final arbiter on same-sex marriage nationwide, perhaps by next summer. I can only hope the consistent conservative principles of freedom and family win out.”

Southerners for the Freedom to Marry – a partnership of Freedom to Marry and statewide/regional equality organizations – is a one million dollar public education campaign to grow support for marriage in the American South.

 
One responder to Mr. McKinnon’s message replied:

“Majorities of evangelicals and conservatives younger than 45 support the freedom to marry. They do so because it's consistent with their conservative values of individual liberty and stronger families."

 
     Thank you Mr. McKinnon!  Thanks, too, for wearing Pat Tillman's number "40" on your arm!  A constant reminder, like the death of Col. Theodore “Ted” Westhusing, that life isn't fair and that our institutions like our government and marriage policies aren't either.

      As a Protestant minister I favor legalizing marriage between two people of whatever gender.   My theology saved me on this score.  There are only two sacraments in the Reformed Tradition and marriage isn't one of them.  The scriptures are said to be clear, but so can slavery be argued from the same source.  I say "minimalize"!  "In Christ there is neither East nor West, slave nor free, Jew nor Greek, male nor female."    The Golden Rule is universal and I have sent a poster of its universal nature to members of the Saudi Royal family and to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld….to Colin Powell and to Richard Perle, to the Iranian Mullahs and to Bibi Netanyahu, to Bill Clinton and Richard Armitage, to….well, to many others. But Jesus is never recorded as doing a marriage in scripture.  Heck, he didn't do baptisms either.....but we give him that one.  So I quit doing weddings.  My gay friends' requests had to be turned down or I'd risk a defrocking from an admittedly flawed church.... as CIA Director Allen Dulles could have verified or as C. Boyden Gray could do of the National Cathedral!   Why jeopardize my proper standing, well, “proper” within the limits of Saint Paul’s and Saint Augustine’s examples, on an issue that I  prefer NOT to be defrocked over, but the church, my church, was putting my....excuse my crudeness.....my theological nuts in a vice.  Nuts or ovaries I preferred NOT to have them flattened almost as much as I wish I hadn't gagged on that damn "yellow cake" that Colin served up with the enthusiasm of Stephen in D'jango Unchained!  Legalize gay/lesbian marriage....civil marriages.....then use the sacraments of communion and baptism to sanctify them as the bastions of civility that they all claim to be.   If pedophile priests can serve communion to all manor of people, then there is no reason not to open marriages to all men and women.   I can assure you that there is nothing that is that "sanctified" about any marriage that people should be run out of the fellowship for having tarnished.  There is no smegma laden copulative (or non-copulative) wrangling that the waters of baptism cannot and have not already washed clean.   Bathing in the waters of Christ's love and forgiveness is good and the bread and wine and grace of Communion is equally so, but Mr. McKinnon would you please tell your friends that we need to maintain clean water and not all in plastic bottles! As in Bolivia with the "Bechtel water wars" or with Enron and Ken Lay's and Jeffery Skilling's "hypothetical future value" and their attempting to sell rain futures which will require me to loose control of my roof and rain water all controlled by a capitalistic-fascist "upper crust" elite like Bechtel's bimbos. Remind them, please, that as any honest and truthful U.S. debutante can tell you.... the "upper crust"?..... It is mostly a bunch of crumbs held together by a big wad of dough.

                                                Peace and Love,

                                                Reverend John Knox Calvin Marshall, IV

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