Have you seen Keith Olberman's broadcast after the passing of Prop 8?

That was great, thanks for sharing.

Excellent.

So umm, Keith Olberman is wiser than my 6,000 year old sacred book and I should listen to him and his liberal agenda rather than my God!? NEVER! You will never fool me with your wolf in sheep clothing tactics Keith.

So, um, we should listen to you and your bible thumping agenda?

Good grief, not again. I hate to tell you this, but your 6000 year old book needs an update.

@syz there’s nothing in between for updates since God is the beginning and the end. Unless, you’re that arrogant to call God a lier and condemn yourself because you a mere mortal know it better than God.

Well, gee, if I believed in this mythical being, perhaps I would call it a liar. ‘Guess I’m that arrogant.

Is the bible 6000 years old? This number seems to shift around a bit. I thought the Earth was only 4000 years old.

My holy text, the Qur’an is only about 1500 years old so I guess yours is better.

“So umm, Keith Olberman is wiser than my 6,000 year old sacred book” to put it simply, yes, yes he is.

Umm, Keith Olberman quoted your God. Perhaps it’s a quotation worth reviewing?

Hmm, yes. Jesus… do unto others… rings a bell. Jesus… homosexuality… nope. Nothing.

@seven: death penalty for atheists, should we go ahead and make that a law too?

Cherry-picking biblical laws to suit your agenda just makes you a run-of-the-mill bigot.

@seVen, I don’t understand how, unless you’re reading the Bible in its original Greek form, it could possibly be quoted as an authority for anything. How do you even know what it really says? Christians, unlike Jews and Muslims, do not read their “sacred text” in its language of origin.

The idea of “do unto others” is common to all religions. Quite frankly, if man is created in God’s image, then God must be thought and reason, because that’s the differentiator between man and other animals.

I think its a race to the bottom as to who is a more dispicable person, Olberman or O’Reilly. Olberman’s piece was ideological driven propaganda, as are many of the recent stories blaming the Mormans, etc. If anyone actually bothered to look at the voting data, it was the black and hispanic vote that really helped in the passing of Prop. 8. Both groups overwhelmingly supported Prop. 8 and overwhelmingly voted for Obama, of which they were lavisly praised by the liberal media. Apparently they didn’t have the intellectual honesty to point out it was their vote that helped passed Prop. 8! Olberman is as much of a deluded hate monger as those he berates on his pathetic show.

I don’t think Prop 8 has anything to do with the presidential election. Don’t “mix the pigs in with the chickens”, as the expression goes. Mutually exclusive topics.

@AlfredaPrufrock – actually, yes they do, the turn-out for blacks and hispanics this presidential election cycle was much higher than historical norms, for obvious reasons. If they were at historical levels, the difference would have been more than enough to defeat Prop. 8.

And yet again seVen goes on a biblical rant to get the attention of everyone here and cause a commotion. Sometimes I think you’re full of yourself to start some pointless arguments.

It was an opinion piece, as such it is allowed to be “propoganda”. We’ve all seen the figures showing that blacks and latinos voted in favor of prop 8, so obviously it’s being reported. The point is that the Mormon church spent millions of dollars reaching out to those populations with their propoganda. No matter how you slice it, religious folks of many creeds oppose gay marriage on the grounds of immorality. See my take on that here.

@augustian – did you then also see the data that showed a ridiculously small number of votes for Prop. 8 were actually influenced by the money the religious organizations (which included more than just the Mormons by the way)?

I have not seen that data. How would such data be accurately gathered?

yes. I agreed with everything he said. And he said it so eloquently.

It was beautiful. He put into words what I’ve been thinking and feeling about the shameful passing of Prop 8.

@paradoxer: check your data -that line of bull about black & Latino voters spewed by Bill O’Reilly has been debunked.

anyone from California who can shed some light on what the word on the street is about this?

There are many legal challenges – it appears to violate the separation clause and the equal-protection clause in the federal Constitution. I’ll be shocked if it becomes law.

More info here.

@Dave – you are joking right? FiveThirtyEight is composed of liberal baseball statisticians. The data I’m looking at comes from the Democratic party internal polling.

@paradoxer

From Slate.com: re the Mormon church
The narrow margin of victory for California’s Proposition 8, an amendment to the state constitution banning gay marriage, may be attributable to millions of dollars in donations from members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The Mormons’ support for the ballot measure is no small irony given the Church’s onetime support of polygamy. The Church disavowed that doctrine in 1890 so that Utah could become a state, but renegade Mormon sects continue to practice polygamy today.

LDS leaders expressed support for Proposition 8 in letters to congregations, Web videos, and outreach efforts with the Protect Marriage Coalition. Church elders pressed followers to “support in every way possible the sacred institution of marriage as we know it to be.” That translated into at least $14 million in donations from individual Mormons and Mormon-owned businesses, according to a 25-page spreadsheet posted on the Web site Mormonsfor8.com (excerpts below and on the following two pages). Mormon contributors are identified by first name and last initial, while non-Mormons are listed with full names. At least one donor, Alan A. from Lindon, Utah gave $1,000,000 to prevent same-sex couples two states away from enjoying legally-wedded bliss (Page 3).

From Slate.com: re the black vote
According to the ‘08 exit poll, blacks favored Proposition 8 by a margin of 70 to 30. (All other ethnic groups were about evenly split on the measure, with white voters leaning slightly against it.) Given these numbers, we can imagine an alternative history: Had 500,000 African-American voters stayed home Tuesday, Proposition 8 would have received 350,000 fewer yes votes and 150,000 fewer no votes. The measure is currently leading by at least 400,000 votes, so the black turnout alone didn’t flip it—but the margin would have been significantly closer had Obama’s supporters not been out in force.

@syz – I don’t know why you and others like to quote sources that have a political axe to grind. In addition, exit polling data is notoriously flawed. One only has to look at the public exit polling data from the 2004 election that showed Kerry was going to win. There is a reason both the Republican and Democratic parties commission their own internal polling, it is more reliable. If exit polling were the gold standard, why would they spend millions on internal polling? The data I’m looking at is the same data that is provided to the Democratic leadership (yes, I have an inside source), and I’ve cross referenced it with the Republican internal polling data. The bottom line is that the extraordinary turn out of black and hispanic voters had far more to do with Prop. 8 passing than did all of the money that the LDS or any other organization poured into it. For obvious reasons, this fact isn’t being told because it is easier to blame religious zealotry than to denigrate minorities. No Democrat has the balls to alienate a constituency.

The Democratic and Republican parties don’t have political axes to grind?

@laureth – yep, they certainly do but they pay independent third parties to do their polling. It does them no good to lie to themselves, they want solid data to make sound decisions. As I mentioned, I cross referenced the Republican data and the Democratic data as an additional check and they were essentially the same. They do not make this data public because in many instances, it conflicts with their own rhetoric.

@paradoxer—At least they’re actually quoting sources, unlike you. You claim you’re looking at information, apparently that you feel is unbiased, but you haven’t offered any links for anyone else to look at and judge for themselves.