Season Four is no different, and its premiere episode, “Public Relations,” gives a nod to our heavily saturated consumer culture through the successes and failures of the newly-formed Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce (SCDP). Everything is a product to be packaged and sold to the public, including the people who sell it. On Sunday night, we watched Don learn that despite forming a new agency to evade a second advertising corporate merger, he remains a market commodity.

The first upset of Season Four hits early in the episode: Don sits tightlipped during an interview with the make-or-break publication Advertising Age about the new Manhattan-based agency. The problem is the question: the reporter asks, “Who is Don Draper?” Don, unfortunately, does not have a clue how to approach answering that question; most viewers don’t either. As the reporter presses Don Draper for a kitschy phrase summing up his creative concepts role in the firm, Don retreats to his Midwestern background briefly with faux-modesty. “I’m from the Midwest. We were taught it’s not polite to talk about yourself.”

It’s ironic that this is coming from the man who bragged about how consumers needed to be told what to buy or else they’d float around aimlessly and without purpose. With no help from Don, the reporter predictably presents a cardboard cut-out in a short corner-page article: ad man, wife, two kids and a dog, house in the suburbs, good guy with a blank page personality. The blurb is great if you’re putting together a statistical profile; but for a creative executive in an advertising agency, it’s public relations suicide.

Don’s self-centered silence about his new company places its small amount of advertising business into a tailspin: a large sporting client leaves the firm because his product didn’t get mentioned in Don’s abysmal interview – never mind that their television executive Harry (who has traded in timidity for pluck this season) just landed himself a coveted spot on ABC. Pete Campbell, the sycophantic accounts manager, gets upbraided for failing to build on the history of two of the company’s partners (namely Roger Sterling and Bert Cooper) and instead calling the venture a “scrappy upstart.” Don’s creative protégé Peggy Olson goes behind his back and coordinates a staged fight in a grocery store over a client’s ham for Thanksgiving. The good news is the fight raises the company’s profile, and they increase their media budget with the firm. The bad news is Peggy finds it incredibly difficult to add the publicity stunt to the company’s portfolio, and she could not afford the out-of-pocket expenses of springing the fighters from jail and keeping them from suing each other and SCDP without telling Don what happened.

“Public Relations” also illuminates problems with space for the new company and for Don’s private life. The new office is unabashedly ‘60s and very bright, with windows and paneling framing every space. Everyone bustles and rumbles along on one floor, though the ad men tell clients that there’s an exclusive second floor. The conference room in the office still does not have – and cannot afford – a table. (Pete tries to point out an upside by saying a potential client believed it was deliberate because a circle of chairs “demands a conversation.” “A conversation about why there’s no table,” Don remarks.) On the home front, Don keeps his newly acquired bachelor pad dark and empty, with only a television to keep him company. His ex-wife Betty and her new husband Henry Francis continue to live in the Drapers’ suburban home on Don’s dime, because of Betty’s spiteful resentment of the house being sold after the divorce. While she tells Don and Henry it’s for their two kids’ sakes, both kids seem miserable being shuffled between their parents.

While it’s tempting to paint Draper’s brashly seductive demeanor as the work (and luck) of the Devil himself, the key to understanding anyone in Mad Men’s ensemble is enabling their dynamism. In Season Two’s episode “The New Girl”, while consoling Peggy about her sudden pregnancy, Don pushes her to move on with her life by saying, “This never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened.”

Don’s problem in this season is with his marriage ending and his professional life rebooted, he has no idea how much history he has to revise to become a success again. I always see these experiments translating to everyday life in the United States as we rebrand everything, including mercenary companies like Blackwater switching to Xe after its war crimes got extensive media coverage, and even long-term war efforts like Obama’s renaming the Global War on Terror to Overseas Contingency Operation. There is only so much denial and revision a psyche can take, whether it’s a person’s psyche or the collective psyche of a nation.

The show lets Don play the field by changing the terms of the game. In order to give the company the jump it needs, Don dramatically throws a swimwear account that pleads for a family-friendly way to market bikinis (or, as they called them, two-piece swimsuits). He books a new interview for the high-profile Wall Street Journal, and he spins the biggest ball of yarn about how he singlehandedly led the charge for creating Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce. The episode closes with the opening lyrics of “Tobacco Road,” another song about coming from nothing and not leaving with much.

