"The gay agenda"

I just read a frightening article in the NY Times entitled, After Victory, Crusader Against Same-Sex Marriage Thinks Big.

Here are some selections from the article:

(on legalizing gay marriage in court) "We saw a stepped program, a plan by gay advocates," Mr. [Phil] Burress recalled. "It would lead to homosexuality being taught in schools as equal to heterosexuality. And we saw that what they couldn't get from legislatures they would try to get by going to court."

*****

Just days after their thundering victories in the fall elections, Mr. Burress and other Christian conservative leaders met in Washington to discuss next year's constitutional amendment battles, which will focus on about 10 states, including Arizona, Florida and Kansas. They hope those fights will be the prelude to their real goal: amending the United States Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage, which could take years.

Beyond that, Mr. Burress plans to take his grass-roots movement in Ohio to a new level, using a computer database of 1.5 million voters to build a network of Christian conservative officials, candidates and political advocates.

He envisions holding town-hall-style meetings early next year in Ohio's 88 counties to identify issues, recruit organizers and train volunteers. With a cadre of 15 to 20 leaders in each county, he says he believes religious conservatives can be running school boards, town councils and county prosecutors' offices across the state within a few years.

"I'm building an army," Mr. Burress said. "We can't just let people go back to the pews and go to sleep."

*****

Though he strongly supported Mr. Bush's re-election, Mr. Burress says he is furious that powerful Republicans like Governor Taft, Attorney General Jim Petro and Senators George V. Voinovich and Mike DeWine opposed Ohio's marriage amendment. (They asserted that the amendment would harm Ohio businesses by prohibiting employee benefits for domestic partners.)

Mr. Burress attacked those Republicans as "enablers" of what he calls the homosexual agenda, and he has vowed to run candidates against them and anyone else who opposes what he considers pro-family, antiabortion or anti-gay-rights policies.

"I'm not an R or a D," he said. "Both parties are driven by selfishness. They are run by people who are Republican or Democrat because it benefits them or their jobs. Our movement will be built on passion, on values, on fire-in-the-belly morals."