Depressing Fact

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer is currently the most reviewed book on LibraryThing.

Extra Post: The Sanctity of Marriage

While researching the previous entry, I came across a lovely, but unattributed list of proposed additional constitutional amendments to further pull marriage into alignment with the Bible. (Scroll down to Brutus' 12/10/2008 post here.) After a bit of sleuthing, I found the original author. (Hooray, Google!) Below is an excerpt from the Alex Frantz's blog Public Nuisance, August 18, 2008. If you copy this, please do credit the original author, as I do so loathe plagiarism:

So here, in support of the Prayer Team's admirable goals, is a proposed Constitutional Amendment codifying marriage entirely on biblical principles:

1 Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women.¹ Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives.²

2 A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed.³ Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden.⁴

3 Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce.⁵

4 If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law.⁶

1: Gen. 29, 17 - 28; II Sam. 3, 2 - 5.
2: II Sam. 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21
3: Deut. 22, 13 - 21
4: Gen 24:3; Num 25 1 - 9; Ezra 9:12; Neh. 10:30
5: Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9
6: Gen. 38 6 - 10; Deut 25 5 - 10

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(Note: I desperately want to fix the Biblical punctuation in the footnotes, but that kind of goes against the whole notion of "quoting," I suppose.)

Queer Eye for the Protester Guy

[update 21 November, 2008, 11:42 AM: more detailed photo credits]

Above are some photos of the Rochester, NY rally against the passage of California Proposition 8. (Thanks for the pics, Gerry Szymanski and Bess Watts!) The crowd ended up filling the entire block, despite the rain.

There was a lone counter protester, and I'm afraid that he wasn't really up to the task. We probably should have sent a gaggle of gay guys across the street to gussy up his message. Here are a few pointers for future counter-protestors:

1. COLOR! You are competing against a freaking rainbow flag. Now is not the time for minimalism. (Partial credit, though, for the yellow rain slicker and red hat.)
   
2. VISIBILITY! That Sharpie isn't working for me, and let's not even start with the penmanship.
   
3. SPELLING! If you love marriage so much, please learn to spell it.
4. FACTS! SaveMarriage.Org is not a real website. (Neither is SaveMarriag.Org, if we're going to be sticklers.) You can't just wish a website into existence.
5. LAMINATE! How do you think God felt when you gave up after 45 minutes just because your sign fell apart?
   

The sad irony is that you were only two blocks away from the best art store in New York. Next time God calls you to heckle, stop into the shop beforehand and ask the nice folks to help you. Yes, they're artists. Yes, lots of artists are gay. God is totally OK with that. You don't see him complaining about the Sistine Chapel, do you?

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Today's writing totals:
Novel: 786 words (I found the ending!)
Blog: 247
DAILY TOTAL: 1,033 words

NOVEMBER RUNNING TOTAL: 7,380/15,000 words