@Mafia - I can see where you might view the Civil Union thing as a set back and I agree it could backfire, so maybe contiuing to fight for a more borad definition of marriage and telling the moral minority to go F- themselves is the way to go.

Yes, what I meant about our lifetimes was the elimination of anti-LGBTQ sentiment and full acceptance. I believe it will eventually happen and *could* be in 40 or 50 years when I'm in my late 80s or 90s, but people like my 84 year old Mom-in-law and even my mid-60 year old parents have to be gone and their influence wiped out first. So while general acceptance may happen in the next half century, complete acceptance and getting it out of the backwoods and the Bible belt will be a lot longer. Hell, the black community has been fighting this a hell of a lot longer than the LGBTQ community and they still have a ways to go before "the Black Community" instills positive feelings for everyone, not just the blacks. It instills unnecessary and unwarranted fear in some who are just emotional and irrational right now the same as "the LGBTQ Community" makes those on the extreme right think "Oh my God! They'll molest my baby and turn him gay!" Even though equating having feelings and desires for others of the same sex or desiring to be/appear of a different sex does *not* equate to being a child molester, they still think it does because they have been brainwashed by the evangelical preachers who won't let them think for themselves that your choice is worng and sinful and all that bullshit.

@Jacob - Spotuing the Bible (and especially the creation *story*) as fact doesn't make it fact. You probably either believe the dinosaur fossils are the tools of the devil or that dinosaurs and man coexisted and that the earth is only 6-8000 years old. Sorry bud, but Abraham and Moses mad eup or were given (if you want to believe God told them these things, fine) that were something simple man who had no ideas of evolution or a round earth or that there was anything outside a few hundred square miles in the middle east could understand. It is a story to inspire early civilization outside of Greece into becoming a more civilized gorup of people by instilling a common fear in them - the fear of a jealous and vengeful God. "Vengence is mine," sayeth the Lord, "I will repay." and he supposedly floods the entire world (not!). So you r truth is a deception and you are the deceived.

Jesus brought a great message and He may well have been the Son of God, but the God of the OT isn't that God. The God of the OT is an evil creature in and of himself, not a God of Love.