The new ruse is in place, and I thoroughly enjoyed the ending. I thought, Don is back! An ever-present pattern in Mad Men is every new façade for Don needs an update; every refusal from Don to change his ways results in dramatic consequences. The joy is waiting for Don to realize the need to change, and it often slaps him in the face (sometimes literally). But how long will everyone keep buying what Don is selling? Will the illusion ever fall? That’s a question for next week’s episode.

If not for the connection to the Good Doctor, Las Vegas would seem an incongruous place for a left-leaning convention. The place pumps enough energy into glittering, flashing neon lights to warm half the globe, and feminist bloggers enjoying cocktails served by scantily clad waitresses just, well, doesn’t seem right, no matter how pro-sex we feminists are.

I was in town for a brief two and a half days for Netroots Nation, the convention formerly known as Yearly Kos and maybe a little misnamed. I expected lots of panels about media, about writing and Web tools, and instead I got candidate after candidate for office.

Of course, I also got Van Jones. I got some new friends. I got a panel on new Civil Rights movements that featured the fabulous Tim Wise driving home the point that economic insecurity is a racial justice issue; that the social safety net was dismantled in the U.S. when it became coded as handouts to black and brown people instead of something that we might all use when we’re down on our luck. And yes, dear readers, I got a little drunk.

Luck is, of course, the theme in Vegas, and I suppose that made it more appropriate as well that we were there. Hoping, naturally, for a little luck of our own come November, that a Democratic-controlled Congress has passed enough legislation that people don’t hate that Democrats can hang on to majorities in both houses. But had we really traveled across the country just to listen to stump speeches and not one, but two versions of the apocryphal Franklin Delano Roosevelt “Make me do it” story?  (One, told by Nancy Pelosi, starring Frances Perkins, first female Secretary of Labor, and the other according to Al Franken starring A. Philip Randolph.)

Mostly, I was a little stunned at the disingenuousness of politicians coming to a fairly politically sophisticated audience to give rote speeches. I sat next to award-winning investigative journalists, longtime media critics, activists who fight in the trenches day after day for immigrant rights, racial justice, LGBT equality. Were we supposed to cheer Democrats, this year?

The closing night reminded me, though, that I wasn’t really at a media conference. I was at a conference that started as a place for the community around one blog met up. The fact that it had exploded into something like this, an event where the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader showed up to face questions from the crowd, was in its own way remarkable. I turned, as they spoke, to Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and joked “Can you imagine having a Tiger Beatdown conference in five years?”

And at least one of the politicians that night did inspire us to whooping and hollering, standing to cheer her and stopping her on her way by to tell her that we loved her and asking her what we could do to help her.  Linda Chavez-Thompson won us over as she stood on a box to see over the podium, and declared “You better know who you’re fighting if you ask to see my papers.” Dear Democrats, find a hundred more of her and you’ll win all the elections out there. Smart, tough women of color who can shake up a crowd, can talk labor (she’s a former AFL-CIO executive vice president) and make you tear up with stories of kids growing up with one book among 300 children. Her T-shirts read “Que Linda,” and I stopped a man wearing one of them later that night to tell him that his boss made me want to move to Texas to work for her.

Stump speeches and panels on snark and sustaining indie media behind me, I left Vegas with a hangover and a non-political book in my lap, chewing over whether I thought the conference had been a “success.”

Movement-building isn’t a game of successes and failures, wins and losses. Candidates and “electeds” come and go (mostly go). The connections we make, though, are what keeps us going. The new friend who suddenly you are so sad to see go, whose issues will suddenly matter that much more to you. The person you drunkenly sang karaoke with and the person you’ve exchanged business emails with who is suddenly telling you about their art and photography. The moment when exchanging business cards isn’t about “networking” but about sincerely wanting to keep in touch.

Progressive politics is a hard slog and sometimes I want to withdraw from all of it and be one of those smug leftists who’s sure that elections don’t matter. I walk an interesting line, after all, fighting for candidates in whom I only half believe because I think that somewhere, some small difference they’ll make is worth it. When in reality my politics are somewhere else entirely–or perhaps politics there is the wrong word. Values has been claimed by the Right, but maybe it’s time to take it back.

And so, “success”? The best panel I saw was on “bringing the snark after winning elections,” and a crew of smart, funny folks one by one agreed that electing Obama didn’t make being a political humorist any harder–or the fight any easier. Despite the number of politicians glad-handing at Netroots Nation, I came away thinking about how much more the fight is about than winning elections.

Politics is an addiction for me like it was for Hunter Thompson. But it’s those little moments when you feel like you might actually be creating a movement that sustain me.

