Prayer Circle Jamboree, Special Olympics Edition

Sister Nancy Beth likes to honor all of God's Children, even the retards. That's why I'm dedicating this special installment of Prayer Circle Jamboree to Andrew Sullivan, with a big ribbon saying "Nice try!" One of Andrew's recent mudpie creations is something called the End of Gay Culture, whose basic premise is that now that the nancies have Andrew Sullivan, they can comfortably unload all of their cultural trappings at some grand homo rummage sale where they serve mojitos. His latest bit of proof that All You Need Is Andy is this entry:

END OF GAY CULTURE WATCH: Casper, Wyoming, has an openly gay mayor. Zzzzzz.

Zzzzzz indeed, except for a few small details that Andy seems to have overlooked. First, according to the New York Times article he cites, the citizens of Casper didn't actually cast ballots for their new mayor:

And it should be noted as well that Casper chooses its mayors by vote of the nine-member nonpartisan City Council. His homosexuality already known, Mr. Padgett was chosen unanimously - but by proxy of the voters through their council members, not by the voters themselves.

And the locals may not be as indifferent as Andy might want us to believe:

Some think the city arrived in the wrong place from that soul search.

Murray Watson, a 64-year-old rancher who lives 30 miles away and was in town on Thursday to shop, said Mr. Padgett's election was a dark day for Casper.

"I wouldn't live in this town because of it," Mr. Watson said.

Small points and probably not worth mentioning, so Andy still gets a glittery pencil to play with on his trips to Provincetown.

Lastly, Padgett's being given the office seems to be more of an act of atonement for the death of Matthew Shepard, one of those hoary figures of homosexualist lore from that dead gay culture Andy's trying to bury, rather than some gesture of Libertarianism:

There have been changes, Mr. Padgett says, including his own election, that are linked in one way or another to the death of Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming whose killing, in 1998 at the hands of two men he had met in a bar, shocked the nation.

Mr. Padgett met Mr. Shepard in junior high school and came out about his own sexual orientation in a magazine interview five years after the murder. Mr. Padgett's partner, Jason Marsden, who was a reporter for The Casper Star-Tribune at the time of the killing, came out in an op-ed column even as his paper was covering the crime.

Mr. Shepard is buried here. And Casper, many say, has probably carried the discussion of what the crime meant, and what it revealed, further than just about any other place.

I've come to regard Andrew Sullivan as the Terri Schiavo of the blogosphere, and we Christians who cherish life should exalt all of his gurglings as cogent and meaningful. Here, Andrew, have a Troll pencil, but don't poke your eye out. Praise Him!