This week I found myself embroiled in quite the online controversy. On Wednesday morning a friend forwarded me a tweet that went out saying, “Josh McDowell’s son uses fear, hate, & ignorance to teach kids how to ‘love’”. Obviously that got my attention! So I followed the link to the webpage and found a cropped video of a panel I was on at the Rock Church in San Diego in 2008 regarding Prop 8.

I was asked the question about how Christians should treat their gay friends. My response, which I think is biblical, is that we are to respond with both grace and truth (John 1:17). Paul says love speaks the truth (1 Cor. 13). But the video showed my opening story and cut the last two minutes, leaving it entirely without context. The video was posted online, and needless to say, I was criticized rather harshly for being hateful, unChristian, fear-mongering, and ignorant (among other things!).

While no one can predict the outcome of the Prop 8 trial, the unlikely pairing of conservative lawyer Theodore Olson with his former liberal foe, David Boies, is making plenty of headlines.   They faced off in the famous Bush vs. Gore Supreme Court battle.  Together, they are now arguing against the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8 which outlawed gay marriage.   

Newsweek features a fascinating first person account from Ted Olson.  Rather than discussing how and when he reversed his position, the former solicitor general for George W. Bush maintains that conservatives should inherently affirm individual liberty and any legislation that promotes marriage, stability and family.     It is also intriguing that liberal lion David Boies relishes the opportunity to put the Obama's administration's equivocating on the issue on trial.    He told Newsweek, "The current administration has been decidedly halfway on this issue," he says, "and I think the specter of having George Bush's lawyer out in front of a Democratic president is something that, shall we say, might stimulate people to rethink their positions."  Conservative scion Edwin Meese offered an editorial protesting the particulars of the trial (including its San Francisco venue) in the famed venue of the left, The New York Times.