I object to almost everybody's tone on this thread, John P, not just yours, because all that most of you are busy doing here is suspecting the very worst of anyone who has a divergent opinion of any kind and seeing only evil and nastiness in everything they say. You are seeing them as the cardboard stereotypes of something bad you imagine in your mind. You're so busy looking for evil that I doubt you would ever find time to concentrate on anything good in the other person. If you want to improve society and find freedom and equal rights for everyone, gays included, you must get off this attack-dog mode of continual demonization of others in a debate and start finding something in common with them instead.

That was what Mr Obama was talking about in his speech.

Most of you here are continuing to project your own fantasies of evilness on the various people you are arguing with here. They are then (presumably?) obliged to waste their own time in trying to prove to YOU that they're not evil...a thankless task! And a task that can never be met, by the way, because you'll never believe them. So it isn't even worth trying to meet it.

The degree of blind prejudice that people are displaying here toward each other on a personal basis....not toward gays, necessarily...is blatant.

It's a sad joke. It prevents you from having a useful discussion. You're all just out to hurt someone as far as I can see (and I don't mean hurt gays).

That's what has caused me to come back again and again to this thread. I hope to divert your frenetic little attack-dog energies toward something more productive than mutual character assassination.

Your questions? (sigh) Oh, I'll get to those presently, John, I suppose. Yes, I will. But they are not my real concern here.