Now, of course the reflexive condemnation of an entire group of people is unattractive (the fact that he is doing this very thing seems to be lost on Berry). Berry lazily buys into the simple assumption that disagreement with the push for gay marriage must be based in hate. But there are some people who challenge this claim by their sheer existence: gay and lesbian folks who don’t support same-sex marriage.

This week, the world witnessed anywhere from 500,000 to just over a million French citizens take to the cold, winter Parisian streets in protest of, as they stated it, the idea of legally denying children a mother and father through a proposed same-sex marriage law. It was the biggest public demonstration France has seen in decades. Reuters reported that “even homosexuals opposed to gay marriage [came] to protest.”

John D’Emilio, noted professor of history and pioneer in the field of gay and lesbian studies has, as a gay man and leading LGBT theorist, been vocally opposed (shown here and more recently here) to the idea of working for the legalization of same-sex marriage. He contends it is contrary to queer ideals and unjust to gays in other types of relationships. D’Emilio and our French friends are not odd outliers. Here is another and another and another and a few more and one more leading gay voices that assert the passage of same-sex marriage can actually be discriminatory and limiting. Uhm.

If some people can oppose same-sex marriage for reasons other than hate, bigotry and small-mindedness, why can’t others?

Among the great joys that will occupy our minds with family and friends celebrating the coming of the God-child, we will all bear significant sadness in our hearts for the families agonizing over the loss young children at Sandy Hook. Curiously, The Christmas season reminds us that such things don’t catch God by surprise nor foreign to His own experience. Evil—even the most unspeakably obscene—is not new. In fact, senseless slaughter is a key part of the otherwise joyful Christmas story.

When Christ, the God-child was still a toddler one man was hell-bent on slaughtering hundreds, if not thousands, of precious, deeply-loved toddlers and infants. His name was Herod, seeking annihilation of a new born King out of sheer jealousy. To make sure this particular child was eliminated, Herod commanded that every baby boy two years of age and younger be slaughtered in the town of Bethlehem and the surrounding communities. It was done suddenly, without warning to either parent or child, with unbridled viciousness and violence. There was, as the scriptures tell us, widespread “lamentation, weeping and great mourning” with the families and communities “refusing to be comforted, because there are no more.” (Matthew 2:18; Jeremiah 31:15)

But in one year the slaughter squad
From Herod came. And where do you
Suppose they started? Not a clue!
We didn’t have a clue what they
Had come to do. No time to pray,
No time to run, no time [to save my son.]

Only time to see
A lifted spear smash through his spine
And chest. He stumbled to the sign
That welcomed strangers to the place,
And looked with panic at my face,
As if to ask what he had done.
“Young man, you ever lost a son?”

The tears streamed down the Savior’s cheek,
He shook his head, but couldn’t speak.