Just across the river and in another state from the largest city in the USA, New Jersey is currently the bloody battle ground for legalizing gay marriage. All the saints and sinners are basking in the limelight and throwing the books (religious and secular) at each other. (At Right: New Jersey gay couple with their certificate of marriage, not the same as legal marriage.)

Coming out of the ultra religious right closet are the Orthodox Jewish leaders quoting twenty six hundred year old laws which supported stoning to death "men who sleep with other men as with women." No matter that the same 6th Century BCE law makers allowed selling your daughter into slavery and supported executing a man who broke any of the Ten Commandments.

It is strange that people listen to the Orthodox Jewish views only when those views concern gay issues. Otherwise who cares about their ban on drinking a milk shake with your Big Mac? Or the fact that the most radicals of that group do not even support the State of Israel, and they deny the holocaust, and that they traveled to an anti holocaust conference in Iran, a Muslim country for godsakes.

Yet, a person with religious credentials, no matter how bizarre, is allowed to speak authoritatively on the gay issue, and microphones are shoved in his face quicker that you can say holy smoke.

The United States' Constitution clearly spells out a separation of Church and State. Maybe we need another amendment that separates the Iron Age from the 21st Century.