On Tuesday a wave of Democratic voters in California helped do two things: elect Obama president AND outlaw gay marriage in their state. Many gay women and men, as well as their supporters in the straight community, worked intensely to elect Obama in California. Their feelings of regret and betrayal are just beginning to surface and it is painful to witness. At Puma PAC, we are not surprised. We KNEW obama and his followers would never stand up for the Bill of Rights, and we were right. From his courting of McLurkin and other evangelicals, to his own embarrassing fumbles in interviews with the gay press, Obama has shown himself to be a political opportunist of the most shallow and callous variety. The passage of Proposition 8 is a disgrace to the Democratic Party. That DEMOCRATS helped pass it is both unconscionable and completely at odds with their own supposed platform. According to exit polls, 87% of African American voters, the vast majority of them Democrats, voted in favor of the ban. Gay rights are CIVIL rights. They are the SAME rights that are enshrined in our BILL OF RIGHTS, precious to each and every American citizen. It does not matter if any individual person or any religious organization believes that gay marriage is immoral. That opinion is as irrelevant to our constitutional rights as the Islamic belief in the legal subjugation of women. People of the Muslim faith are free in this country to believe in Sharia law if they so choose, but they better not start trying to FIND that subjugation in MY bill of rights. Gay people are right. When ANY American citizen is denied the FULL benefits of the Bill of Rights then my own freedoms, and those of my family, are in jeopardy. Who is to say that in 50 years a Muslim majority in some states won’t be able to force my grand daughters to cover themselves in a sheet when they go outside? Who is to say that a Muslim majority of citizens won’t VOTE for a change in the constitutions of California or Michigan so that it aligns more closely with the Koran or Islamic values? The foundational document of Democracy in the United States is the CONSTITUTION. Not the Bible, not the Talmud, and not the Koran. So Christians may feel safe today because THEIR religious text happens to be the one the majority of Americans believe in, but I don’t think that’s wise. Other religions gain popularity and new adherents every year in this country. One hundred years ago the population of Catholics in the U.S. was 17 million. Today there are 65 million. Until 1940 the number of Muslims in the United States was too small to count. Today there are around 3 million (8 million according to less reliable sources within the Muslim community). Every time we open the door of Democracy to religious orthodoxy we close the circle tighter around Freedom.  And before we know it we will have choked Liberty to death. The Founding Fathers were radical thinkers. Many, if not most, of them were very close to what we would call atheists today. They believed in a Creator, but are very vague on the details, and they feared the Tyranny of Religion as much as the Tyranny of Kings. They codified in LAW the foundational PERMANENCE of freedom for citizens. They provided us a RADICAL mechanism for the continuous enlargement of a free Democratic society.  Hemming in the Bill of Rights is a dangerous step toward Tyranny and NO AMERICAN should support efforts to choke our freedoms. The Constitution is a RADICAL DOCUMENT, and those who defend it are Radicals. Like me. When I said that Puma PAC is a home for the homeless, I didn’t mean for the Sad, or the Meek, or the Sweet — although sad, sweet, and meek people are welcome. Puma PAC is a home for Defenders of the Constitution — radicals like Thomas Jefferson, Alice Paul, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The tragedy of today, exacerbated by the tragedy of Propostion 8, is that there are SO MANY homeless defenders of the Constitution in our beautiful country today.