Just last week the Minnesota Council of “Respectful Conversations Project” to encourage civil religious dialogue about this fall’s vote on an Amendment to limit the freedom to marry.
About nine hours ago (and counting) this quote was posted on the Facebook page of Minnesota for Marriage, the campaign supporting the Amendment:
“If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”
~Leviticus 20:13
Jeremy Hooper has a screen shot here. While they’re still up, go ahead and read the comment thread.
Andy Parrish, the spokesman for Minnesota for Marriage, claims in a tweet:
My Twitter, Facebook,
@gmail.com @me.com were all hacked and garbage was posted on the MInnesota For Marriage FB. I won’t be intimidated.
It’s curious that, although all of his accounts were hacked, only the Facebook page got the Leviticus love.
But, wait a minute – is Parrish saying that some quotes from the Bible are garbage?
Now that we can agree that the Bible and Leviticus in particular can be used to justify all sorts of stuff we might today consider “garbage” — maybe now we can begin that respectful dialogue?
UPDATE: Aaaaaand… it’s deleted! Their new status update says:
Good Morning – Last night our Deputy Campaign Manager, Andy Parrish’s personal email, Facebook, and Twitter accounts were hacked by an individual who posted the Leviticus verse below. We are currently working with Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and Apple to see who hacked Andy’s account and who posted this message. Clearly we would never advocate for anyone to be put to death – We strongly believe that people are entitled to love whomever they choose, but they are not entitled to redefine marriage for all of society.
Who will tell those Amendment supporters who had been commenting favorably to the Leviticus quote – that stuff is garbage!
UPDATE 2: Oh wait, spoke too soon. Leviticus is still there. Guess it’s not garbage after all!
Seriously, I was wondering what they’d do in this damned-if-you-do situation. Take the post down, you agree, in the words of the campaign’s spokesman, that the quote is “garbage.” Keep it up, and you keep a headache on your hands. For now, someone please send a shipment of Excedrin to Minnesota for Marriage?
For what it’s worth, my guess is this: A campaign its size probably has more than one person with access to their Facebook page. This might be less of a hacking and more a case of someone on the campaign going a little off message.
UPDATE 3: A new post at Minnesota for Marriage says Facebook forensics (is that like Internet CSI?) is close to finding the culprit:
Friends – We cannot remove the post from the hacker until Facebook’s forensics team has identified the hacker. We are told they are close. We will remove it as soon as we can. We have also found out that US Senate Candidate Kurt Bills Facebook was hacked last night as well and hateful things were written as well. Thanks for your understanding – Andy Parrish, Deputy Campaign Manager. Minnesota for Marriage
A commenter on MPR’s Newscut writes:
B.S. The post was made from M4M’s account. Therefore, they don’t need Facebook to verify anything. All they need to do is go to Account settings > Security > Active sessions and put the cursor over the session that was active when the post was made to view the IP address used.
Sounds logical to me, but – this I don’t know much about this stuff. Oh, and apparently the hateful things a hacker said on US Senate Candidate Kurt Bills’ Facebook page was that he no longer supports the marriage amendment. That turned out to be false.
Maybe some good can come of this very odd episode. We can all perhaps agree that selective readings of the Bible do not lead to “respectful conversations”?
Thug In Pastels 
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