Saint Louis Today has a report about a young woman who sued claiming that she did not give consent to appear in the videos. Apparently, Jane Doe (as she was known in her lawsuit), claimed that she was at a bar dancing, when a woman came behind her and pulled her top down. This was recorded by the camera and placed on a video, which was subsequently marketed for sale.

Both sides built their case around the issue of consent. The plaintiff explicitly stated that she did not give consent and her lawyer claimed that she could be heard on the tape saying no. Unfortunately for Jane Doe, Patrick O’Brien, the jury foreman felt that: “Through her actions, she gave implied consent. She was really playing to the camera. She knew what she was doing.” After ninety minutes of deliberation the jury delivered a 9-3 decision for the defense.

The plaintiff will now have to live with the knowledge that there is footage of her semi-nude body available to the public that she did not approve of and that a company is now making a profit from. This decision is much larger than the repugnant “Girls Gone Wild” franchise; it brings into question what constitutes consent.

Certainly, it should be clear by now that the absence of a clearly articulated yes does not constitute consent. Even if the plaintiff was enjoying herself, she absolutely had the right to determine when the activity had moved beyond her comfort level. Taking this ability away from her is tantamount to suggesting that she does not have the right to complete autonomy over her person. This is very much like a rapist continuing with sexual behaviour after the woman has said no, because his raging erection demands satisfaction.

In Marcella Chester’s analogy regarding affirmative consent, she points out that handing over your wallet to a robber that demands it is not a free action because you have been placed under duress. The plaintiff clearly did consent to being filmed because she was performing for the camera; however, because she did not lower her own top, she could not possibly have consented to the display and filming of her naked breasts — this was an action forced upon her by a third party.

Furthermore, consenting to one action does not imply consent to further activity and this is what the jury so clearly failed to see, because affirmative consent was not factored into their decision. Affirmative consent is not a concept that feminists created to stifle sexual behaviour; it is in fact, the only perfect strategy to ensure that regardless of the sexual activity involved, that all are comfortable with the level of engagement.

What happened to the plaintiff definitely rises to the level of an assault, one which “Girls Gone Wild” not only filmed but profited on. Without a uniform understanding of what constitutes consent, the violation of women will continue to be something that is easily challenged in a court of law, making it extremely difficult for justice to be achieved. It is because the words yes and no are clearly not open for interpretation that we refuse to make this the standard of consent. The law as it is written, and in fact applied in this case, is not about ensuring a reduction in the number of sexual assaults, or even affirming the right to female autonomy; it is about ensuring an avenue of patriarchal control over women’s bodies.

“No means no” and “yes means yes” are very simple to apply as a rule of law, as can be seen by the Canadian Criminal Code.

[C]onsent is defined as “the voluntary agreement of the complainant to engage in the sexual activity in question.” CC § 273(1)(2). And CC § 273.2 provides that:

[i]t is not a defence . . . that the accused believed that the complainant consented …where (a) the accused’s belief arose from the accused’s: (i) self-induced intoxication, or (ii) recklessness or wilful blindness; or (b) the accused did not take reasonable steps, in the circumstances known to the accused at the time, to ascertain that the complainant was consenting.

Similarly in the U.K, according to the Sex Offences Act (2003):

1) A person (A) commits an offence if— (a) he intentionally causes another person (B) to engage in an activity,

(b) the activity is sexual,

(c) B does not consent to engaging in the activity, and

(d) A does not reasonably believe that B consents.

(2) Whether a belief is reasonable is to be determined having regard to all the circumstances, including any steps A has taken to ascertain whether B consents.

There is no universal standard of consent across the United States. Though many of these cases in the U.K. and Canada will still come down to a he said/she said because of the number of people involved, affirmative consent means that sex and sexual behaviour/interaction is understood as something that both parties must wilfully participate in. Thus the victim (or in this case, the plaintiff) necessarily begins from a position of bodily autonomy.

There should be no wavering, or questioning whether or not a sexual interaction is indeed desired, when it can simply be determined with one word – YES. No means no — but yes always will always equal consent, and that is something every person should have the right to actively say when there is an interaction of a sexual nature occurring. There is simply no reasonable excuse for affirmative consent to waver from state to state when it has already been proven in two other countries to be enforceable and functional.

The plaintiff did not receive justice in this case. We can simply add this to long the list of women for whom the justice system has failed, or we can decide to advocate for affirmative consent, because that is the only way we can ensure that all sexual interaction is desired. Until the day women have complete autonomy over their physical bodies, we cannot claim to live in an equal world.

