The Eleventh Commandment
[Joseph E. Kurtz, Archbishop of Louisville, who leads a panel of U.S. Catholic bishops set up to fight marriage equality: ] "With regard to marriage [equality], this implicates the right of Catholics to practice our beliefs. Here we are talking about the bedrock of society, it's not just a belief, it's written on the hearts of every human person."
[Michael A. Lindenberger, "Will Gay Marriage Pit Church Against Church?", Time, 26 April 2009.]
Gosh! Conservatives are really, really good at ratcheting up the hyperbole when they run out of ideas, aren't they? (Yes, it's a rhetorical question, but feel free to answer anyway.)
First things first: his bigotry clearly is not "written in the hearts of every human person" since many, many people have examined their hearts closely and found a yearning for fairness, equality, and justice.
Now, about this "bedrock of society" business: why are the over pious and self-righteous so obsessed with gay people? By a stretch of whose imagination can it possibly be thought that keeping two men from marrying each other is the only thing that holds civilization together?
Besides, if this were the single most important thing to civilization, wouldn't that mean old testament god have made it a commandment instead of vaguely alluding to it in a dusty old set of laws that most Jews don't even remember?
If it were really that important I think he/she/it could have found room to inscribe "11. Though shalt not marry someone of the same sex" someplace on those tablets. Perhaps he was too busy worrying about all those biblical heroes and their multiple wives?
More likely: even he thought it too silly sounding to carve into stone.