.... you'd know that I opposed the Ford boycott but did several posts here and elsewhere about how stupid it was for Ford to ignore the concerns of at least 15-20 million Americans when it was struggling with viability as a business -- and how short-sighted the media was to pretend that the boycott, which probably cost Ford almost $1 billion in gross margins, wasn't a reason why Ford's sales declined worse than GM's or Chrysler's during the two years of AFA's boycott.

Even beyond that, the AFA was asking Ford as a COMPANY to be NEUTRAL in the culture wars and to do what companies are supposed to do -- make money for shareholders.

The arts community has, in essence told this man that he can't ply his trade in California, and more than likely in the rest of the US.

The analogy would be if AFA had demanded the resignation of specific people at Ford who donated to specific causes before calling off their boycott. They didn't.

If you don't see the frightening difference between AFA-Ford and this situation, you're deliberately blind in one eye and refuse to see out of the other.

Dakota who?

And you draw a moral equivalance between a boycott of goods and services and assault?    There is a vast difference between individuals refusing to patronize some business establishment because the do not agree with one or more policies of that establishment and individuals employing violence to deter others from free exercise of their God-given rights.  Only a moral relativist would attempt such distortion.  The former are exercising the right to control their own actions.  The latter are thugs employing violence to control the actions of others.

By implication, you, by citing "Hound Dog" as an example of "free speech" that was stifled by Conservative action, are claiming that gratuitous depiction of child sex abuse for purposes of entertainment is free speech eligible for protection under the First Amendment.

As to boycotting Ford, have you not heard that in a free  marketplace, any buyer is permitted to decide for themselves what goods they wish to buy, from which sellers, and at what prices subject only to their ability to fulfill a voluntary purchase agreement.  This includes buying cars from Ford.  Anything else is tyranny. 

And you are an educator?  In what institution may I ask?  A Federal Penitentiary?

Attorney Girl,

Having lived in Sacramento a good chunk of my life, I can look back and observe that Sacramento wanted to be San Francisco in the worst kind of way, and now it is.

The left engages in projection.  Any psychologist worth their salt can tell you that it is the left and not the right that is more bigoted, hateful, angry, and violent...even though they regularly accuse the right of such behavior.

Frankly, I'd take a rather libertarian approach to the issue if the left (with gay rights, or abortion, or socialism, etc.) respected the rights and freedoms of others.

In Canada, did you know it's a hate crime if you - as a parent - try to withdraw your child from a class where they're teaching a lesson on homosexuality?  Look up the name Rev. Stephen Boission.  He wrote a letter to a Canadian newspaper, and a gay rights activist filed a complaint with the draconian/Orwellian Human Rights Commission, which fined Boisson and ordered him never to publicly profess his faith again.

Here in the USA, a New Mexico photographer was sued and fined for declining to shoot a same-sex commitment ceremony.  In New Jersey, a Methodist church lost tax-exempt status because they declined to allow a same-sex ceremony on some of their property.  In Massachusetts, Catholic Charities was forced to shut down their very successful adoption program because they didn't want to adopt to same-sex couples.  In California, they lobbied to remove the words "mom" and "dad" from textbooks so as not to discriminate against alternative lifestyles.

And now, again in California, violence.  Threats.  Harrassment of church-goers.  Racism directed at blacks and Hispanics who dared vote their conscience in a free election.  Attacks on the family and traditional marriage.  Attacks on religious clergy and believers.

This is supposed to convince me to support same-sex marriage, how, exactly?

My First Amendment rights are clear.  I have an unalienable right to worship freely, as I choose, and with that right I am free to call a sin a sin if it's my religious faith.

There is not, however, a right to live your life entirely unoffended.

And has anyone else here notice the conspicous absence of condemnations of the violent protests from the celebrities who lamented the outcome of Prop. 8?  Ellen DeGeneres, Rosanne Barr, Rosie O'Donnell, etc. etc. - not a one of them said, "Hey, we're disappointed, but let people have their own points of view."  Nope.

Thanks - that really is another motivator for me to just jump on board the SS Tolerance.

Basically, if you're reading this and angry over the outcome of Prop. 8, here's a few suggestions:

1. Stop violently forcing your beliefs on others.  Stop engaging in hateful rhetoric, violent protests, and threats.
2. Stop using the courts to ram your ideologies down people's throats when democratic votes don't go your way.
3. Stop expecting schools to teach homosexuality, stop expecting religious persons to "suck it up" and condone behavior they disagree with, and stop calling heterosexuals "breeders" and attacking the traditional family (including words like "mom" and "dad").
4. Learn you're never going to get rid of all the bigots.  Folks like the a**holes at the Westboro Baptist Church have always, and will always, exist.  Most people don't care and aren't hateful in they way they are.  Let them make themselves look like morons and hold your head above that stuff...like the church in Michigan, where the Bash Back group caused damage.  The church goers didn't attack the anarchists who violated their rights.  They prayed for them.  There's a lesson there.  Learn it.  Just like many, many Catholics did when PZ Myers desecrated a Eucharist.  We didn't burn down his home or bomb his office - we prayed for him.

In short, let me live my life, raise my kids, worship, and vote as I please and perhaps  you won't be met with such negativity in the future.  Practice that whole "tolerance" thing you talk about. I really don't care what you do in your bedrooms, but when you take your private life public (see: Folsom Street Fair) and give us the proverbial finger (and worse), or attempt to intimidate me into approving, expect to meet with resistence.  GREAT resistence.

The post is about a person being forced out of his chosen profession because he happens to think that marriage ought to be legally limited to one man and one woman, as has been the case in virtually all, if not all civilizations. This is gay McCarthyism, pure and simple. You can't defend it, and I notice you didn't try.

The comparison to interracial marriage is fundamentally dishonest, and African-Americans didn't buy it at the voting booth.

I'm against SSM. That doesn't make me a bigot. Your characterizing me as a bigot on that belief alone makes you the bigot and the stereotyper.

Yet another bigoted Obamaton.

Just how many of these idiots did Obama hire, anyway?

-Dave

Did this country just elect Obama/Biden, or was it Soros/Ayers?

nobody is denying anyone else the "right to marry".  They have every right to marry any member of the opposite sex who would agree to marrying them.  They already have the same legal rights through civil unions.  Marriage was instituted by GOD and therefore HE gets to set the perameters of said institution.  The people who are fighting so hard to protect marriage are not doing so to limit the so-called "rights" of people trying to change it, they  are not voting out of hate or intolerance, they just wish to keep marriage as defined by the original creator of marriage, intended to be a picture of our relationship with God and His love for us.  There have been a lot of attacks on traditional marriage, and this is just one more. 

Sean Hannity calls for fellow conservatives to boycott companies with unethical practices all the time.

I would suggest that you name the companies he has said should be boycotted.

The list is very short, if there even is one, and it sure as bleep isn't "all the time."

You are lying.