The trend lately with NOM and the Witherspoon Institute has been to feature writers and activists who have that rare gift of being able to write fifteen-hundred words while saying absolutely nothing. Our opposition is so desperate to appear intelligent and thoughtful, because they know that they do not appear intelligent and thoughtful to sane people. The other day, we spent some time with Anthony Esolen of NOM’s Ruth Institute, who dressed up his Absolutely Nothing with paragraph upon paragraph of inane ramblings, mythological citations and whatnot, and at the end, we were left with little more than an impression of a strange, lonely man who may or may not have met actual human beings.
Today, in the same vein, we have self-loathing homocon Doug Mainwaring, writing words upon words for the Witherspoon Institute about how his opposition to marriage equality is about high ideals and intelligent analysis, rather than just a bunch of words that could be shortened to “Oh, my god, I hate myself.”
Look:
As the national marriage debate advances, history can teach us a lesson about our circumstances. Consider alcohol prohibition. In his excellent book, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, Daniel Okrent charts the rise of the movement that led to the Eighteenth Amendment and its later repeal.
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As our Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 and Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), we face similar prospects: Will the Court usurp the people’s authority to define marriage, in order to dilute it and render it meaningless? Will it bend and twist an immutable concept to accommodate an implausible dogma of political correctness?
He really thinks he can tie this to Prohibition?
Prohibitionism succeeded because its leaders won public opinion to their cause. But the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed because that same cause fell from popularity. I predict the same trajectory for the same-sex marriage movement.
I am tempted to simply call him a moron, hit “publish” and move on to something else. But yes, Doug Mainwaring is going to now tell us how legalizing marriage equality is going to suddenly make it less popular, which would be markedly different from what’s happened in every state and nation where it’s been passed, considering the fact that legalization seems to make marriage equality more popular one hundred percent of the time.
Proponents of same-sex marriage, especially the mainstream media, have conjured up a very impressive perception of near-universal consent to their agenda since last November’s ballot victories. It suddenly seems as if acceptance of same-sex marriage is an unstoppable tsunami, sweeping across the nation, knocking down principled opposition (and gathering up the gullible), i.e., everyone, in its path.
But tsunamis always recede. Or, as Okrent puts it, fevers always fade. Hurricanes always die down.
Perhaps the “tsunami” metaphor is stupid, Doug. Because one might say that a tsunami came and people suddenly understood that slavery was horrible, that women should have the right to vote — anything that involved expanding people’s rights and making them fuller participants in this thing we called America. But those “tsunamis” didn’t recede and anyone who would casually argue that women’s suffrage was a mistake is rightly called a fringe extremist. Because that’s what happens when rights are granted.
That’s why this issue is so urgent right now: Proponents know that the aura of fairness and equity associated with the same-sex marriage movement will soon dissipate.
Er, no. There’s no evidence for that, and “because some self-loathing homocon says so” isn’t a persuasive argument. The reason we have majority support now is largely that the majority of Americans know gay people and realize that the stuff the Religious Right has been spewing for decades is simply untrue. And the more that people know us, the more they support us. The next phase of this won’t be apathy, but rather a situation where the great majority of the country considers you a buffoon and a bigot if you don’t support basic fairness and equality. That’s already how it is for most educated people.
Doug then quotes one of America’s most pathetic wingnuts, Rich Lowry, who suggests that gays are demanding that the Supreme Court “declare the traditional definition of marriage—and by extension everyone who adheres to it—irrational and bigoted.” This is, of course, an insane statement, and nothing of the sort is happening. We are at the Supreme Court right now, making the more compelling argument that marriage is a fundamental right in this country and that there is no rational basis for excluding gay couples from the institution. If your “traditional marriage” is damaged by me, and even Doug Mainwaring, whether he likes it or not, having full equality, your “traditional marriage” sucks and you need to stop blaming gay people for that.
Back to Doug:
There’s a reason for this. Proponents of same-sex marriage must derail public discourse and demand quick action via judicial, executive, and/or legislative fiat; otherwise their mission is doomed.
No. No evidence for that either, and Doug doesn’t try to cite any. He’s just writing in that flowery, declarative style NOM and Witherspoon are so fond of, as they all hope against hope that someone, somewhere will read their words and find them persuasive. Not gonna happen. We are in the courts, though, because that is the branch of government related to rights and Constitutional interpretation. We understand that most wingnuts do not understand how our government works, but that’s their problem, not ours.
Over 100 Republican leaders signed an amicus brief in support of same-sex marriage. So what? Only two are currently elected officials.
Some NFL players submitted a similar amicus brief. Again, what’s the big deal? With 32 NFL teams, each with 53 players on the active roster (totaling 1,696), they amount to less than one-fourth of 1 percent of all NFL players.
