I guess if he doesn't see marriage equality as a civil rights issue, he was right to resign.

The Rev, Ratliff is certainly entitled to hold and act on his values. I think he is wrong to dismiss gays and lesbians as indulging in "deviant behavior," and I think he's wearing blinkers if he chooses to not see same-sex marriage as a civil rights issue. He's not alone, unfortunately: many American blacks are behind the times when it comes to recognizing LGBT rights as a civil rights struggle which they should support.

From my perspective, I find it sad that one community doesn't recognize the struggle the other is going through. They could perhaps be more powerful in their continuing efforts if they joined forces.

Don't believe everything you hear about what "the Black Community" believes as a whole. That is the media distorting things to create news. The majority of gay men I have encountered in my entire life are in the black church choir. If I wanted the opinion of a gay man I would head directly to my nearest church choir because I wouldn't know where else to find one... I'm partly joking but I honestly believe this is a story hyped by the media in my opinion. The NAACP fights for and against many issues ... I guess those are no longer important to The Rev so I'm glad he did he right thing and stepped down.

I wonder what Martin Luther King Jr. would have done had he faced this question.

I'm sorry he resigned because he's right.Now we have people saying blacks are behind the times, How dare you black people not agree with some brainless white person.A man marrying a man is still unnatural. Tully

Absolutely Not! people NAACP and many others worked hard and protested for their rights . It was a hard fought uphill battle for rights and freedoms. And now he wants to deny others of their rights? We, the people , regardless of race religion gender or any other difference, all deserve the rights and freedoms of this great country

I was very proud of him for standing up for what he believes in. It doesn't matter what the subject was, it matters that he has principles.

Rev. Ratcliff made the right decision. If he truly believes homosexuality is nothing more than "deviant behavior" he is unsuited to lead a civil rights organization.

As the attitudes and words of Mr. Klinzman and many others on this issue reveals, this is not about moving gay sex into acceptance in the American mainstream. It is about the liberals' power struggle and their inability to accept that someone else would dare disagree with them. These personal character attacks in response to a viewpoint that differs from their own will escalate and they will before long be advocating the force of law to shut up their detractors, and then forcible, even violent means toward the same end. Watch it come to be.

Hm. Indeed. And we know how peaceable Labor's past has been. But treating your attempt at painting two sides, isn't it funny, your seeming black & white attempt to define it? How do you answer the young woman who wishes to play NFL ball? Equality or exception? What about the non-union electrician who wishes to work in Chicago? And the man who wants to work out in a female gym? What about a girl scout who wants to be in the boy scout troop? Come now, Klinzman, you are either for equality and include EVERYONE in EVERYTHING or you are against it in one broadly sweeping statement. No mincing now. Which side are you on? Ah, but if you DO reserve the right to discriminate -- just according to your own definition of right and wrong, then you must allow others the same freedom of thought. Tsk, tsk. How the liberal mindset encircles itself into its own noose.

Oh, hey Mr. Klinzman. Thought of one more. What if you are the hiring manager interviewing me for a job? Would my position on gay sex color your selection process if I was the best qualified applicant? You would of course be careful not to leave any evidence of discrimination, being so egalitarian and all. Do you support religious belief as a protected class? Can an orthodox Jew who does not support gay sex be free to speak against your belief? Is he free to decline to accept you as a volunteer in his soup kitchen? Are you truly for equality for ALL? TRULY?

Fine, doctor. You will then be held to a higher intellectual standard. Challenge your education, because in your "strained" (good word) legal reasoning, you illogically appear to turn a state supreme court ruling into a settled decision governing the whole country. Consult one with an advanced legal degree and sort that one out. Remember, also, that the judges in this case were then thrown out by Iowa voters. Remember also that a majority of the states have passed constitutional amendments against your position. Remember also the federal Defense of Marriage act. All conveniently left out of your intellectual analysis doctor.

Basic truth? Oh, the doctor is one who now declares insurmountable truth (in his own lofty doctatorship.) You did not answer one of my other proposed discriminations, presupposing you have no answer. By implication, you do support that discrimination not only happens, but is warranted under various circumstances. Good. There is some common sense in you.

So if we are going to pick and choose our discriminations, what standard can we agree upon for filtering the right from the wrong -- what the doctor declares as undeniable truth? You are perfectly entitled to your opinion, but my question from the start is - do you permit others their own?

How trapped in your thinking your are, Doctor. Do you depend on constitutional law to tell you what to think? What precedes what in the building of civilization, a shared ethical morality or the rule of law? Did Europeans come to this land, discover "the law", and adapt themselves to it, or did they write a new consititution and law according to their beliefs? Writing a rule, and then appealing to the rule as self-evident of truth is a classic logical flaw of circular reasoning. The standards to attain a PhD must be slipping.

This issue is not about equality in marriage - which is a cleverly branded smokescreen. It is about gay sex, and its forced acceptance. Gays won't stop short of freedom from criticism. For gay sex advocates, new laws that prevent freedom of religious expression (a.k.a. hate speech crimes) will not be a bridge too far. Then people like you will argue the law as self-evident. How convenient. Gay sex advocates push increasingly provocative displays in all media outlets. But these things already together march forward.

