After a federal judge overturned Michigan's ban on same-sex marriage yesterday, four counties began handing our marriage licenses.

It's believed Marsha Caspar and Glenna DeJong, who have been together for nearly 30 years, were the first gay couple wed in the Great Lakes State when they were married Saturday morning by Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum.

Donohue explained on the Catholic League website:

For the past few days I have been engaged in an e-mail conversation with officials from the Heritage of Pride parade, New York’s annual gay event; the dialogue has been cordial. I asked to join the parade under a banner that would read, “Straight is Great.” The purpose of my request was to see just how far they would go without forcing me to abide by their rules.

It didn’t take long before they did.

Today, I informed Heritage of Pride officials that I objected to their rule requiring me to attend gay training sessions, or what they call “information” sessions. “I don’t agree with your rule,” I said. They responded by saying that attendance was “mandatory.”

The St. Patrick’s Day parade has mandatory rules, too. It bars groups representing their own cause from marching, which is why pro-life Catholics—not just gays—are barred from participating under their own banner. But only gays complain: they refuse to abide by the rules. Indeed, they went into federal court seeking to force a rule change.

They lost: In 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that private parades have a First Amendment right to determine their own rules.

It is hypocritical for gay activists to complain about having to abide by the mandatory rules of the St. Patrick’s Day parade, and then inform me that I cannot march in their parade unless I respect their mandatory rules, rules that I reject. Good luck to the Heritage of Pride participants. I may be watching it from afar, but I sure won’t be downing a Guinness afterwards.

Wait a minute, they offer "gay training" sessions? We could use some of those!

Fred Phelps has been in the news after his passing earlier this week. But it's not the first time he made headlines. Back in June 1951, Time magazine wrote a flattering profile of the Westboro Baptist Church leader, when he was just a 21-year-old student at John Muir College in Pasadena, California.

Fred Phelps's talks drew crowds of up to 100. Over & over he denounced the "sins committed on campus by students and teachers . . . promiscuous petting . evil language . . . profanity . . . cheating . . . teachers' filthy jokes in classrooms . . . pandering to the lusts of the flesh."

Such strictures sent Dr. Archie Turrell, principal of John Muir, and most of his faculty into a slow burn. Not only was Evangelist Phelps attacking them, they decided, but conceivably he was violating California's state education code, which forbids the teaching of religion on any public school campus.

A fortnight ago they ordered him to stop his campus preaching. Phelps moved across the road, off campus, and kept on preaching. Principal Turrell warned him again. "He accosted me in very stern language," says Phelps, "and told me that he would call the law. So I told him I had no fears. If the police arrested me I would preach to them in jail."

As Phelps's audience grew, police arrived, cleared the crowded sidewalk of both the earnest and the merely curious. Phelps was "invited" into a police car and driven away from the scene; John Muir suspended him for the rest of the week.

But Evangelist Fred Phelps, who had turned down an appointment to West Point to devote his life to preaching, was not to be discouraged by a little thing like suspension. Last week he was back, preaching from the lawn of a friendly Pasadena citizen across from the quadrangle. His audiences were bigger and more sympathetic; in fact, Fred Phelps now had something of the attraction of a martyr.

...Students were delighted with the story that Phelps had been ordered to consult the school psychologist, a middle-aged lady, and that he had turned the tables on her by "psychoanalyzing" her. Gloated an admiring coed: "I hope he did. They had no right to suggest that he's off his stick. Just because you're religious, it doesn't mean you have to be crazy."

No, but if you're Fred's kind of religious is does. (Source: Good as You)

var p = new anv_pl_def();p.loadVideoWithKey("eyJwIjoiMTAwMDAxMSIsIm0iOiJTUFMiLCJ2IjoiZXhwcmVzc18xMzk1NTExMTc4MzkwIn0=");

// ]]>

Speaking of the late Mr. Phelps, protestors from the Westboro Baptist Church demonstrated outside Lorde's concert in Kansas City last night, proving their leader's death hasn't slowed the flow of hate.

After Lorde encouraged a counter-demonstration via Twitter, A group of more than 20 amassed across from the WBC outside the Midland Theatre, with signs that read "Live your life and be awesome" and “sorry for your loss.”

"If people are forced to stare at that they should have the option to have something good to stare at," said one counter-demonstrator.

“We realized that it wasn’t so much about antagonizing them,” explained Megan Coleman, who made the "Sorry" sign, "but sending out the [idea] that we are here for people who need that message and need that positivity.”

The message wasn't exactly understood by it's intended audience. WBC spokesman Steve Drain told KSHB “I don’t even know what they’re saying.”