I have an obsession with the state of activism in the United States. As a labor and environmental historian, I am constantly thinking about activism in the past and present. I look at successful social movements and wonder at our troubles creating effective change and sustaining long-term campaigns today.

This question has an incredibly complicated answer, enmeshed in historical and cultural context, wrapped up in class and race politics, and influenced by a niche capitalism which promotes individual expression over collective identity.

My next few columns will address activism in the past and present. It’s worth examining the movements progressives look to as models. The civil rights and 1960s movements dominate narratives of successful organizing in the United States, both because of their success and because their members are still alive. These movements motivated millions of Americans to activism, successfully altering the nation’s history.

These and all movements had what I call an “architecture of activism.” In brief, this is a shared set of symbols, heroes, songs, and other cultural reference points that provide an umbrella of common understanding necessary for organizing. For example, statues of Vladimir Lenin in the Soviet Union spoke to devoted communists around the world in specific ways that helped shape their ideology and activism. Each line in his face conveyed meanings to devotees. All movements, regardless of size, have an architecture that binds members together in solidarity. Political movements certainly have this, but so do, for instance, hipsters or underground rock scenes.

Freedom songs such as “We Shall Overcome” provided an architecture for the civil rights movement. These songs brought people together. Old and young, radical and conservative, black and white, civil rights workers united around these songs. They provided sustenance during beatings and while in jail. The songs, the shared history of suffering, the past and present leaders, food, and music: all of this brought people together to provide them inspiration, guidance, and collective identity.

The broad architecture that sustained civil rights activism could not hold up by the late 1960s. As the civil rights movement splintered into ethnic nationalism, feminism of various shades, the antiwar movement, and other social movements, each acquired their own cultural symbols. But these radical movements still shared much even if they didn’t often work together. Che Guevara and the doctrine of world revolution provided an ideological framework for many of these groups. Malcolm X gave them a hero and a path to accomplish their goals. Rock and roll, marijuana, and LSD gave these increasingly youth-dominated movements common cultural touchstones.

At the same time, youth culture began eroding the architecture that allowed for broad-based, multi-generational movements such as the early civil rights movement and the labor movement of the late nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries. The rebellion of the Baby Boomers rejected the ideas and forms of their elders as out of date. Creating a culture defined as oppositional prioritized exclusivity. Organizing communities split by age. Boomers also had massive consumer power. Hippies began their own businesses to sell age and culturally-specific products to each other.

By the early 1970s, as the political tumult of the 60s waned, individualism supplanted collectivism in the minds of the young. But the ever-evolving youth culture remained powerful. Capitalists took advantage of these individualistic desires, creating niche markets for products. Popular music expanded from shared songs that most people knew to a wide variety of popular music along with underground scenes that appealed to particular small groups, but with no hope of massive popularity. Fashion and cable television had much the same affect. Our interests and shared cultural touchstones became shared with smaller and smaller groups of people. The old seemed out of date unless you were part of a niche group of people interested in old things.

Past decades became a series of stereotypes to alternately borrow from and scorn. From the 1960s, we occasionally mine the decade for retro fashions. Much of its music remains popular. We either admire or laugh at the hippies. But our ironic age has little use for the earnestness of 60s radicals. Starry-eyed beliefs don’t have much credence in 2010.

In the late 1990s, I was heavily involved in organizing in east Tennessee. We visited the Highlander Center, home to much civil and labor rights organizing since the 1920s. Still working at Highlander were Guy and Candie Carawan, folksingers, radicals, and long-time activists. People remember Pete Seeger but Guy Carawan was almost equally influential in the 1960s. Carawan helped popularize “We Shall Overcome” within the civil rights movement.

During the visit to Highlander, the Carawans led a sing-along. They led us through the old freedom songs. And it was special in a historical sense. How many opportunities like this do you get? But it the singing itself felt weird and awkward. While the older people were into it, the younger people mostly found the experience. Later that night, many complained about the out of date singing.

As a historian, I didn’t have a lot of patience for the complaints, but I definitely felt the discomfort. Singing those old-timey songs in an age of rock and roll sliced and diced for each demographic felt hokey. The slow but inspirational song structure of “We Shall Overcome” has no cultural resonance within modern music. These songs were not my cultural touchstones, no matter how much I respect them and the singers who made them famous. In an age of irony, who can take such earnestness seriously?

I am sad that I and other young people had this reaction to our experience with the Carawans. We can’t unite in a mass movement if we can’t speak to each other across generations, across class, across race and education and experience. A broad-based architecture of activism, with commonly shared symbols, cultural touchstones, and leaders must guide us.

