I don't agree with the over-acting line, Chavaling. But I do happen to find Dave Barry's review of The Two Towers to be very funny. From last night, my response to this page (posted by another friend of mine): *reads link, gags* Excuse me. I need to go purge my eyes now from that masterwork of bigotry and demeaning language. I should put a rainbow flag on my page. I should write something to announce to all of those closed-minded, frivolous, would-be-Christians out there that if they wish to stand on their podium of free speech and proclaim that it's perfectly fine to discriminate against the GLBT world because "they chose to be gay"...stop a moment. Wait. Think. You have the right, as someone who *chose* to be Christian, to practise your religion and your beliefs and your lifestyle without being discriminated against. You have that right. You have the right to religious freedom. You have the right to raise your children on a blasphemous corruption of the Word, to teach them hatred and hellfire, to clothe yourselves in hypocrisy and speak with serpents' tongues. You have the right to lure them into your world, to bring them (as I have seen so many times) to believe that their errors have earned them no forgiveness, only pain and penance, only death. You have the right to take an infant and teach it that to love is wrong. You have the right, because you have *chosen* the religion you have, to name your God whatever you want, and to teach them to worship that being without question or consideration. You have the right, when your little girl comes home from school frightened and questioning - you have the right to throw her out of your house, tell her never to come home again. You have the right. And yet you would seek to deny James, deny Eric, deny Ally and Melissa and Michael and David and Brandyn and Eleanor and so many, many more. You would seek to deny them the right to hold a job without fear, to know that if they die, if they are injured, the people that they love and care for, the people who uplift them and guide them, the people who give them the family that their parents and their so-called-friends are willing to throw away - to know that those people will not be left desolate. Because they "choose" to be gay. Because you "choose" to be Christian, you should remember the centuries of persecution and murder, the endless trials and torments and abuse that *your people* suffered because of their choice. If you desire to stand up and fight for your belief in the right, then fight for it. You have that right; you have that privelege. If you desire to worship your judgmental and condemning God, your Christ who turns his back on the weak and the suffering and the lame; if you find your path to be good and true and just, then worship it. Follow it. You *have* the right to make that choice. But is the cloak of hypocrisy you wear light and comfortable, you pharisees? Are you comfortable with the law you are creating? You have no more right to protection than those you seek to cast into the pit. You have made a choice, and you enjoy the privelege of legal protection. You cannot be discriminated against because of your choice. If you seek to strip that protection away from the gays and lesbians of the world because they have "made a choice", then be prepared to throw away your own security blanket and return to the days when Christians were stoned and burned and torn apart by lions. Are you strong enough in your faith to face that den, Daniel? Can you look into the flames and say in perfect security, 'My God will protect me; I will not bow down to the idols of the world', Shadrach? Because that is what you are asking for. Fight if you want. Condemn if you want. I will serve my God, a God of justice and love, a God whose Christ walked among the poor and the lame and the suffering of the world and lifted them up, taught them by the example of perfect love to walk in the light. A God who has walked with me in every step, every day of my life. A God who I believe has inspired the gay members of the church I grew up in to provide a leadership unlike any the church has ever known - that has brought more people into the church than would ever have been anticipated in a church that's part of a denomination with largely static membership. And I will walk, humbly with that God, knowing that -all- have sinned, and fallen short of glory, knowing that all the same, there is -always- hope. Make your choice. And no, I don't expect everyone to agree with me.