Dear Friend....

Rob called me yesterday while I was at work and asked me if I was a straight, anti-gay rights spy, like some mix between Ted Haggard and James Bond. Had he been sleeping with the enemy?

Now, I want to be clear. I am not straight. I have never been straight. I don't even have a wide stance.

While I have many straight friends, who I love with all my heart, I do not even condone their lifestyle or encourage that perverted predilection under which they suffer. Really. I'm so moral that I want to keep them from or annul the legal rights that strengthen their families (or at least that's what it would seem us gays were out to do by what Rob told me next).

After I assured Rob that I was truly gay (by reciting Olivia Newton John's part to"Hopelessly Devoted" from Grease, backwards), it came as a surprise that Rob was referring to a letter, addressed to me, from the Sutherland Institute, one of Utah's many groups out to harm our families in the name of Family(TM).
Click on it to better see the full text.

How sad and disturbing is that? You should have seen the donation card that came with it too. For 5K you can help them make decisions on how to best legally hurt us and our kids. What a bargain.

I am, of course, kind of surprised to be their "friend" and to be invited to such an event. Maybe I should go and bring all my friends, as they suggest :-). Hey, it's free; we should all go!

Seriously though, it may be educational to just sit there quietly and listen in order to hear what arrows they have waiting in their quiver, ready to hit my home. It would be educational... but difficult.

For example, I guess they are now calling the Common Ground Initiatives a dire threat to Utah's man-woman marriage law, one for which they need a bunch of money? What else could it be? Nevertheless, these bills don't touch Utah's man-woman marriage law, seem to at least be not objectionable to the LDS church (I just wish they'd stop this and say so), and they would help many Utah families and children.

It is disturbing to know these people will be getting together, scheming about how get money to best legally harm my most sacred institution, the people I love most and am absolutely obsessed with protecting. It can keep a man up.

They'll do it while imagining righteousness and God's blessing; imagining they know what being gay means. They'll do it while pretending it's moral to harm us in a way they'd never want their family harmed. They'll use words like "defend" while they attack families, and call our hope for equal treatment under law an "attack", as though taking our families' tax dollars puts no responsibility of equal treatment on their shoulders. They will say we are against traditional marriage when nearly every marriage we respect and support is traditional. They'll hope to hurt our children under another name, will probably insult them as morally deficient as the LDS press room recently did, and pretend it's all for the good of "the children". They'll believe it like a faith, with the best of intentions. And, frankly, that sucks too :-), because I know they aren't all bad folks, and I don't even get to blame it on evil or indulge in anger.

My best option is to just listen and try to react as best I can... Things like this really do make me feel like the stick gatherer. We don't share the same faith with these people; it often seems we don't even speak the same language. What I see as glorious in family--the dedication, the sacrifice, the love--they see as trash, or as something to fight, if the wrong anatomical shape is attached to it. Nevertheless, I'm caught here, and they will ditch the Golden Rule and force my home and even minority churches to live by their faith in law, if they can. And in Utah, they can.

Anyway, Sutherland Institute, nope. I'll not be sending you money to pay you to "fight to the bitter end", whatever that means for my home.

Eh, they will get something back, though. Rob stuck their return envelope in the mail with some coupons in it; he donated a little :-). At least that postage won't go to funding their righteous crusade again us enemies of proper society.