Who could withstand the onslaught of warm air and occasional drizzle? But they should have known. The Washington state legislature voted to legalize same-sex marriage on February 8, and the day before that a court in California struck down laws against same-sex marriage. This punishment through horrible warmness and light rain is the natural outcome.

At least that’s what fundamentalist Christian leaders John Hagee and Pat Robertson and Stephen Bennett and John Piper and Graham Dow and Yehuda Levin say. They say that weather is God’s divine judgment against communities embracing sodomicious equal rights. So yea, people of Seattle, tho ye quaver and ye shake yon fisties at the heavens, know this is a Mighty Tepid Mist of DOOM! Los Angeles, you’re next! In a few weeks! Maybe!

“Marriage is defined and has always been defined as ‘one man and one woman.’ We simply cannot allow 50 different definitions of marriage.”

We cannot allow 50 different definitions of marriage? Why not? For that matter, what choice do we really have?

Most people who have been married for any length of time understand that every married couple has its own definition of marriage. There are millions of different definitions of marriage in the America today. That’s life.

Rick Santorum does not live in the same world you and I inhabit. Santorum lives in a fantasy land where everyone has the same idea about what marriage is supposed to be, and how it’s supposed to work. It’s an outdated Leave It To Beaver model of marriage that wasn’t even accurate back in the 1950s.

We need a President of the United States who can deal with the world as it is, not the world as he wishes it could be. In the real world, several states recognize that the scope of marriage is bigger than what’s imagined in Rick Santorum’s small vision.

Marriage is not and has not always been defined as only between one man and one woman. That’s a fact. If Rick Santorum still doesn’t feel ready to learn the facts, that’s his business. Let’s just not allow him to bring his ignorance into the White House.

Tony Perkins, of the Christian right wing Family Research Council has denounced the ability of characters in an online video game to enter into homosexual relationships. Characters in the game are not able to have actual sex, but are able to form same-sex romantic attachments.

The video game, Star Wars – The Old Republic, is set in a time thousands of years before the rise of Darth Vader. That particular detail of the the video game got me wondering what the theological justification is for getting upset about the relationship status of fictional extraterrestrials in far away galaxies in the distant past.

There is no Christian Bible in the Star Wars world. The characters aren’t humans. They’re extraterrestrials. If Darth Vader lived “a long time ago”, and the video game is set thousands of years before Darth Vader, that means that the characters in the video game lived long before the book of Leviticus, which right wing Christians cite as the source of the ban on homosexuality, was written. So, how can Christians object to the idea that somewhere on another planet, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, members of another species had same-gender sexual bonding habits?

Jesus didn’t preach on the moon of Endor, as far as I know. There’s no way that the characters in the Star Wars video game could have read the book of Leviticus. Leviticus was never published anywhere in the galactic republic of the Star Wars world, so, even if the authority of the god of the ancient Israelites were supposed to extend all the way to this distant galaxy, the specific prohibition against homosexuality from Leviticus never seems to have been imposed there.

Besides that, Leviticus declares that “You shall not lie with mankind, as with womankind”. That’s men and women. It doesn’t say anything about what ewoks or wookies should do.

Finally, and yet most obviously, the Star Wars universe does not exist. It’s fictional. So, the characters there aren’t really in homosexual relationships, are they?

Many people would point out that the god of the Bible is fictional too – just a different kind of fiction from the fiction of the Star Wars universe. These two fictional settings are completely separate. To get upset with characters in the Star Wars universe about their lack of obedience to the rules made by the divine main character of the Bible is kind of like getting upset with Peter Pan for not helping Dorothy and her friends defeat the Wicked Witch of the West.

Maybe Tony Perkins and his friends at the Family Research Council believe that their deity is so powerful that its laws against homosexual relationships apply to absolutely everything – even fictional non-human species in distant galaxies in far away galaxies. If that’s the case, though, surely there would also be a ban against homosexual relationships among non-human species here on Earth. There are plenty of non-human creatures on Earth, however, who engage in homosexual relationships. If it’s wrong for non-human fictional creatures to have homosexual relationships, then it must be wrong for non-human creatures on Earth to have homosexual relationships too. So, why isn’t Tony Perkins preaching to these creatures to change their ways?

This wasn’t a statement that came from just one part of the nation. The following map shows the cities whose mayors have signed the Freedom to Marry statement. A full list of the mayors’ names is provided here.

P.S. Unless you’re gay.

