COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATIVES IN MARYLAND

From the Baltimore Sun (if the link doesn't work, try this):

...Conservative and Christian groups are mounting a widespread effort - using e-mails and Web sites with often-fiery rhetoric - against four bills they charge promote the gay agenda.

"Pray that God's will be done and that all the churches rise up against these bills," says an e-mail distributed to members of the Christian Coalition of Maryland....

The legislation would add gays to the categories of people protected under the state's hate-crime laws, allow unmarried couples to make property transfers without paying state or local taxes and require schools to report bullying incidents....

[VoteMarriage.org and Take Back Maryland], along with other organizations, such as the Christian Coalition of Maryland, Defend Maryland Marriage and the Family Protection Lobby, also are supporting Del. Donald H. Dwyer Jr.'s petition efforts to repeal a bill to give unmarried couples medical decision-making rights, among other benefits....

Yeah, this is what Jesus would do.

I think the opposition to the bullying bill is my personal favorite. It reminds me of this charming anecdote from the recent Rolling Stone article on a conference of "Dominionists" (right-wing Christians who think right-wing Christians need to take over the U.S. government):

[Gary] Cass [executive director of Reclaiming America] also presents another small-town activist, Kevin McCoy, with a Salt and Light Award for leading a successful campaign to shut down an anti-bullying program in West Virginia schools. McCoy, a soft-spoken, prematurely gray postal worker, fought to end the program because it taught tolerance for gay people -- and thus, in his view, constituted a "thinly disguised effort to promote the homosexual agenda." "What America needs," Cass tells the faithful, "is more Kevin McCoys."

Charming.

The pro-bullyists in Maryland say pretty much the same thing, the Sun reports:

Kerns and other opponents of the bill say they fear it would be used to discuss homosexuality in the classroom.

On the VoteMarriage.org Web site, the gay-rights agenda is described as working to "program future youth to be led as lambs into the dangerous and denigrating homosexual lifestyle."

Delegate Richard S. Madaleno Jr., who supports the bill, has a response for that:

"I guess the whole idea is a 14-year-old should be beaten senseless in order to be a straight person," said Madaleno.

Yup, I think that's about right.