Opinion of TJ in Cleve

[TDAS04]

FF.  I'm not a fan of social conservatism but TJ is both a great poster and a nice guy.

[TDAS04]

Anyone who believes that LGBT folk are not worthy of the same rights as straight people is an HP. He's nice and he's personable, but I'm not sorry. We need to make loud and clear that there is no room for these views in any decent society. They perpetuate the idea that gay people are inherently "less than," and it is absolutely not okay.

While opposing legal SSM is inexcusable, as it is opposition to certain equal rights for LGBT people that is not based in logic, not all SSM-opponents are seething with hatred or wishing death to gays.  Mild bigotry can be forgiven, and even someone who was mildly racist a few decades ago may not have been an automatic HP.  For example, a person in the 1970s who opposed interracial marriage for silly, irrational reasons may not have been virulently hateful to the point of wanting to harm blacks.

Anyone who believes that LGBT folk are not worthy of the same rights as straight people is an HP. He's nice and he's personable, but I'm not sorry. We need to make loud and clear that there is no room for these views in any decent society. They perpetuate the idea that gay people are inherently "less than," and it is absolutely not okay.

"Gay marriage is the most important moral issue ever and constitutes the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is good or evil. On the other hand, supporting economic policies that make it possible for people to starve or not have a roof on their head is a legitimate position, though I disagree with it."

^ Modern American liberalism in a nutshell.

Nobody said such a thing.  Obviously the necessities of life are more important than anyone's right to marriage.  At the same time, opposing equal rights based on who a person is--whether it's about race, gender, or sexual orientation--is opposition to civil rights.  Opposing civil rights is more offensive than opposing greater economic regulation in the sense that those with the latter position don't necessarily hate the poor, but opponents of gay marriage believe the silly notion that there's something wrong with being gay.

[TDAS04]

According to Antonio's logic, it would have been "bourgeois" to fight hard for the rights of blacks to sit where they wanted to on the bus during the 1950s, because it would have taken away emphasis on economic justice.

Telling someone to sit on the back of a the bus is a message that they are "inferior", just as it is to gays when you tell us we can't marry someone of the same gender.