On the gay marriage thing ...

Take a deep breath, unclutch your pearls, disengage your prejudices, and engage your brain.

RE: the Court's decision today ...

1. It does not mean that you will be forced into a gay marriage. Same sex marriage will not be mandatory. Those who choose to, may now enter into such a union and enjoy all the benefits and suffer all the potential pitfalls of those entering into a conventional marriage.
2. The birth rate will not decline. Honestly, no joke. A caller to a Christian radio program in Milwaukee a while back fretted that if gays are allowed to marry, the population of America will decline precipitously because gays cannot procreate. It initiated my most painful face palm to date. 
3. Your conventional marriage will not be threatened. No one's out to bust up your happy union. No one wants to tear your family apart. No one wants to make marriage between a man and a woman illegal. Chill.
4. It is not the first step on a slippery slope. The constitutionality of a marriage between a man and a goat or a woman and a donkey will not be on the Supreme Court's docket next year, or the next, or the next. If it is, call me and I will arrange a fine banquet for you and your family at one of America's finest fast food restaurants. 
5. It's not an 'in-your-face' to God. There are other marriage configurations mentioned in the bible besides the one man, one woman construct so stridently voiced today. 
6. Any earthquakes, tornadoes,  mass shootings, floods, droughts, hangnails, lost keys, constipations, rashes, cold soup, inconvenient stop light timings, or blue screens will not be a sign of God's displeasure. Hey, if you can say it is, I can say it's not. Neither of us knows what God's thinking. For that matter, neither of us knows for sure if God exists or not. You can say you know in your heart that God's out there, but feelings aren't proof. 
7. The basis of a healthy, solid family I believe is love, not gender. Love's the trump card. It means that you would do anything for those you love, even lay down your life.
   
   Let me not to the marriage of true minds
   Admit impediments. Love is not love
   Which alters when it alteration finds,
   Or bends with the remover to remove:
   O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
   That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
   It is the star to every wandering bark,
   Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
   Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
   Within his bending sickle's compass come;
   Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
   But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
        If this be error and upon me proved,
        I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
   
   Wm. Shakespeare, Sonnet CXVI