Newt Gingrich would have had a point if he supported policies of freedom and self-determination in marriage for other people. But he doesn’t. Newt Gingrich is all about freedom for himself, and all about taking freedom away from other people. What a despicable man.

How DARE he? He’s running in a presidential contest and the American people have the collective memory of, oh, what’s a dim, slimy little scurrying animal with incredibly low self-awareness? Right, a Newt.

The possibilities for a new Gingrich campaign slogan are plentiful:

Gingrich 2012: “I’m Open, America”

I think maybe I should start seeing other candidates, Newt.

Gingrich-Edwards 2012: A Mistress in Every Pot

Gingrich-Ensign 2012: Traditional Marriage, heh heh.

Newt Gingrich for President, Carrot Top for Pope

Gingrich 2012: If We Let Lesbians Marry, Where Will I Pick Up Chicks?

Tawdry-Inappropriate 2012

Newt Gingrich: A New Era of Openness (OK with Callista)

Gingrich ’12: Traditional Values, Unless Your Name Rhymes with “Flute”

Newt ’12: Lookit what the Gays did to my marriages!

There must be more than this. Can you come up with the new Newt Gingrich presidential campaign slogan in this new era of Openness?

Over the last few years, however, American culture has had an important shift. Attacks against homosexuals aren’t so popular anymore. It’s not that the number of homosexual Americans has changed. What’s changed is that most heterosexual Americans are not willing to stand by silently and do nothing while their homosexual neighbors are used as punching bags by opportunistic politicians.

The majority of Americans now support full legal equality for gays, lesbians, transexuals and bisexuals. That majority includes large numbers of Republican voters.

So it was that when Rick Santorum brought out his old attacks against homosexuals this week, his audience of New Hampshire Republicans decided that they weren’t going to tolerate Santorum’s intolerance. The Republican crowd booed at Santorum as he repeated his anti-equality slurs.

Of course, the problem isn’t just with Rick Santorum. There isn’t a single top tier Republican presidential candidate who accepts the right of homosexual Americans to equality under the law.

To confront the Republican candidates’ homophobic bigotry, there will be a protest march tomorrow in Manchester, New Hampshire. The march, called the Pride Walk, will begin at 12:00 Noon in Veteran’s Park, moving toward Victory Park.

The march’s organizers explain, “The PRIDE WALK is a response and a reaction to the negative and hateful campaigning some of our Presidential candidates have demonstrated. Attacks against the GLBTQ community is a form of bullying that is unacceptable in our Free state. We are standing up for NH Families and the right for equality in marriage to remain law.”

• Stephen Bennett
• Harold Camping
• Graham Dow
• John Hagee
• Yehuda Levin
• John Piper
• Pat Robertson

… have repeatedly insisted that God uses the weather as an instrument of punishing judgment when gay and lesbian people in a community step out of hiding and engage in the sort of acts public affection that straight people take for granted. Holding hands. Getting married. Kissing. That sort of thing, according to the religious leaders listed above, will lead to killer tornadoes, floods and hurricanes.

A perfect test for this notion arose on December 22 of 2011 when two women in the Navy were granted the public honor of the “first kiss” after arriving in port in San Diego, California. Navy-sanctioned photos of the two women kissing each other, and of sailors applauding, spread around the world. It’s the sort of thing that’s happened for straight military couples for over a hundred years, but this was the first same-sex “first kiss.”

So what hit San Diego for the offense of hosting this public display of sapphic love? Was it a hurricane? A tsunami? An earthquake? A volcano?

Nope. The day of the kiss, San Diego was cursed with warm air and sunshine. The next day, too.

What’s next? Will Yahweh send accursed same-sex couples to the comfy chair?

This move is yet another demonstration of the Republican Party’s disregard for…

… what? Pardon? Oh, dear. You say it’s the Democratic Party administration of President Barack Obama, not the Republican Party administration of President George W. Bush, that’s responsible for this fiasco? No, no, no. That can’t possibly be true. You see, political interference in scientific decisionmaking to abet a conservative agenda is a Republican thing, not a Democratic thing. Interfering with women’s reproductive choices is a Bush thing, not an Obama thing. I’m sure of it, because President Barack Obama promised right there in his inaugural speech to “restore science to its rightful place” and leave the politics out of it, and President Obama is a sincere man who would never go back on his word. He’s the Change We Can Believe In, so he couldn’t have possibly done this. All the news stories pinning this on Obama must have been written by Karl Rove. Yes, that’s it. Karl Rove is the one to blame.