“One man…one wife.”
That alone tells you the dark ages he still lives in.  

Just who is pandering without proof?Does Sylvester Williams have any polling in the City of Durham to back up his claim that the City Council was wrong?
He obviously doesn’t cite Elon University survey of NC where a majority support relationship recognition.
http://www.elon.edu/e-web/elon…
Or any of the national polling?
Sylvester Williams: willful ignorance or just a damn liar – you decide.

Who’s out of step?

Why are we out of step with the rest of the country, why are we out of step with the state of North Carolina?

The USA is one of only a handful of major Western nations that lack nation-wide recognition of same-sex relationships. The same goes for employment and goods & services discrimination protections. It was also one of the last to ban slavery, as well as being one of the few wealthier Western nations without universal healthcare, and one of the last to legalise homosexuality – America was a whole decade behind Russia on that one, and even then it took over 20 years of court battles to achieve.
So tell me, who’s out of step? It seems to me the USA has a long and undistinguished history of trailing behind other Western nations in recognising & protecting human & civil rights, and accepting social advancement only reluctantly, when shamed into doing so. Dudgeon V. UK, the ECHR case that legalised homosexuality in NI, formed part of the basis for Lawrence V. Texas – and predated the latter case by over two decades.
That’s not to say Americans are inherently socially backward. Because you’ve often had to fight harder for their rights, you tend to value them more. The Civil War and the Civil Rights, LGBT Rights and Feminist movements are all good examples.

Did anyone reply to this back-woods ignoramous?Someone needs to school the city council in how to respond to these attacks on their veracity and integrity with hard facts.  These kinds of attacks will continue until they are put down in the public square and in the record.

Not only that (and I agree completely),but it never occurs to these “pastors” that their superstitions religious beliefs are definitely in the minority.  The huge preponderance of the world’s people are not Christian, have no interest in becoming such, and as often as not consider Christianity to be a backward embarrassment of a belief system.  If Rev. Sylvester (sufferin’ succotash!) wants to be “in step” he ought to try Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam or, better yet, philosophy.

It’s even worse than that…I know literally hundreds of people who have Christian beliefs but refuse to identify as Christian because they associate Christianity with hate. No small irony, given Christ’s statement that people would recognise his followers by their love. Even I don’t feel comfortable being thought of as Christian – not because I’m concerned with what other people will think, but because of what the word means to me. It would be like identifying as a Nazi or Wahabbist.

The “one man, one woman” argument isn’t even BiblicalAbraham had children by both his wife, Sarah, and his wife’s servant, Hagar. Isaac had two wives, Rachel and Leah, and had children by them and by their servants, Zipah and Bilhah. King David had eleven children by seven women and had other, unnamed wives. King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. And Paul, in I Timothy and Titus, places monogamy as a condition only on clergy: apparently, polygamy was allowed among lay people in the very early church.
Why are the Bible-thumpers so damned ignorant of their own Scriptures?

Let’s not forget…Let’s not forget that the practice of a celibate clergy is a very recent practice in the Catholic Church!
They’ve conveniently forgotten the fact that most of their leadership was handed down, and to eliminate the claim illegitimate sons of the hierarchy had on the leadership (because some of the early popes were as randy as rabbits in heat!), they imposed the unnatural practice of imposed celibacy.

One pope gave birth.

It’s not that recentThe custom of clerical celibacy in the Christian church arose in the 4th century as part of a larger movement that elevated celibacy and virginity to sanctity. There was also a very practical aspect to this: as Christianity came to be more and more accepted, the newly converted were giving considerable wealth to the church, typically in the form of land. There was a very real problem where bishops were treating this property as the holdings of their family, to be passed down from one generation to the next. From very early on, the church had adopted a rule that bishops must be unmarried men with no family of their own, to avoid this problem.
The first mention of mandated celibacy was the Council of Elvira in 306, which required that not even married clergy could engage in sexual relations. By the Council of Chalcedon in 451, celibacy was (officially) strictly enforced; by the Council in Trullo in 698, differences were appearing in how the Western and Eastern churches treated celibacy. In the west (Roman Catholic), the rules were expanded and made more strict, while in the east (Orthodox), the rules were loosened a bit: most Orthodox traditions allow married men to become ordained but prohibit unmarried ordained men from getting married. To be an Orthodox bishop, however, you must be unmarried.

Churches taking a stand in DurhamThere were definitely Churches at Pride in Durham over the weekend, both in the tents/booths set up at the festival grounds, many marching in the parade with us, and some church volunteers passing our water bottles with rainbow labels to thirsty parade marchers (I’m holding up one in the pic below).  Who then is out of step?

You can see their signs a little better in this one.  I think I saw signs for other religious groups too that were also in the mold of “I’m a ____”

It seem this outspoken bigot was eliminated in the primary on Oct 6Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t the top two vote-getters move on to the November general election for Durham City Council?
http://www.wral.com/news/polit…
Williams came in third in the primary.
Also noteworthy, incumbents Clement and Cole-McFadden sailed through their contested primaries by wide margins.  These incumbents were a part of the unanimous marriage resolution from the council.