Just because someone hangs around in a bagel shop that doesn’t make him a bagel. Just because a gay hispanic dude goes to church doesn’t make him a Christian, much less a theologian.

“Nov. 25, 2008 | For author Richard Rodriguez, no one is talking about the real issues behind Proposition 8.

While conservative churches are busy trying to whip up another round of culture wars over same-sex marriage, Rodriguez says the real reason for their panic lies elsewhere: the breakdown of the traditional heterosexual family and the shifting role of women in society and the church itself. As the American family fractures and the majority of women choose to live without men, churches are losing their grip on power and scapegoating gays and lesbians for their failures.

Rodriguez, who is Mexican-American, gay and a practicing Catholic, refuses to let any single part of himself define the whole. Born in San Francisco in 1944 and raised by his Spanish-speaking Mexican immigrant parents to embrace mainstream American culture and the English language, he went on to study literature and religion at Stanford and Columbia. His first book, “The Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez,” explores his journey from working-class immigrant to a fully assimilated intellectual — angering many Latinos with his view that English fluency is essential. “Days of Obligation: An Argument With My Mexican Father,” which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1993, continued his investigation into how family, culture, religion, race, sexuality and other strands of his life all contribute to the whole, a complex “brownness” of contradictions and ironies. “Brown: The Last Discovery of America” completes the trilogy — but not his insatiable intellectual curiosity, which he is now shining on monotheism.

The ideal of homosexual activity, much more gay marriage is non-debatable from the context of Scripture. It’s not a matter of “interpretation” for the text is clear as to why the Bible – God’s word – forbids the relations of same sex.

Mr. Rodriguez’s assertion, “The crusade for Proposition 8 was fueled by the broken American family,” is not only laughable, and heretical. It’s simply lazy logic. The catalysts for supporting the passage of Proposition 8 is that instinctively people, even though fallen, know it’s wrong. Christians are commanded to be the salt and light of the world and to expose evil.

People who voted for it are not religious “zealots”, or “insane” or even “mixed up”. They simply know the difference between right and wrong as it’s defined in scripture.

Rodriguez tips his hand here when he of course blames Bush.

“To my knowledge, the churches have not accepted responsibility for the Bush catastrophe. Having claimed, in some cases, that Bush was divinely inspired and his election was the will of God, they have failed to explain why the last eight years have been so catastrophic for America.”

Perhaps it’s time for the Church of Christ to practice what it was commanded to do. Rid itself of false teachers and prophets.