Just attended the Ground Zero Mosque protest.  Here is a photo of Keep America Safe‘s Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles Burlingame III, pilot of hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon, speaking to the crowd.

The two best articles on the mosque controversy, that capture the essence of the issue, are Dan Senor’s Open Letter on the Ground Zero Mosque, from the Wall Street Journal, and Charles Krauthammer’s Sacrilege at Ground Zero from the Washington Post.

For non-New Yorker’s tempted to entertain the argument made by some on the Left (as Eleanor Randolf, member of the New York Times Editorial Board, did last night on NY1) that two blocks is a really long distance in New York City blocks, here’s a photo I snapped from Park Place and Broadway, a few doors down from the proposed site of the Cordoba House.  The gaping hole in the sky is where the towers once stood, and the cranes are in “the pit” building the new Freedom Tower.  This proposed mosque would be right next door folks.

Crowd was patriotic and insistent the mosque be moved to another location in the city.  No one I spoke to refuted the constitutional right to build at 51 Park Place, but everyone objected to the insensitivity of the project, making clear that it will fail it’s stated objective to further interfaith understanding by building in this location.

Still, my favorite reaction belongs to Greg Gutfield, genius humorist of Fox News who is raising money to build a muslim gay bar adjacent to the Ground Zero Mosque.

As a conservative Republican representing the next generation of attitudes towards gays and lesbians, I encouraged the readers of FoxNews.com last January to take a careful look at the arguments and evidence in the Prop 8 trial, Perry v. Schwarzenegger.

The case was presented by a constitutional conservative, Ted Olson, who helped found the Federalist Society, successfully argued Bush v. Gore to the Supreme Court (among fifty-five other cases), and was George W. Bush’s Solicitor General. Working with his Democratic legal partner David Boies, Olson sought to prove that marriage equality is a constitutional question, not a partisan issue.

The trial assembled a thorough record of evidence that Prop 8 unreasonably discriminates against gays and lesbians, relegating them to second-class citizenship. Their plaintiffs, Kristen Perry and Sandy Steir, Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo, are the face of the marriage equality movement. They wish to share in the myriad societal, economic and psychological benefits of marriage, which the Supreme Court has ruled is a fundamental right owed to all Americans. By denying them the right to marry because of their sexual orientation and gender, Olson and Boies argued that Prop 8 violates the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment, and is unconstitutional.

Read entire article at FoxForum

Andrew Sullivan’s post, in response to Douthat, said far better.

“Ross is at his most Catholic today in his column on marriage equality, and I’d like to start a response by saying that he has conceded many secular points: that the life-long, monogamous heterosexual nuclear family is not natural and it is not the default definition of marriage in world history. Abandoning these defunct arguments – defunct because they are transparently untrue – is a helpful throat-clearing for which I’m most grateful.

“Ross’ core argument is that “lifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable — a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations — that makes it worthy of distinctive recognition and support.” I’m going to repeat what I have said before: I don’t disagree with this at all. I remain in awe of the heterosexual life-long coupling that produces new human life. There is a miraculous, sacred, awe-inspiring aspect to it. I understand why this is a Sacrament, and have no interest in being included in such a Sacrament since it is premised on the very Thomist arguments Ross puts forward…

“And – this is my main point – Ross’ argument simply ignores the existence and dignity and lives and testimony of gay people. This is strange because the only reason this question has arisen at all is because the visibility of gay family members has become now so unmissable that it cannot be ignored. Yes, marriage equality was an idea some of us innovated. But it was not an idea plucked out of the sky. It was an attempt to adapt to an already big social change: the end of the homosexual stigma, the emergence of gay communities of great size and influence and diversity, and collapse of the closet. It came from a pressing need as a society to do something about this, rather than consign gay people to oblivion or marginalization or invisibility. More to the point, it emerged after we saw what can happen when human beings are provided no structure, no ideal, and no support for responsibility and fidelity and love.”

Read the entire entry.