Talk:Michael Marcavage

I have relocated this section from the article page. I have posted some notes below the section.

Marcavage was described in June 2005 at Salon's World O'Crap Blog as a "professional anti-gay activist (he believes the government should put homosexuals to death) who claimed he was arrested for just preaching the gospel, but whom police said he was arrested for disturbing a lawful gay event by using a bullhorn to shout 'Sodomists repent, you're going to hell,' and for disobeying police orders, etc."

• I haven't seen any primary source citation that indicates that Marcavage believes "the government should put homosexuals to death"; in the absence of that then I don't think we should leave that claim on the article page;

• "police said he was arrested for disturbing a lawful gay event by using a bullhorn to shout 'Sodomists repent, you're going to hell,'": I'm not persuaded that we know that it was Marcavage who shouted that or whether it was someone else. The article by Sheryl Henderson Blunt, "Muzzled Speech: Christians tried for anti-gay preaching" in Christianty Today March 2005 states "During the incident, which happened in October, several of the Christians were calling out, "Sodomists repent. You're going to hell," a police officer testified." It doesn't specifically identify Marcavage as one of those and notes that there were eleven people arrested that day.

• There is certianly available material covering Marcavage's protests and facing charges but, as it is on his profile page, we should make sure that it is directly describing his activities.--Bob Burton 22:18, 10 May 2007 (EDT)

Further Edit Notes

I relocacted this par from the article pages and have located alternative sources as far as possible. The original Tidmus post no longer seems to be online so it was unclear what the original sources supporting his summary was. So I have found alternatives for the San Francisco arrest, the protest againt John Kerry (though with different details) and the Ten Commandments incident. However, I haven't tracked down anything on what happened re the inauguration. --Bob Burton 23:28, 10 May 2007 (EDT)

synopsis of Marcavage's activist career prior to March 2005 comes from Mike Tidmus' blog:

"Mike Tidmus blog has a good summary of Michael’s career, which includes such feats as: getting arrested for failing to obey a sheriff's orders to leave town hall while protesting San Francisco’s granting of same-sex marriage licenses; getting arrested for trying to interfere with workers as they covered a Ten Commandments in Pennsylvania; picketing a private residence visited by Sen. John Kerry and asking a child there how many abortions she’d had; and traveling to D.C. to protest President Bush's inauguration."

Edit Notes

In a phone call Michael Marcavage has raised several points about the content of the profile page:

• I have deleted the link Note file extension is for MichaelMarcavage, Army of God. He stated that he has had no connection to the group and nothing to do with the content of that page.

On looking at it, the inclusion of "MichaelMarcavage.html" in the url shouldn't be taken as him authoring the page. The first version of the page in the Waybackmachine from December 2004 http://web.archive.org/web/20041214234904/http://armyofgod.com/MichaelMarcavage.html helps explain the naming. The content of the page, largely consisting of a media release by Marcavage over him being arrested at the October 2004 Outfest in Philadelphia. The apparent author of the page is identified as Rev. Donald Spitz from Virgina. Later on the content of the page was changed but the same file address retained.

• As indicated in an earlier edit note the post "We Told You You'd Hear More About Him," World O'Crap Blog, January 14, 2005 doesnlt add much that is not covered in other links but does include some claims which can't be verified from elsewhere. I had deleted this material from the body of the article but hadn't deleted it from the list of references.

• I also removed this link as I couldnlt get it to work over a period of a few hours so I think its more than the server being temporarily out. --Bob Burton 06:26, 18 May 2007 (EDT)

Franny Ward, "Michael Marcavage Vs. Lansdowne," Totally Delco Blog, August 7, 2004.