Doctor, you would never limit freedom of sexual activity among consenting individuals, right? Then you must not stop at two men or two women for marriage and child-raising! Why not three or more individuals in a group marriage? Someday we will be ready for that, an enlightened society, right?

Why limit marriage by age? 8th-graders are having sex and the world hasn’t ended. If they are mature enough for that decision then why not run households and provide for themselves? What about copulating with close relatives? Can't I marry my own child when she is old enough to say ‘yes’? We have moved beyond the obvious natural argument against gay sex -- it can't produce children -- so is there any doubt we'll just adopt kids until we can mess with the genes and make babies of three or four parents or more? Certainly our coming medical science will allow us to copulate with our close relatives and genetically engineer out the otherwise natural mutations that can occur.

Libs today have little objection to sex between school-aged teenagers, yes? Where is the outrage? Let's teach them how, even the gay way, and give them condoms to facilitate the process. If we are going to assist them, then why not grant them fairness under our laws? Why prohibit them from marriage?

Dr. Doctor, why do we need marriage at all? Is it not a basic truth within our humanity that anyone ought to be able to have sex with anyone and everyone else anytime as long as everyone in the room "consents"? Was it not the great coming out of our society to recognize that even a sitting President ought to be able to get a BJ from someone other than his wife in the Oval Office without consequences? Who the heck was I to judge??

You will no doubt have some dismissive response for the slippery slope we are all being dragged onto by those who think like you. You refuse to recognize that anything we can think of doing to pleasure ourselves and still call OK is a human failing to be curbed, not coddled. Human beings, when faced with comfort (excess time and resources) will endlessly seek ways to get our rocks off. The oversexed whine about their oppression from those of us who would limit them, yet daily our senses are being assaulted with their licentious behavior as it is waved in our faces via media, parades, t-shirt messages, any way they can flaunt it. That they can have sex with each other in a private place is not enough for them. They demand that every one of us to a person worship their lifestyle, and if we don’t, it is we who will be discriminated against, vilified, shut-up or shut-out of public life, yes?

The height of human greatness is not found in our sexual identity and expression. It is found in the sacrifices we make to limit ourselves for the good of others. Humility is not about demanding and granting of rights. It is about doing the hard work of admitting our faults and working together to protect one another from our baser motivations.

But you don’t need help, cuz you’re a doctor.

You need to drop your self-serving reliance a consitutional law that many people smarter and more educated than you or I have interpreted against your viewpoint. In Saudi Arabia, a U.N. member, a nation we all trade with, a nation at the table of nations, you cannot speak against the king. You cannot discuss a religion other than Islam. You don't have due process. So, since that is the law there, does that make it self-evident truth?

Let's see if you can argue the merits of gay sex without using the law as a crutch.

For thousands of years of human history, what has marriage been except a public (secular and religious) acknowledgement and encouragement of two people to make a lifelong commitment that includes and celebrates the private removal of clothing, enjoyment of sex, the natural result of which is children and family, and the resulting legacy in the passing on of values and building of society that results? This tradition is so innate to our very existence, who except modern fools would ever have thought it would need to be pre-defined in law?!

But no, we would undo all of that as wrong. We have been shortchanged by previous generations and civilizations. We would be far better off today if we had manufactured families and taught children according to the ultimate in our selfish expressions of sexuality. With the arguments that you would use to delimit one expression of sex, you cannot refuse the next person the same arguments to delimit the next expression, like sickening examples I give previously.

Your views are all about the here and now -- acceptance by the populist crowd you are afraid to stand against. You are too irresponsible to consider what the future you would create might be like for your progeny.

It would take far too long, to explain to you how ridiculous it is to compare the issues underpinning gay marriage to inter-racial marriage and inter-faith marriage, themselves incomparable to each other. It's lazy thinking.

Doctor, you need some help understanding human persuasion. What happens when a kid in a schoolyard gets picked on for wearing payless shoes and not something cool? Does he not sell his soul to get a pair of Nikes? Adults don’t behave very differently – the details just change. Very few people have the backbone to stand up to bullying, and folks like you are bullies.

You divorce a connection between condemning the beliefs of others as not limiting them? Look at this forum. How many are “for” vs “against”? Surveys have never given the gay crowd a majority on this issue, and until very recently they were never even close. Why in this generation the sudden shift toward gay acceptance? Why the lack of very may in forums like these standing up to you? Because supporters of gay sex together have chosen public, verbal bullying to advance their agenda, and most decent people are too hard at work living out their values to risk any loss of jobs and community goodwill by standing up to you – giving you a pyrrhic victory. The problem is, illusions often do become realities. You sharks smell blood and you are circling, waiting to devour, with your errant legal and philosophical arguments, anyone in your path.

But I don’t know you, so I don’t know if you are among the early pushers of this tragic story, or among the younger adherents indoctrinated by your professors and peer-pressures. You may be a victim in all of this, and the hazed often later become the hazers.

