Greetings!
I hope this finds you and yours well. The Maes family continues grounding itself in what may be the closest thing to what many would call a normal life. My career at Integra Telecom continues to flourish and my role as a sales manager truly allows my skills to benefit others and the company, even as I work to improve myself in the high tech side of the industry.
Another area of my experience there is one that I never anticipated and continue to challenge myself with. Two gentlemen I often share the lunch room with are gay. They aren't ashamed to discuss it but also do not desire to bring attention to it. Others in the company are openly gay and I suspect one or two may be that aren't so open about it.
Today's political environment is so bombastic and caustic when we bring the extremes in that it is difficult to have a logical and open conversation about certain issues. One of many things I admire about these two gentlemen is that they know clearly where I stand a a conservative Christian on the issues and yet we can have regular and civil conversations about how our lives are so opposite on one particular issue yet, generally speaking, they are conservative on many other issues.
Before I continue I have to brace you all for seeing things from multiple viewpoints. One of those conservative issues is a constitutional view of the subject of gay rights. During the campaign one thing that really rose my ire was when someone would ask me a question with the intent of setting me up to embarrass me. It's more than gotcha politics, It's premeditated intent to manipulate you then take you out. In this case it was a very constitutional group with a female inquisitor that liked my strong constitutional philosophies but then asked me about gay marriage. I stated my clear opposition to but then she confronted me with the very strong constitutional argument of limited government, pursuit of happiness equal protection under the law, etc. I was challenged to say the least. Libertarians could take a queue from her. She didn't insult my faith and how it guided my thoughts. She made a case for the constitution and we agreed to disagree.
Back to the lunch room. The same argument was made to me by these two articulate men and it was done on the context of them being able to make it very personal about them and their desire to be happy. One in particular has a way of appealing to my moral foundation as he too is believer struggling with reconciling his lifestyle to his faith. I find the discussion beneficial and think we conservative Christians need to come into the world and understand it rather than segregate ourselves in self righteousness and judge rather than live out our faith with "being in the world but not being of the world".
I waited until a Sunday to write this hoping the issue had not cleared the legislature yet. As of this writing it is not done. The reason for a Sunday is that it is one of the days I finally have a few minutes, and secondly I want to write with a spiritual perspective after getting in line again spiritually after being "in the world" all week. I can not get past the moral and spiritual truth that we are all created in God's image and our first order of business is to love God and then each other. (Don't delete or unsubscribe just yet. I am not finished). Scripture does not say "except if gay". Our constitution does not state, "except if gay".
For those of you who didn't hit delete or unsubscribe your reward is coming. Although this may also be debated until the cows come home, our founding documents clearly recognize the divine and a God. That Judeo-Christian God clearly states that marriage is for a man and a woman, period. Labelling it a civil union is simply playing word games just as the marijuana crowd uses the argument, "it's no worse than alcohol". I digress.
So to the Republicans who pandered to the right when it came to marriage, standing on their alleged conservative Christian soapbox I say, "Put your money where your mouth was" and vote against this bill. For if there is one thing that politics wreaks of is hypocrisy. And we are tired of it. Do what you said you would do. Vote the way you lead us to believe you would if confronted with this issue.
With that said, I think there are many civil remedies already in place for gays that address this issue. If there are any more then bring it to your legislator and let's examine it. Civil rights must not be denied, but civil unions must be. | 
