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Damnation And The Danger Of Faulty Vision

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Daniel Ruth

druth@tampatrib.com

Published: October 26, 2008

"Those Chicago nuns almost did a good job of educating little Danny Ruth," mused Pepo, yet another of the legions of satisfied readers who flock to my scribblings. "But they must have beat him too often about the head and shoulders.

"If he doesn't have brain damage now, Moby Dick was a guppy."

Actually, they were Akron nuns of the Order of the Blessed Waterboard, which likely made them more surly.

Pepo was peeved over a column last week suggesting the proposed constitutional initiative, bizarrely titled "The Marriage Protection Amendment," was little more than a homophobic effort being peddled by John Stemberger and the Florida Family Council Bible thumper crowd to ban gay marriage.

That prompted Tom Sheerin to write: "Your support of gay marriage in your column confirms my belief that liberals are attracted to perversion as flies are to..." - well, you get the idea.

"It also confirms my belief that liberals are destroyers of nations due to radical compassion disconnected from common sense," Mr. "WE'RE ALL DOOOOMED!" wrote, adding, "As for your charge that those opposed to gay marriage are homophobic, I would reply that left-wing loons like you are moralphobic and normalphobic."

Mr. Happy was joined by that visionary thinker James Dentinger, who noted, "Write an article about the social benefits of gay marriage, highlighting the fact that eventually they will all be self-extinct and will no longer be an endangered species - bad news, good news sort of thing.

"You have a great knack for twisted logic, throw in an endorsement for teaching homosexual acts in the schools speed up the rate of extinction."

Now there was a "we're all God's children" moment for you. Thank Gawd, there's no homophobia at work here!

Speaking of the Almighty, you'll not be surprised to learn the gay marriage column also prompted no shortage of those fun-loving, cheery "You're All Going To Burn In Hell!" types, who couldn't wait to pass along a litany of Scripture verses decrying homosexuality from Romans, who knew a thing or two about men in love.

Of course, that resulted in an e-mail from s.adair, who rightly noted one can also find justifications in the Bible for slavery and condemnations for eating shellfish, bad eyesight and planting different crops on the same land.

To be fair, not all the letters reacting to the gay marriage column wanted to consign me to an eternity spent with the nuns of the Holy Order of The Killing Fields.

"I am a 62-year-old woman who has been with my partner for 27 years," wrote Diane Johnson, who is perfectly content not to hide behind some phony pen name. "The religious right have no right to discriminate against us.

"Thank you from the bottom of my heart for saying what we have wanted to say out loud," Johnson stated. "Amendment 2 is written in hate and discrimination against only one community and unfortunately others will be hurt by it as well."

Keyword: Book of Ruth, to read and comment on Daniel Ruth's blog.

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