The fragment of autobiography from Josephus shows that this was still acceptable among at least the Jerusalem aristocracy as well, and I cannot read I Timothy or Titus and their ’special regulation’ for Church leaders that requires a leader to be the ‘husband of one wife’ as anything but demonstrating that this was not a regulation for the Church as a whole.

Even Jesus’ condemnation of divorce does not necessarily imply that a man can’t have more than one wife, just that he can’t divorce one he has.

What a bizarre notion. If my church is willing to marry a 13-year-old girl to a 20-year-old man, the law must recognize that marriage (and suspend the prohibition on statutory rape) even if it contravenes public policy that opposes making girls into wives and mothers before they’ve even started high school?

That sentence reveals just how disturbing these people’s ideas about the law actually are. They see the law as a servant to their beliefs, rather than as something that exists independently of their beliefs. And if the law refuses to be a servant, these people feel justified in “civil disobedience.” I just hope that in their attempts to invoke the legacy of the civil rights movement, they’re as nonviolent and accepting of the penalties for violating the law as MLK and other civil rights protesters were.

It would be nice to think this mindset could be dismissed with “Silly fundamentalists, don’t they know about the First Amendment?” But there’s serious threats lurking. One religious group, protesting the passage of hate crimes legislation that would include sexual orientation, said they were considering making a “test case” for the constitutionality of the law. That means they’re thinking about having someone COMMIT A CRIME against another human being — whether it’s robbery, assault, harassment or threats — in order to “test” the law. There’s no way to test a hate crimes law without committing a crime. That’s how low they’re willing to go.

Even marriage equality may come to have a more than symbolic relevance for these people and the institutions with which they’re associated. If we ever manage to get federal law to recognize same-sex marriage, for instance, “Christian” employers may find themselves having to accord the same treatment to married gay employees when it comes to payroll taxes that they accord to straight couples. This shouldn’t be a big deal, you’d think, but I’m sure someone will say it would violate his religious beliefs to take an action that implicitly recognizes the equality or existence of same-sex marriages.

But thank God for the First Amendment! However much I disagree with this rhetoric, and however hateful I find it, these people have a right to believe what they believe and to tell the rest of us what they think.

Conversely, it looks like the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial will unfold on it’s scheduled date: 1-11-2010 @ 8:30 AM. The proponents had threatened to withhold essential documents from the plaintiffs until the 9th Circuit ruled on their appeal, but Walker ordered them, again, to produce the documents, immediately, and on a “rolling basis,” and must be completed by the already established deadline on the 11-30 -09 discovery deadline. The next step after that is for the plaintiffs to depose 5 key proponent campaign managers, but they must do this between 12-01, and 12-11, because the proponents have threatened that they will not allow their clients to be deposed within 30 days of the scheduled trial date, but Walker will be speaking with both parties on Monday, 11-23 at noon. I’m assuming that he will check in with the discovery process, and facilitate an efficient deposition schedule. The plaintiffs only have one shot at deposing the campaign managers, and this deposition, along with the requested discovery documents, are “central to the plaintiffs claims,” said Walker.