Instead of putting up a bunch of tedious posts about political issues that I feel the need to get off my chest, I’m just going to boil them down to little pearls of wisdom and put them all in one post, so if politics makes you retch, like it does me, you can safely and conveniently ignore all of it.
Religious Gay Marriage Alarmism:
No, legalizing gay marriage will not force churches to stop preaching that homosexuality is a sin or start performing gay marriage, for the same reason that the Civil Rights Act didn’t stop churches from preaching white supremacy or refusing to perform interracial marriage.
Freedom of Religion at Ground Zero:
I can be staunchly against the Ground Zero Mosque but still believe in freedom of religion for the same reason that I can be staunchly against you telling my four-year old son that Santa Claus is not real but still believe in freedom of speech.
X-Treme Presidents:
President Obama is not a communist for the same reason that President Bush was not a fascist. Stop being fucking ridiculous. When you wrap up your legitimate criticism in paranoid rhetoric, nobody takes you seriously except the other paranoid whackjobs who already agree with you.
Sailing to Byzantium 
To the first and last, yes, definitely. To the second one… eh… my objections are (a) I was under the impression that the Mosque was near, not at/on “Ground Zero”; and (b) who exactly are we comparing to your four-year-old and his belief in Santa Claus? I would hope the American public has more maturity and awareness than a toddler (if not… I think maybe it’s time we broke the news.)
Also, I wish people would stop calling it “Ground Zero” as if it’s the sight of a nuclear blast. The only “Ground Zero”s that exist are in Japan, and we’re the ones who perpetuated the mass slaughter of civilians there sixty-five years ago. Why do so many Americans have this addiction to victim-mentality, romanticizing our own wounds by comparing them unrealistically to the wounds we have afflicted on others? Sigh….
Nobody. It’s just an example of something I would be opposed to you saying and would even–using reaosnable means–try to stop you from saying, without any reference whatsoever to whether or not the federal or state government is allowed to stop you from saying it, or whether people, as a general rule, should be at liberty to give voice to their opinions.
I can believe in freedom without being obligated to like, support, enable and/or approve of every possible way you might decide to exercise it.
Yes.
Yes.
And Yes.
Ali, the proponents of the Ground Zero mosque are the ones who chose that spot, and they have consistently referred to the location of the proposed mosque in terms of its proximity to “Ground Zero”.
Harris Zafar, Senior Writer, Muslim Writer’s Guild of America, wrote a piece for the Huffington Post titled, “Ground Zero Mosque: A Muslim’s Perspective”, in which he said: “Should a Muslim group be allowed to build an Islamic prayer center two blocks away from Ground Zero? …. A better and potentially more palatable approach would have been to conduct broad community outreach and enlist broad community support before pushing the Center’s plan through local government channels. Given the sensitivities surrounding the Ground Zero site and the general ignorance of Islam, this approach may have averted the nasty debate we have now. Ultimately, I am in the favor of the construction of a mosque, but I am not happy with the way the organizers have appeared to have pursued it.”