What about Jon Huntsman? Senator Rob Portman? Media made it sound like the entire Republican Caucus in the U.S. Senate and the NFL had become friends of Dorothy.
Chris Cillizza from the Washington Post, for example, made the wild unsubstantiated claim that “The political debate over gay marriage is over,” and Republican strategist Ana Navarro said, “This is now undeniable. The shift is here. We’re not going back.” It’s hard to tell whether media and politicians are being strategic or whether their reason and intellects have also been swept away in a tsunami of their own making.
More of the elected GOP officials who support equality will come forward as time goes by. At the moment, they have to deal with the fact that their base is made up of rubes. Moreover, it’s just beginning in professional sports. It’ll be fun to watch that expand and grow. But again, there is absolutely no evidence that the “tsunami will recede” and suddenly people will go back to being bigots. That’s just not the way our country works, Douglas.
We also need to notice what has actually happened in the LGBT community since marriage was redefined in nine states and the District of Columbia. The media would have us think there is a huge pent-up demand by gays to marry. But if that were true, there should have been massive stampedes to the licensing departments in those states that instituted same-sex marriage immediately after its legalization. On the contrary, the mad dash to the altar by couples dressed in matching tuxedos or wedding dresses has never really materialized.
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As it turns out, the pent-up demand for same-sex marriage was never all that pent-up, and the demand in general for marriage among gays and lesbians appears quite anemic.
Apparently not enough gay couples were on “go” for Doug’s liking, therefore we don’t really want marriage. But yet somehow, most of the coupled gays I know are…married. It’s the norm, not an aberration, and part of the reason support is spiking right now is that straight people are learning about their married gay friends and finding out just how many rights we’re still not granted. Normal, educated straight people find this to be insane.
Now, Doug may be projecting his own feelings here, because he is a gay man who doesn’t love himself enough to want to be considered a first-class citizen. That is a distinct possibility.
Put all this together and it’s evident that there’s no real urgent need for same-sex marriage to be instituted, no great demand for it, and no sea change of conservative support. In fact, the degree of popular support has been fabricated, woven from thin strands of sophistry and fragile threads of emotion.
Actually, the degree of support has been measured by polls, done on a regular basis, that show that we’re gaining a couple of percentage points per year in support, and that we’re well over 50% these days with no signs of stopping. Oh, sure, it’ll probably plateau in the 60’s or 70’s at some point — old wingnuts die hard, y’know. But as much as Doug may want to assert as truth things that he wishes were true, he’s still — well, he’s just full of sh*t, really.
Proponents are well aware of just how weak and vulnerable their grandiose narrative is, so they desperately need the Supreme Court to rule in their favor. June, when their ruling will be announced, can’t come fast enough as far as they’re concerned; otherwise the push for sweeping transformational change is lost.
No, it will be a setback if that happens, but if that happens, a later court will overturn the current one and meanwhile, it will continue state by state. But no, there will be no momentum lost.
Just as the Prohibition movement advanced too far, leading to repeal, so too will the same-sex marriage cabal’s efforts be recognized as a tyrannical assault on freedom and a rejection of natural law and reason.
Some may ask, “Prohibition was repealed because it limited the rights of Americans; isn’t same sex marriage about expanding—not limiting—our rights?” Absolutely not. Extending the term “marriage” to male/male and female/female couples will have exactly the opposite effect, because it will collapse all differences between marriage and any other close relationship between two people.
And that makes absolutely no sense to anyone who actually knows gay people. Doug, I know you like dudes, but do you have any gay friends? Because if you think that recognizing our loving committed marriages equally will “collapse all differences between marriage and any other close relationship,” I’m worried that you don’t go outside much, that you don’t socialize with anyone who is like you. And of course, that you hate yourself.
And if marriage is rendered indistinct from other forms of companionship, we will have destroyed the greatest intermediary structure standing between the individual and the power of the state.
Sentence makes no sense, moving on, and also skipping a random non sequitur about “Julia,” the mythical single woman used in the 2012 Obama campaign.
Our recent juridical and legislative history is rife with assaults on the rights and needs of children, always trumped in favor of selfish adults. No more. I am confident that the naked overreach of the media and progressive activists on this issue will invite a voter backlash that will either meet or exceed the same-sex marriage movement’s achievements, leading to a thorough rethinking of Roe v. Wade, no-fault divorce, and our debilitating, anti-family, anti-father welfare state.
The fact that lots of gay couples are raising children kinda screws you on logic there, doesn’t it, Doug? That said, he gets mighty grandiose there at the end, and as usual, proffers no evidence. Roe is not going anywhere, because women have brains, and marriage equality will, sooner or later, be the law of the land.
I am sorry, Doug. I wish that you loved yourself enough to believe you deserve to be equal. For now, you will just have to be NOM/Witherspoon’s useful idiot, writing 1500 word screeds on the internet about why you don’t deserve to be loved.
