I could only make it 46 seconds before losing it.

When will it end?!

I thought West Virginia already had marriage defined as one man one sheep.

Two things: "Father's Day celebrations are not observed" in schools. Duh. It's in June, when schools are out. Also, having lived in West Virginia, I can say that heterosexuals are doing a fine job undermining marriage on their own.

I actually flinched, physically, when they superimposed the crosshairs over the "traditional family". I live in Massachusetts in just such a family (husband, wife, son, daughter) and the idea that my gay friends and acquaintances wish to do us harm, in any sense, is inconceivable.

The people who produced this ad are, quite simply, scum.

The thing I find most interesting about this ploy is that the non-existent threat is the most scary. Just as people in rural areas are more likely to buy an extreme fear of terrorism than are people in NYC or DC, the same is true of gay marriage in WV. Not that there are no gays here, but if you only counted openly gay, we'd be a bit like Iran.

I've said it before, most religion is a mental illness, whose primary symptoms are hatred and intolerance.

Crosshairs today, bleeding maps tomorrow... the Sudetenland next week.

What people don't know, they suspect.
--Mark Twain (who got it from R.F.Burton)

The further you are from everything else the more acutely you feel it.

The part that made me laugh out loud was "...one West Virginia couple on a weekend trip to San Francisco, plus one ACLU attorney, could easily become a nightmare for marriage in West Virginia." Quick! Enact a state no-fly list to keep teh gheys within state boundaries!

The poor people of WVA are the result lack of education, poverty, poor health care and malnourishment, ignorance. And the right preys on them. Sickening.

If the people of WVA had the opportunity to a decent education and health care, I guarantee this nonsense would not be so pervasive.

And that's coming from someone in KY!!

"most religion is a mental illness, whose primary symptoms are hatred and intolerance."

I'm inclined to disagree, though 'organized' religion is often very scary. People who follow a true spirituality usually do so to improve/fulfill an inner sense of self amidst a larger context. That calling usually leads to a sense of peace and kindness towards others.

What you have here is more like a politicized perversion of religion. The scum behind this are politicians and certain "send me money and I'll pray for you" minister-types looking to cash in on people's ignorance.

yes the crosshairs was creepy...but did anyone else notice the "good people of west virginia" shot was a bunch of white silhouettes. Maybe I'm looking too deep, but there wasn't 1 shot of a "health family" that was cross-racial.

bigots

ned...
i thought it was one cousin and another cousin.

Marler, RSM, anyone? Are you sure you want to make this your cultural legacy, given your support of Republicans?

If there's one thing that finally put me down on the side in favor of same-sex marriage -- not just civil unions, but marriage -- it was that opposing marriage for gay couples would only put me down on the side of the most hateful, most extreme elements of the right-wing electorate, and empowering them could only make the rest of the country worse off.

"Our constitutional guarantee of religious liberty is going toe to toe with an aggressive social agenda and religious liberty is losing . . ."

Huh? That's actually true, but from the opposite perspective of the narrator. It's the aggressive conservative social agenda that's restricting the religious liberty of gay and lesbian parents.

"In schools today teachers are being ordered to stop using the words mother and father . . . the very concept of motherhood is abandoned to political correctness."

OK religious right, name me one school -- one school in the entire US -- where public school teachers have been ordered to stop using the words "mother" and "father." On all the kids' forms I see references to mothers, fathers, caregivers, guardians . . . but no orders not to use "mother" or "father."

What utter, sanctimonious bigotry.

pj in jesusland, @18:02

"Our Father, who art in heaven..." and "Mary, Mother of God" are never uttered (or nt supposed to be), in public schools. That's enough for the wingnuts.

Meantime, a part of our family (my husband, I, my stepdaughter and her son) spent a big chunk of a day a few years back, frantically trying to remember that same "Our Father" and teach it to the kid, because he was going to a (private) camp, where he'd be dragged to church every Sunday. And yeah, he could have "opted out" but, when you're a kid, you don't want to be the odd one out.

Quick! Enact a state no-fly list to keep teh gheys within state boundaries!

That would be funny if I weren't confronted every day with people who want to see me and my partner wear pink triangles for identification purposes, or jailed, deported, in detention camps, or killed. Most days I can just laugh it off, but today isn't turning out to be one of those.

I could only watch about a minute before bursting out laughing. What a fairy tale, this myth of strong, stable white heterosexual marriages comprised of mature, committed white people, no doubt he with a stable job and she, a stay-at home mom, both happily taking a moment to blow bubbles with their happy, adjusted two children in their lovely house that isn't being foreclosed on. No mention that 50% of marriages end up on the rocks. I wonder why?

Sorry, Keori; I can see why that joke hit too close to home. A big FAIL for me.

Yes, I noticed that it was made up of entirely WHITE adults, and in amongst all the kids, I saw two children of color.

Brings me back to my childhood when I actually heard the term "White, Christian, America".

WOW.

So apparently the only GOD fearing union in WV is with WHITE hetrosexuals? Wasn't it next door Virgina that supplied the Supreme Court case that struck down miscegenation laws?

It's especially offensive given that Jim Adkisson murdered two people in Knoxville because their Unitarian church supports gay marriage and had a banner outside saying so.

There are people out there killing other people over gay marriage, but it ain't the gay people who are doing the shooting, assholes.

Why is it that Massachusetts, founded as a religious refuge and now one of the first states to approve of gay marriage, has the nation's lowest per capita number of divorced people living there -- 2.4 per 1000 according to the US Census Bureau?

By contrast, Texas has 4.1 per 1000. If I were a West Virginian I'd be more worried about hypocritical, santimonious Texas Christians than about Massachusetts liberals.

It's all okay, shortstop. Usually I can laugh at the ridiculousness. It's just that right now in Hawaii the Civil Unions battle has passed the House and is about the hit the Senate, and the whackaloons are losing their minds. Thursday it was people from some Pacific Islander evangelical church screaming outside the Capitol that "God made AIDS to kill you faggots!" and taking pictures of our car license plates. This week, who knows? We have crazies in Paradise, too.

"same-sex marriage in West Virginia is "a closer reality than you may think..."

Makes me think of the old joke, If you get divorced in West Virginia, is your ex-wife still your sister?

Thursday it was people from some Pacific Islander evangelical church screaming outside the Capitol that "God made AIDS to kill you faggots!" and taking pictures of our car license plates.

I have this weird belief about AIDS: God did send it, not as a curse, but as a test to see if we've been paying attention to all of the "love one another" messages S/He/They have been sending us for millennia.

We have failed the test miserably.

On a quiet night in West Virginia you can hear a young woman moan as she loses her virginity, "Get off me pa, yer crush-in my cigarettes"

exlibra: Meantime, a part of our family (my husband, I, my stepdaughter and her son) spent a big chunk of a day a few years back, frantically trying to remember that same "Our Father" and teach it to the kid, because he was going to a (private) camp, where he'd be dragged to church every Sunday. And yeah, he could have "opted out" but, when you're a kid, you don't want to be the odd one out.

For your kid's sake, I hope you straightened out in advance whether the kid needs to say the Protestant version (with the doxology) or the Catholic (without). Saying the "wrong" version could really get him branded, y'know.

W C W J U

what..

caliber..

would...

jesus...

use...

As a native West Virginian...the saddest thing is that this will probably work.

It's heartening to see the youtube comments roundly blast the damn thing though. Usually, it ends up in circle jerks about how true and how honest the video is, at least when posted by the originators in earnest.