In other words, what will be our “We Shall Overcome”?

In late May, Rand Paul told a Russian news program that America is “the only country I know that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen.” While it may be true that we are the only such country Paul knows, we are far from the only country with birthright citizenship laws. Yet as anti-immigrant sentiments become more common in developed nations, that list of countries is shrinking. It’s been suggested that recent changes in the birthright laws of England, India, Australia and other countries have been undertaken to prevent birth tourism. In a contentious 2004 referendum, 80% of Irish voters rejected birthright laws over concerns about “citizenship tourism.”

And more and more American politicians are beginning to share their fears. State Senator Russell Pearce, best known for sponsoring Arizona’s draconian immigration law SB1070, has proposed a state bill that would deny citizenship to any child born in Arizona unless one parent can document their US citizenship. Randy Terrill, a Republican Representative from Oklahoma, has introduced a similar bill in his state. Under current laws, Terrill told NPR, “children of invading armies would be considered citizens of the U.S.” Fear-mongering at its best.

The media, it seems, is following their lead. Just last week, The Washington Post published an article entitled “For Many Pregnant Chinese, A U.S. Passport for Baby Remains a Powerful Lure.” The “many” of the title is questionable, however. The article admits there are no hard numbers, and the company they spoke to estimated they had helped 500-600 women in the course of five years – not quite the flood of wealthy Chinese birth tourists the title conjures up.

In April, ABC News carried an almost hysterical segment on birth tourism, which used rampant speculation in the place of facts. “Of the 4,273,225 live births in the United States in 2006, the most recent data gathered by the National Center for Health Statistics, 7,670 were children born to mothers who said they do not live here. Many, but not all, of those mothers could be ‘birth tourists,’ experts say.” [emphasis added] By their own admission, that makes birth tourism responsible for a whopping .001 percent of all births at most.

Using the tiny number of birth tourists as a front, birthright laws are coming under a full-frontal attack by the Tea Party. And why shouldn’t they? Isn’t this just an easily exploitable loophole in our immigration policies?

In short: no. Birthright citizenship is an incredibly important part of the social contract that is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Without it, the stage is set for the creation of a permanent underclass of workers that have no recourse for citizenship, even down through generations. It was designed to ensure that slavery could never again happen in the US. The citizenship laws that have replaced explicit birthright laws in much of Europe require an ancestor with citizenship for a child to gain citizenship of their own. This creates a situation where immigrant populations can be trapped as resident non-citizens forever.

In fact, attacks on birth tourism are simply red herrings designed to mask a larger assault on immigrants in this country. The image of rich foreign families coming over to give birth is easy to demonize. As The Washington Post article put it, “these Chinese parents fly in on first-class seats.” It is simpler to attack these families than it is the true face of birthright citizenship: the children of poor, hardworking immigrant communities in the US.

For Paul, Terrill, Pearce, et at., the real fear is not the small number of women who may come to visit the U.S. to give birth (and, in eighteen years, have their family sponsored for citizenship), but rather the women and families who are already in this country.This is but one small part in a larger Tea Party initiative to chip away at the rights of all immigrants in this country, legal and illegal.

Thankfully, amending the Constitution is a difficult and unlikely process. But as more and more state level officials jump on the anti-immigration bandwagon, we can expect to see an uptick in local bills that require proof-of-citizenship to access pre-natal care and birth-related services.

And the Foundation’s display of “I’m sorry” merchandise (t-shirts available for $20!) went over swimmingly – just look at the tender moment captured on the sidebar. However, many, including noted columnist Dan Savage started to question the Foundation’s motives. As Savage put it, “I don’t want … to discover that these guys came to pride to deliver the same old love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin message …”

Sadly, while Marin is very coy on his website – sticking to feel-good rhetoric and a nebulous desire to improve relations with the LGBT community – his real views are never far below the surface. His personal blog includes a link to an infamous “pray away the gay” group – the Institute for Sexual Identity at Pat Robertson’s Regent University.

Marin’s allegiances become even more obvious while reading his book Love is an Orientation. Marin is clear that “Bible believing Christians” such as himself who take a “traditional Christian hermeneutical interpretation” of the Bible are “against same sex behavior of any kind.” However, he believes that “love the sinner, hate the sin” (a fully accurate description of his ministry) should be “remove[d] … from our vocabulary” because it might cause LGBT individuals to “build up their defenses.”

