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The fourth century Donatists believed that the church should be a pure communion of true believers who demonstrated the truth of the gospel in their lives. They abhorred the apostasy that had come into the church when Constantine wedded Christianity to paganism in order to unify the empire. Compromising clergy were "evil priest working hand in glove with the kings of the earth, who show that they have no king but Caesar." To the Donatists, the church was a "small body of saved surrounded by the unregenerate mass." This, of course, is the biblical view.

Augustine, on the other hand, saw the church of his day as a mixture of believers and unbelievers, in which purity and evil should be allowed to exist side by side for the sake of unity. He used the power of the state to compel church attendance: "Whoever was not found within the Chruch was not asked the reason, but was to be corrected and converted." Augustine compelled attendance by threat (and worse) against the citizenery. Frend says of Augustine, "The questing, sensitive youth had become the the father of the inquisition. Though he (Augustine) preferred persuasion if possible, Augustine supported military force against those who were rebaptized as believers after conversion to Christ and for other alleged heretics. In his controvery with the Donatists, using a distorted and un-CKhristian interpretation of Luke 14:23, Augustine declared:

Why therefore should not the Chruch use force in compelling her lost sons to return?..The Lord Himself said, "Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in..." Wherefore is the power which the Church has received theough the religious character and faith of kings the instrument by which those who are found in the highways and hedges - that is, in heresies and schisms - are compelled to come in, and let them not find fault with being compelled.

There is no question Augustine played an major role in propagating church thinking,theology and its subsequent action.

His prescriptions were a little more than the state opposing gay marriage. I don't recall the state sending the military in to arrest and torture these homosexuals to "get their minds right." Augustine did just that. He taught the requirement to torture as a technique to convert the lost by prescribing burning unto death, and other horrors. And he, himself, characterized his action as a mercy he showed the victim.

Your analogies are not serious comparisons. Your rivisionist history does not wash with me. Keep it to yourself.