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The issue isn't gay marriage. The issue is theocracy. As in, the United States was not designed as a government of God, for God, and by God, and when it gets into the God business it ceases to bear any resemblance to itself.

Too bad fundamentalists are stupid enough to fixate their attention on single for/against propositions and drag the rest of the country/world into their fixations. It's really, really stupid of the rest of us to be caught off-guard, again and again, and suckered into debates which pit one class of people against another class of people. Such as, women having abortions against women not having abortions.

These single-issue, slippery slope, good-guy/bad-guy polarities have nothing to do with...dare I say, Christ? Christ, take him or leave him, wasn't obsessed with how people conducted their personal lives, notably in the sex department. Saint Paul was, but he's a much dimmer light and doesn't have a religion named after him, although he did a lot to institutionalize Christ's teachings. He didn't think anyone should marry, but conceded it's better to marry than to burn.

Christ is on record as having preached one rule and one rule only, ipso facto rendering obsolete the 10 Commandments, said to have been directly handed down by his father to Moses. And I quote, "Love thy neighbor as thyself."

Love is hard; fixing-up is easy.

Christ's advice to those trying to improve other people was, "Hypocrite! First remove the beam from thine own eye, and then you'll see clearly enough to remove the mote from thy brother's eye." By "beam" is meant a redwood-size chunk of lumber and by "mote" is meant a speck of dust. In other words, if you're looking for someone to improve, start with yourself. Duh!

Two other teachings come to mind in the current political climate. First, the image of Christ throwing the money-lenders out of the Temple. Such clarity of thought, such resolute action. Where's the leader, religious or otherwise, with the wits and guts to apply similar zero-tolerance to the thieving cutthroats of Wall Street?

Second, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's." In other words, you religious types, stay out of politics.

The problem with Rick Warren isn't he's a bloated knucklehead using vicious stereotypes of same-sex coupling, likening it to incest and paedophilia. The problem is, he's the anti-Christ. A demagogue, he seeks to impose his beam-laden view of humanity via the ballot box. He has the chutzpah to accuse his enemies of being Christophobic when we are merely Rick Warrenophobic. What a jerk.

What a sorry spectacle Melissa Etheridge makes, inviting this hypocrite into her home so he can see up-close how normal nice gay people are. Jews similarly tried to convince Adolf Hitler they were good Germans. This isn't a game that can be won by appeasement.