SC anti-gay activist acknowledges that marriage equality will come to the Palmetto State

Oran Smith of the Palmetto Family Council (center) celebrates in 2004 with SC state legislators when the state legislature introduced anti-marriage equality bill which was passed two years later via referendum. Smith is singing a sadder tune now.

It's hard to believe but in my eight years of blogging, I don't think I have ever written a lot of posts on the anti-gay religious right group in my state of South Carolina, the Palmetto Family Council.

This is probably because the council is a low-key, ineffective organization which takes for granted the fact that it is located in a Bible Belt state.

The lgbt community and the Palmetto Family Council generally don't grapple over equality issues, except for in 2006 when the organization successfully led the charge to pass a statewide anti-marriage equality amendment.

However, this success was not necessarily due to anything done by the Palmetto Family Council, but the momentum against marriage equality back then. And as that momentum shifts in the favor of marriage equality, it turns out that the Palmetto Family Council is already accepting the inevitable outcome that marriage equality will come to the Palmetto State.

In a recent interview with the fake news site, One News Now, Palmetto Family Council president Oran Smith acknowledged this:

"[Alan Wilson] asked the state Supreme Court to rule on whether that was proper for two or three probate judges to be giving out these marriage licenses or taking applications, and the court responded to him that no -- it was not appropriate," Smith reports. "We don't have a final decision from the federal courts, so they were restrained from doing that and stopped issuing the licenses and the applications."

South Carolina is in the fourth federal Court of Appeals district to invalidate marriage amendments, so the final ruling is expected soon.

"I think South Carolina, like all the rest, will bow to that decision," the family advocate laments. "And we're then probably stuck with gay marriage in South Carolina until we have some other further progress in some other way," such as federal court decisions in Louisiana and Puerto Rico upholding one man/one woman marriage in the cases that are making their way through the circuit courts to the Supreme Court. That is, if the nation's high court decides to hear those cases.

Sorry Oran, but I think you've lost this one. Get over it.

Photo taken from the Palmetto Family Council's webpage. Take a gander at the link to see the arguments the organization used against marriage equality. And try not to bash yourself over the head while repeatedly muttering, "I can't believe they got this through the legislature with those slack-assed arguments.

'Incident underscores need for talk about homophobia in black community' & other Monday midday news briefs

How the Morehouse Football Team ruined Dear White People and proved its point - From the author of this piece - 

"I want you to imagine yourself in a dark room with a hundred physically fit men rooting for a hate crime to be perpetrated against a gay man. It was terrifying. It was horrifying. It was depressing. Can you imagine what a kid on that team who was gay would have felt?" 

And what's worse, the gay guy was black and the guy punching him was a white racist. In the words of Samuel Jackson: "this here is some repugnant @#&!" 

Audio: Brian Brown advocates on behalf of pro-equality Democrat, destruction of his own party - Definite sign of the Second Coming of Jesus.  

Top Methodist Court Officially Reinstates Pastor Defrocked For Officiating Son’s Gay Wedding - Awesome news!  

Westboro Baptist Church Files Federal Motion To Defend Anti-Gay Marriage Ban - Oh yeah. THAT will help their case.

Anti-gay activist Robert Oscar Lopez is furious to be called out on his homophobic statements

Lopez

How do you know that you've gotten the religious right's attention?

When they publicly lie about you.

Unfortunately I am not the subject of that riddle.

 Robert Oscar Lopez is a foul individuals who claims to have been raised in a same-sex household. But he spends so much time denigrating that household and other same-sex households in such ugly fashion that he has caught a lot of attention from folks on our side of the spectrum.

Needless to say, he is not happy over it. In a piece published on the anti-gay BarbWire, he takes specific attack at lgbt groups which he claims distorts his point of view:

Read this about Paul Singer. He gave millions to the Human Rights Campaign to launch their global media initiative. The HRC then used the money to pay character assassins, formed on the mold of Jeremy Hooper (mastermind of GLAAD’s infamous Orwellian Commentator Accountability Project). The HRC had people working full-time scouring everything I’ve written or said, in order to smear me. Why? Because Paul Singer’s son is gay and I am a bisexual son of lesbians with a story that undermines the consensus on same-sex parenting, which in turn undermines the case for same-sex marriage.

So I must be destroyed by Paul Singer, with the help of the horrible Human Rights Campaign. Unsuccessful at finding real dirt on me, the HRC, Jeremy Hooper, and GLAAD had to resort to filthy slander. First, financing an artist to draw a sketch of me, caricaturing my face as a wanted criminal. Then, they resorted to lifting endless quotations from my blog that were so out-of-context, they were essentially slanderous misquotes.

Pathetic. First of all, Lopez has GLAAD's Commentator Accountability Project mixed up with Human Rights Campaign's The Export of Hate report.  The purpose of both projects is not to silence or intimidate folks but to educate on statements made by anti-gay activists

And both are accurate.