The images don't match the writing...  How do you picture hypocrisy?  

So here’s the deal:  The Reverend Rick Warren, senior pastor of the Orange County Saddleback Church and 13 other folks who describe themselves as religious and civic leaders have written a letter to President Obama asking for an exemption from the anti-discrimination rule for their churches and/or civic organizations.  In other words they want to continue two practices: they want to continue to discriminate against people whose sexual orientation offends them, and they want to continue to receive taxpayer money from the government which they now get to fund programs they have set up to provide service to citizens.  Also in other words, they want what the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling gave to Hobby Lobby, a for-profit company.  Hobby Lobby got exemption from government mandated requirements which the company’s owners say God doesn’t like. The Hobby Lobby folks claim God doesn’t like sexual activity that could be considered recreational.  If you do IT just because IT feels good, you displease God presumably because God wants you to do IT only when you are participating in His plan to populate the earth.

But the religious and civic leaders who wrote the letter pleading for exemption this time aren’t asking for permission to deny contraceptive health care.  They assume their battle in that regard has been won.  What they want is the government’s blessing of their discriminatory practices regarding LGBT citizens, to go along with the huge blessing religious organizations already receive in the form of exemption from having to pay taxes.  Warren and his religious bedfellows say in their petition that the right to religious freedom trumps LGBT rights to civil justice, LGBT rights to be treated like all other citizens.  Reverend Warren and his other religious leaders say in their letter, “We still live in a nation with different beliefs about sexuality.  We must find a way to respect diversity of opinion on this issue.” 

What Pastor Warren and his clergy colleagues are actually saying is that religious freedom and human rights are incompatible, and they expect the country to bend in the direction of unrestrained religious freedom. 

Go online to read Michael Hiltzik’s piece in today’s Business Section of the L.A. Times.

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-lgbts-from-work-20140715-column.html#page=1

The yellow day lily bloomed this morning in my yard. 

I got the picture of the rainbow flag on a balcony in Hillcrest.  

I talked my friend Clyde into sitting for a portrait with whimsical devils at a temporary construction site wall.   Here, Pastor Warren, is a man of keen intelligence, extraordinary talent, and unquestioned integrity.  You and your friends would deny him and his spouse full civil rights.