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   A cancer is rarely cured.  It is treated, it is operated upon, and it is fought tooth and nail but seldom is it truly abolished.  Rather, it is shrunk, partially removed and bombarded with radiation, thereby buying the patient some extra time before the process begins anew.  Today, America is the patient and the cancer is the same reoccurring malignancy that has plagued this nation since its very inception.  As voters in Maine proved, prejudice and bigotry are alive and well and its prescriptive remedy is – surprise – in short supply.

   As Maine voters elected to restrict same sex couples the right to marry, they have proven that the Great American Cancer has not only come out of remission, it has metastasized; jumping from state to state and population to population. It has destroyed the hopes, dreams, rights, freedoms and families of millions of Americans.  Just as cancers hide in the body in the form of fatigue, headaches, and any number of common maladies, this scourge takes refuge under an innocuous and seemingly benevolent banner.

   Christianity, once the religion of love, brotherhood, salvation and hope; what is the ‘Good News’ you bring us today?  It is a gospel of hate and oppression.  While millions of church men and women sing praises to their Lord, their brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors are persecuted and dehumanized.  How soon before these “good people” flout the law and take up arms against homosexuals, just as their ‘spiritual’ forbearers took up violence against African-Americans in the last century and just as they have to Jews for thousands of years?   Certainly not all Christians are hateful and bigoted yetsadly, their faith has been hijacked by fanatics who pilot their destructive vitriol into the edifice of civil society and social justice.  Had they their way, the society these beasts desire would look little different from that of the Taliban.  Stone the fags, deport the Illegals, lock the women in the kitchen!   Who will be next? 

   Some may say the people of Maine and California and so many other states have spoken.  They do not want Gay Marriage.  To them I say that the people of Maine and California and so many others are wrong.  They have acted not on principle but on bigoted, small-minded evil impulses.  The laws barring Gays the right to marry or any other inequities are not just unjust, they are an abomination!  We as Americans can no longer sit by while discrimination runs rampant.  We must tear this noxious weed up at its roots once and for all.  As Dr. King said, “Justice to long delayed is justice denied” and frankly, justice has been denied to far too many for far too long. 

   Civil unions are not enough, domestic partnerships are not enough and simply affirming your belief in equality is not enough.  The danger greater than Christian fanaticism is the ineffectual moderate who as Dr. King again astutely says, “…is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice…who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises…to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will” 

   If we are to have full justice, we can not stand idly by, merely professing our views and waiting every four years like a Dickensian orphan for the meager gruel we call a vote. Voters in Maine have “Democratically” decided to strip their fellow citizens of their Unalienable Rights, rights enjoyed by all other citizens.  In the name of religion and “family values” they have committed a great sacrilege against the sanctity of freedom and equality.  They have done so, having been mystified by the corrupted coffers of Mormon Church, the Vatican and the various confederacies of evangelical Protestantism. 

  The time to engage is now, we can no longer wait.  They are right about one thing, these so called Christians.  We are in a culture war and one side must win.  We who fight for liberty must be the side that wins.  We must engage them at every turn, tell them when they’re wrong, march against their oppression, and if need be, take to the streets.  We must claim victory or the freedoms all of us hold dear will slip away like desert sand through fingertips.  Because if we don’t, I wonder who will be allowed to speak out when they come for us?