1) Robert Benne and Gerald McDermott expose Thirteen Bad Arguments in Favor of Same-Sex Marriage.
2) We completely understand Dick Cheney's desire to be supportive of his lesbian daughter. Presumably he disagrees with her choices, though that is not entirely clear. His comments earlier this week on gay marriage muddied the water and seemed to cast doubt on his support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. He would have done better simply to say, "I love my daughter" if that's what he wanted to say, or he should have said, "I support the President," if that's what he meant to say. Or he could have said, "I love my daughter and I support the President," and we would all have understood his predicament. Just goes to show that it's usually not a good idea to mix personal concerns and public policy.
3) One final thought re: Paul Hamm and the gold medal controversy. It's a sign of the times. After being told again and again that there are no absolute standards and no such thing as ultimate truth, it figures that no decision can ever be regarded as final. Now the prevailing rule seems to be, Don't hurt anyone's feelings. So even when the rules for appealing a mistake were not followed, we still have talk about how to make things right. You make things right by following the rules in the first place.
4) A friend suffers from cancer that threatens to take her life in the next few months. Another friend is deeply concerned and wrote me a note that included this sentence: "We are really going to have to buckle down and pray hard for her." For some reason, I can't quite get that sentence out of my mind. It seems entirely biblical to me. Most of us don't "buckle down" in prayer very often. James 5:16 reminds us that "the earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and wonderful results" (NLT). The word "earnest" can mean "fervent" or even "boiling." A "boiling" prayer speaks not of length or loudness, but of the deep concern of the heart. It's how you pray when a loved one goes into surgery, or when your son in the Marines is sent to Iraq. Perhaps God puts us (or our loved ones) in crisis situations so we will do what we ought to do all the time--buckle down and pray.
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