And this is Marin’s principle message throughout the book – don’t argue about things like civil rights, biblical interpretation, gay marriage, etc. because you’ll only make those sensitive homosexuals mad. And we’re trying to “elevate the conversation” and “build a bridge” between the LGBT and evangelical communities so that we can get them fixed and Saved.

And that’s what it’s about for Andrew Marin. That’s the endgame. Getting ‘em to repent, come to Christ, and change their ways. While he is very careful to sidestep the question of whether or not he believes that LGBT individuals can change their orientation, he does say that:

The metric of change in relation to a GLBT person’s faith journey … can cover a number of variables: secular to spiritual, non-Christian to Christian, sexually active to celibate, gay to straight …

In this vein, Marin provides many personal success stories where his love and encouragement has helped grateful LGBT folks make all of the above journeys. He says that “sticking to the facts” of these stories “diffuses the weight of opinion-based answers.” One might also add that no one has been able to reproduce the results claimed in his anecdotes in any peer-reviewed scientific study. But that would be a whole other article. And I’m lazy.

The one thing that all the LGBT folks he meets in his book have in common is that they are all miserable, and most of them have HIV/AIDS. They are prostitutes, junkies, burnt-out workaholics, depressed, often suicidal, with no meaning in their lives. Until their great savior (Marin, or Jesus of Nazareth, still not sure which) comes along and listens to their feelings. And treats them like a real human being. With a gayness problem, of course.

And they’re so grateful. In fact, Marin’s Foundation (which along with his associated book and speaking engagements provides most of his income) received a lot of its initial funding from the gay folks of Chicago’s “Boystown” neighborhood, where Marin lived and obsessively attended gay dance clubs at the urging of the Lord.

And just as Marin was kind to the gay bar patrons, the bars have in turn provided great opportunities for the Foundation – as my friend Luke says, “give, and it shall be given unto you.” Marin decided that other fundamentalist Christians should see how real and human the gays could be and organized a continuing event for Christian groups called “Out Night” where they could go down to Boystown and observe the LGBT community in a sympathetic forum they could easily relate to – good, wholesome fun like the Friday Night Shower Contest and Saturday Night Lube Wrestling (no, I am not making that up).

After the unqualified success of “Out Night,” many expected Marin to attempt to further heal religious tensions by taking Christian youth groups to experience “authentic” Islamic culture at a Hezbollah training camp, but he instead decided to continue “bridging the divide” by teaching a class on “Immersion into the Gay and Lesbian Community” at the fundamentalist Moody Bible Institute’s graduate school.

If the class is anything like Marin’s book, he teaches the kids at Moody not to directly criticize gay sex because “sexual behavior is gay identity”. All those silly, sensitive old gay folks get mad when you trash talk their buttsex because that’s all they do all day – it’s who they are. It’s not like they have meaningful, healthy romantic relationships or anything – they’re all miserable hookers. But because that would make them mad and stop us from working together to “make a difference for the Kingdom.”

Marin also spends a lot of time talking about “Gay Christian” and “Christian” theology so that his pupils won’t get fooled by sneaky homosexual deviations like original languages and historical context. And even though Marin realizes that “too much damage has been done on both sides for some quick patchwork,” he has some great tricks on how to get those pesky gays to listen to you. After you’ve stopped saying controversial stuff:

Find a gay church with a gay pastor; ask to get together with them so you can listen and learn … next, invite GLBT people to your church … and just watch what happens as that little step inaugurates life-altering redemptive conversations about the things of God with the GLBT community.

Inspiring, that. And I understand why Marin doesn’t want to talk about the icky parts of his theology. It’s not fun. But before anyone starts “elevating the conversation” with him, he needs to explicitly, and unequivocally confirm that LGBT individuals – and their relationships – have a place in his church and deserve equal protection under the law. Because you can’t really ignore the “tough questions” he wishes to avoid when they call your basic humanity into question. And Andrew Marin can’t change that simple fact. Even if he’s really nice. Even if he wears all the “I’m Sorry” shirts in (what he assures me to be) his massive inventory.

On a personal note, during my time in Mississippi I attended a bible study at a southern Presbyterian church with a lovely girl of African-American ancestry. We drew more than a few stares. And you know what, we deserved to ask for (and receive) the unambiguous, unconditional affirmation of the pastor before we engaged in any more dialogue with that community. And all the LGBT folks out there deserve that as well. I know, because I’m a Christian. As are the welcoming folks at the Epiphany United Church of Christ in Chicago, who are among the Marin Foundation’s many donors. Let’s all work together to truly make a difference for the Kingdom.

The author is a Baptist seminarian at the Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, TX.