Join me in supporting Maryland's Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act

To all my friends and readers who live in Maryland, I'm asking you to take a few minutes of your time to work for the civil rights of your fellow Marylanders. Our state legislators return to Annapolis this week to begin their 90-day regular session. This is the critical window of time to gather cosponsors for The Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act. No matter what your religious convictions, I think you will agree that it's time for Maryland to institute freedom of religion. Freedom of religion means that churches, synagogues, mosques or other religious institutions may decide whether to marry any particular couple. No religious institution will be forced to perform or honor the civil marriage of a same-sex couple.

The greater the number of cosponsors, the more pressure on undecided legislators. Legislators will only cosponsor if they hear from their constituents. So it's up to you and me to make sure our legislators know how important this legislation is to the security and well being of LGBT families in Maryland.

Last fall, I had some simple surgery done at one of the many great hospitals in Baltimore. Although in the end everything turned out fine and I'm in great health today, there was a complication during surgery that required me to stay an extra night in the hospital, and to spend one night in the ICU. Fortunately, my surgeon has known both me and my partner for years, and was very compassionate during this stressful time. We know that we are extremely fortunate. In another hospital, with another doctor, my partner could have been completely excluded from my care. As it was, she waited for 6 hours while I was in surgery. Can you imagine if she had been told she could not see me in ICU because she was not "family"?

Without passage of this important legislation, that just as easily could have happened. A marriage license brings with it hundreds of state protections that same-sex couples in Maryland are denied. Here a just a few:

• Ability to extend health insurance benefits to a spouse
• Right to hospital visitation with and to make medical decisions for an incapacitated spouse
• Added protection for children
• Ability to inherit property without incurring tax penalties
• Ability to name your spouse as primary beneficiary of life insurance without him/her incurring tax penalties
• Right to make burial decisions
• Right to sue for wrongful death

With the Court of Appeals failing to end this discrimination, the struggle to win the freedom to marry for same-sex couples now turns to our elected officials in Annapolis.

Please join me in contacting our state legislators to ask them to support the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act. A civil marriage is a civil right. Please click here to read more about the Act, and to send a message to your state legislators in Annapolis.

The scourge of heterosexuality

From The Huffington Post:

When sixth grade teacher Kelsey Peterson fled to Mexico with her 13 year old "lover" late last month, my heart told me it was time to speak out. But fear told me not to; in today's PC world, there's no sin so great as speaking the truth. Then, last night, I opened the paper to find that Norma Giannini, a 79 year old Roman Catholic nun had pleaded no contest to repeatedly sexually abusing two middle school boys.

But it's time that somebody spoke up for our children, and pulled them out of the clutches of these sick, perverted heterosexual women. Let the "straight" apologists say what they will, but the simple truth of the matter is that most child molesters are heterosexual. The only unusual aspect of these cases is that the perpetrators were female, while the vast majority of child sexual abusers are heterosexual males. And yet we still are asked to put our children in the hands of these heterosexual deviants each day we send them to school.

Well, I've had enough. We all know a pattern when we see one, and while we're doing our best not to bruise these perverts' feelings, our children are being inflicted with emotional scars that will last their entire lives. The scourge of heterosexuality is here, it's among us, and it's time to fight back.

Read more about these perverts, who are lurking at this very moment in your community, here.