Gay activists are taking revenge on Californians whose votes took away their right to marry. They are interrupting religious services–especially targeting Mormons–issuing threats, publicizing names of people who gave money to the anti-gay marriage cause and harrassing them, hurling racial epithets at black people who overwhelmingly voted against the measure as they came to the polls in record numbers to vote for Obama. (The majority of white people supported gay marriage.) See this news report:

The backlash against those who supported a ban on same-sex marriage continues to roil California and nearby states.

Protests and vandalism of churches, boycotts of businesses and possibly related mailings of envelopes filled with white powder have followed the passage of Proposition 8, the ballot initiative to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriages.

In Sacramento, a high-profile theater director resigned from his job of 25 years after a boycott threat over his $1,000 donation in support of the measure. In Los Angeles, a Mexican restaurant owner, a Mormon who donated $100, was reduced to tears and left town after hundreds of protesters confronted her at work, by phone and on the Internet.

“You express your beliefs and you have to be punished for it?” said Arnoldo Archila, an employee at the El Coyote restaurant. “This is not right, not in this country. This is not Iraq.”

See also What Happens If You’re on the Gay “Enemies List” - TIME, which quotes gay activists saying that while people have a right to vote the way they want, they have a free speech right to create consequences:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which opponents say donated more than $20 million to the Yes on 8 campaign, has already become a focus of protests, with demonstrators gathered around Mormon temples not only in California but across the country.

The Mormon Church is not the only group being singled out for criticism. African-Americans, 70% of whom voted yes on Proposition 8, according to a CNN exit poll, have become a target. According to eyewitness reports published on the Internet, racial epithets have been used against African-Americans at protests in California, directed even at blacks who are fighting to repeal Proposition 8. Said Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, “In any fight, there will be people who say things they shouldn’t say, but that shouldn’t divert attention from what the vast majority are saying against this, that it’s a terrible injustice.” (See the Top 10 ballot measures.)

In addition to protests, gay activists have begun publishing lists online exposing individuals and organizations who have donated money in support of Proposition 8. On AntiGayBlacklist.com, individuals who gave money toward Proposition 8 are publicized, with readers urged not to patronize their businesses or services. The list of donors was culled from data on ElectionTrack.com, which follows all contributions of over $1,000 and all contributions of over $100 given before October 17. Dentists, accountants, veterinarians and the like who gave a few thousand dollars to the cause are listed alongside major donors like the Container Supply Co., Inc. of Garden Grove, Calif., which gave $250,000. “Anyone who steps into a political fight aimed at taking away fundamental rights from fellow citizens opens themselves up to criticism,” said Wolfson. “The First Amendment gives them the right of freedom of speech and to support political views, but people also have the right to criticize them.”

Also, some progressives want to put President Bush and members of his administration on trial for policies they consider criminal, including for war crimes.

This mindset of the victors retaliating against the losers, or the losers retaliating against the winners can quickly bring the end of both democracy and liberty.

The Roman Republic fell largely due to the nasty custom of winners of elections prosecuting the former officials. Julius Caesar refused to step down from his consulate because Pompey’s faction had all kinds of charges ready for him as soon as he did so. Therefore, Caesar refused to give up power. Instead, he brought his legions across the Tiber, defeated Pompey and the Senate, and, in effect, overthrew the Republic and began the rule of Emperors. Thus ended a constitutional, representative government that had lasted 450 years, far longer than America’s experiment has.

And losers punishing political winners is a kind of extortion and intimidation that can thwart and manipulate democratic participation. Doing so is a crime against democracy itself. People must not be punished because of their political beliefs, either by the government or by other citizens. There can be no free speech right to enact retribution against people for exercising their political rights. Voters and democracy itself may need further legal protection.

E. J. Dionne is a liberal columnist, but as a Catholic he has a guilty conscience over abortion. Other progressives do too. Dionne is calling on Barack Obama to carry out his promise to find common ground with pro-lifers and to do things to reduce the number of abortions. From Obama’s Promise to Pro-Lifers:

“There surely is some common ground,” Obama declared toward the end of the third presidential debate.