When you condemn, you apply pressure. You make others afraid to dissent and disagree because most people unfortunately place being liked and accepted above being right or even honest. You spend your time speaking out because you know it works – but so do I. I will not relinquish the floor to you even though too many others have.

So you have the right to condemn, then you must accept being condemned. I condemn your support of gay sex and deviancy. I condemn the travesty to the fabric of stable family, the foundation of stable society, represented by marriage by any other than one committed adult man and woman. I will stand up to you, Dr. Bully. You cannot complain, because you by your own words you believe it preposterous that my condemnation in any way limits you.

So there we have it, Jackson: you can only see sex in gay and lesbian relationships, and you are rationalizing your opposition to same-sex marraige based on a conditioned response. You have been (pick the verb) trained, programmed, indoctrinated, brainwashed, to be repulsed by the idea of gay and lesbian sex, and ergo cannot abide any attempt to recognize and legitimize those relationships. In case you haven't noticed, there is no act in the gay or lesbian sexual repertoires which is not also available to heterosexual couples.

Keith Ratliff, like you, cannot see gays and lesbians as anything but "deviants." He therefore resigned from a civil rights organization which supports today's most important civil rights struggle. He did the right thing.

If I were interviewing you for a job, and you displayed the behavior in the interview that you have here: obstinance, continuing an argument long after you had lost it, dismissing the perspective of others, I wouldn't hire you. You would not be able to work as part of an organization, and many, if not most, of the organizations I have worked in have had gay and lesbian team members.

Go ahead and do what I know you will, which is have the last word.

FIne, doctor, I will, in order to point out your hypocrisy to the handful here. You *would* limit the rights of someone who disagrees with you.

Good to draw you out, because we all need to know what's coming at us. And I say this as an employer, an owner of several multi-million dollar small businesses, and one who has trained, led, and by extension fed hundreds of families; built economy, built family, built community, served on numerous commissions and boards, donated more than I have kept for myself, and built something other than self with my life.

You and yours have come and attacked the values and the very way of life you did not earn but inherited from us, as we inherited it from those who came before us. I did the best I could to be responsible for the opportunity handed to me. I'm fed up with those of you ready to squander it. How happy you will be when we have died off so you can spend it with no one to parent you and say 'no'. When you have run your course, you will no longer be owners, but owned by others who will command your resources and you will wish you could still argue for decadence.

But neither one of us will have the last word. There will be no answering back the One who will with secular arguments.

Bah, humbug! Gay marriage is abt relationships -- love, commitment, & partnership -- NOT abt sex! M. Pawlenty, if "LBGT" turns on dirty movies in ur head, than I wld venture to guess that U have the problem. Human rights r what this country shld b about -- it was founded to support liberty, after all -- & as citizens, we r all tasked w supporting & promoting them. (thus spoken by another Ph.D.) if this happened a YEAR ago, why debate it now, btw?

Another illogical Dr.? Dr. Halprin, sex is all that gay marriage and acceptance of gay lifestyle is about -- because it has nothing else to offer. Saying that it is anything else is the liberal smokescreen I have been talking about. Logical proof: what in historical ethics prevents friendship? Friends can love one another in all ways aside from physical love without being frowned upon. Friends can be committed to each other in community, commerce, and mutual welfare. Friends can be partners in philanthropy, business etc.

The ONLY thing that differentiates same-sex friends from "gay" is physical intimacy. You tell me: what else besides physical intimacy defines being "gay" that isn't already available to everyone via commonly normal relationships?

And what else defines a marital relationship besides sex and the natural result -- creation of children -- that ISN'T already available via commonly normal relationships?

Remove physical intimacy from anyone's definition of marriage, and everything that is left, even sharing of/mutual contribution to a household and pooling of financial resources, is perfectly normal and acceptable to nearly everyone. Ironically, even married people today often keep financial resources separated. How backwards we are moving!

I am no prude. I thoroughly support and enjoy the dimension of physical intimacy that marriage offers, and accept the responsibility of children that derives from it.

But folks that are pro-sex w/o marriage and pro-gay marriage are all about social acceptance of the sexual activity. Defining it any other way (human "rights", love, commitment, freedom, parallels to gender/race equality issues, etc.) is all a whitewashed fence.

You either want to have sex with anyone you choose, anytime anywhere, you want to leave your physical intimacy options open by advocating this freedom for others, or you advocate this freedom to be accepted by your social circle. You don't advocate this freedom because you have worked through it rationally, because it isn't rational.

And how can this issue really be about anything BUT social acceptance of improper sexual expression when nothing legally prevents deviancy (assuming mutual consent) behind closed doors done quietly. But no, deviants want to shout their deviancy at everyone else and demand well wishes for their deviancy. There is only one reason for this. Their choices have emotionally and spiritually unsettled them, so they are crying out for social justification to set their upset souls at peace. Even when they get what they want, that disturbance will not subside. This is destruction of our moral fiber and social balance -- all for nothing.