And I liked it before I knew where it came from.

I realize this is about on par with admitting to liking Celine Dion, but it's sometimes necessary to stand up to the cooler-than-thou crowd.

I've been to a gay pride festival and it was kinda kicky. I got to see how tolerant conservatives are too! They had their little signs about how God hates my sister.

I certainly wasn't shocked into becoming Republican. Afterwards my sister and I went back to her house and (if I recall correctly) grilled steaks, played with a pet rabbit, and watched previously recorded soap operas. That's some crazy lifestyle there, yes sir!

If I wanted to read this sort of crap, I'd be reading the trolls in the letters section.

Heather, it's my impression, based on the testimony of women who have left plural marriages, that common lechery is a lot more frequent motivator than religion. Maybe it's not as pretty a picture or as easy to identify with, but I can hardly agree that showing that Big Daddy is just making this up as he goes along so he can screw more women is a mistake. That seems to be pretty much exactly why Joseph Smith came up with the idea in the first place.

The one thing that can't be said about you is that you're afraid to voice your opinion. Sometimes (yesterday for example, discussing the would-be stepthing on Cary Tennis) you are brilliantly, extravagantly right. Sometimes (in my opinion, at least) you're so far wrong you border on insane.

In either case you should remember that I didn't take a potshot at you and bigguns and I are not the same person.

Yes, I'm aware of the entire complicated history of the Civil War. I friggen' live in Tennessee, and I've heard "it was about State's Rights" since I was kneehigh to a grasshopper. That doesn't alter the fact that the right in question was the right of a state to decide whether slavery was legal within its boundaries.

Whatever you may think of my specific examples, the fact remains that I know of no instance where the intolerant were preventing from trying to harm the objects of their intolerance by any means other than law and its enforcement. Saying that we should all sit down at the table and talk is a little bit like me wanting to sit down with the fine gentlemen who broke into my house and explain the principles of private ownership in hopes that they'll give up burglary and decide to open an ice cream store instead. It won't work, at least not in this world.

Don't tell her you've been keeping it to yourself all this time and you're ashamed of her. Just say, "Dear God mom it smells like a squirrel died in your mouth! Do you have a bad tooth? Maybe you should get the doctor to look at your stomach? You're not on that no-carbs diet that causes ketosis, are you?"

Breath that bad is a sign of something wrong. You don't fail to mention it and you don't try to fix it with a breath mint. It is mostly likely something easily fixed, but it's also quite possibly something that will KILL HER IF NOT FIXED. Don't kill your own mother because you're too embarrassed to open your mouth! For heaven's sake woman!

I'm more interested in what gets done than in the symbols surrounding it.

Obama, right now, seems to be trying to figure out a way to deal with the sad truth that almost one half of his country is morally retarded.

So far, I don't agree with his methodology, but here's the thing: I can't suggest a better one. I live, love and work among these people, people who just plain don't get it that you don't get to vote on fundamental human rights, that whether or not I can be compelled to use my body to carry the child of a rapist is not a "disagreement," that choosing to ignore the parts of the Bible which say God is love and judge not is at least as bad as ignoring the part that says a man who lies with a man is an abomination. I have talked to these people, I am pretty persuasive, and I cannot make headway by any means short of braining someone with a big rock (haven't tried yet but oh so tempting.)

It may turn out that the big rock is, in fact, the right answer. It was the right answer during the Civil War (no I don't care if your economy depends on slaves stop it) and it was the right answer during the suffrage battles (yes I know your wife belongs in the kitchen and she's too dumb to vote now take your hands off her before I arrest you) and it was the right answer during integration (okay so your lily white child ain't going to school with no Nee-gro now tell that to the National Guard.)

I can't much blame Obama for trying weasel ways first. Get to know each other, convince them you aren't so bad, then talk. The problem is that this will never, ever work. The people he's trying to move are entirely capable of hating and hurting their own children. How does he think he's going to get to know them better than their own children do?

At this point, I have to have a little faith in the man's intelligence. He's not been stupid in the past. He'll figure out eventually that his approach won't work. Or so I hope.