He argued that “those who believe in choice and those who are opposed to abortion can come together and say, ‘We should try to prevent unintended pregnancies by providing appropriate education to our youth, communicating that sexuality is sacred and that they should not be engaged in cavalier activity, and providing options for adoption, and helping single mothers if they want to choose to keep the baby.’ ” Obama added: “Nobody’s pro-abortion.”

Once he assumes office, Obama might be tempted to forget that moment, issue the pro-choice executive orders that the abortion rights movement expects and move back to the sagging economy. But doing this would be both politically foolish and a breach of faith with the pro-life progressives who came to Obama’s defense during the campaign. They argued that Obama truly was committed to reducing the number of abortions. He shouldn’t turn them into liars.

Rep. Tim Ryan, a pro-life Democrat from Ohio, stumped all over his state urging Catholic groups and others on his side of the abortion question to put their faith in Obama’s pledge. He’s confident Obama will keep it.

In moving quickly, he says, Obama would “show that there is a new politics by acting on one of the most divisive issues of the last 30 years.” . . . He should not lose his chance to make cultural warfare a quaint relic of the past.

What do you think of the prospects of (1) Obama reaching out to the pro-life cause (2) stopping the culture war with measures that still allow abortion?

As Charles Krauthammer explains, we really are talking about socialist, as opposed to free market, economics, a command economy run from the top by government dictate:

Saving Detroit means saving it from bankruptcy. As we have seen with the airlines, bankruptcy can allow operations to continue while helping to shed fatally unsupportable obligations. For Detroit, this means release from ruinous wage deals with their astronomical benefits (the hourly cost of a Big Three worker: $73; of an American worker for Toyota: $48), massive pension obligations and unworkable work rules such as “job banks,” a euphemism for paying vast numbers of employees not to work.

The point of the Democratic bailout is to protect the unions by preventing this kind of restructuring. Which will guarantee the continued failure of these companies, but now they will burn tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. It’s the ultimate in lemon socialism.

Democrats are suggesting, however, an even more ambitious reason to nationalize. Once the government owns Detroit, it can remake it. The euphemism here is “retool” Detroit to make cars for the coming green economy.

Liberals have always wanted the auto companies to produce the kind of cars they insist everyone should drive: small, light, green and cute. Now they will have the power to do it.

In World War II, government had the auto companies turning out tanks. Now they would be made to turn out hybrids. The difference is that, in the middle of a world war, tanks have a buyer. Will hybrids? One of the reasons Detroit is in such difficulty is that consumers have been resisting the smaller, less powerful, less safe cars forced on the industry by fuel-efficiency mandates. Now Detroit would be forced to make even more of them.

If you think we have economic troubles today, consider the effects of nationalizing an industry of this size, but now run by bureaucrats issuing production quotas to fit five-year plans to meet politically mandated fuel-efficiency standards — to lift us to the sunny uplands of the coming green utopia.

If the Democrats try to push the economy in this direction, it can only mean ruin. Republicans need only wait.

Thanks to Rich Shipe for alerting me to this listing of Ten Arguments for the Existence of God. Some of them I had never heard of before (e.g., the argument from aesthetics; the argument from arguments; the argument from evil).

Of course, such arguments are not the basis for true faith. Few of us believe in God because of such chains of reasoning. And to know there is a God tells us nothing about His disposition to us. For that we need Him to reveal Himself to us, which He does in His Word. And such arguments tell us nothing about Christ, that God has come in the flesh as a human being. And such arguments tell us nothing about the Cross, how the incarnate deity took into Himself the world’s sin and suffering to redeem us all. (That point has always seemed to be a powerful response to the problem of evil put forward as an argument against God’s existence.)

Still, these arguments are intriguing and helpful in their own spheres, and an answer to the assumption that religious belief is somehow anti-rational.