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Typical liberal reporting of manipulated 'facts'. Like this one:
"President Bush and the Vatican both spoke out against gay marriage, with Bush calling homosexuals "sinners." "

Bush did NOT call homosexuals sinners. He said, "we are ALL sinners." He did not single out homosexuals. Of course, an accurate quote would not make for an incendiary quote, though, would it?

I had to doublecheck to make sure Dowd didn't write this article with her usual extractions and manipulations. Poo poo to this balderdash.

A friend of mine wrote this guy a letter. Here is his answer (she passed it onto me, asked me to post it here)
At least he answered. Nobody can dissect an argument better than freepers, have at it!!!

Thank you for your email. President Bush said that he was against gay marriage, but that we shouldn't be too hard on gays because

"I am mindful that we're all sinners, and I caution those who may try to take the speck out of their neighbor's eye when they got a log in their own,"

Overlooking his grammatical error, it's quite obvious what the president was saying. Yes, we are all sinners. You and I may have a variety of sins. The sin of gays is homosexuality. It's a belief that , according to your email, you also hold.

As an example, say the president had been talking about President Clinton's sexual escapades in one sentence and, in the very next sentence, says, "I am mindful that we're all sinners, and I caution those who may try to take the speck out of their neighbor's eye when we got (sic) a log in their own." In this example, Bush is calling Clinton a sinner.

If you also disagree with that example, then our disagreement is over logic (whether B necessarily follows A), not the rules for quotations.

That being said, I'm a little confused about why a Christian would think that labeling someone a "sinner" is "mean" - shouldn't the president have the courage of your convictions? Wouldn't Bush be viewed as quoting traditional, classic theology?

As far as bias, I'd like to point out that the article quotes four people with pro-gay positions, and three (four counting Bush's "sinners" quotation) with anit-gay positions. That's pretty even-handed, considering the point of the story was to talk to gays about what it's like to be gay today. A biased article would include only one side of the argument. This article clearly presents both.

To answer your request, there will be no clarification. No one was misquoted, and no one was portrayed as "mean."

Regards,

Ron French
The Detroit News