Good. The opponents of gay marriage couldn’t even get a majority of the Senate to support a vote on a marriage amendment. Only 49 senators voted to close debate.
I can’t express how disgusted I am at Colorado’s Wayne Allard, whom Time named one of America’s five worst senators, and those who agree with him. That includes the President, who hasn’t even discussed the issue since he was re-elected but now sees fit to use us in order to help his party.
As Michael Scherer points out, opponents of gay marriage rarely talk about actual gay people anymore. While it’s nice that insulting gay people directly is apparently no longer a respectable component of mainstream political discourse, it also means we’re left out of the equation completely.
But rather than talk about gay marriage, a dozen speakers, including Colorado GOP Sen. Wayne Allard, took turns expounding on the importance of loving, two-parent homes for children. They talked about the damage done by deadbeat dads in the inner city, and the importance of family in minority communities. As the Rev. Eve Nunez, an Arizona pastor put it, “America has been wandering in a wilderness of social problems caused by family disintegration.”
The press corps who had gathered for the event appeared universally baffled by the argument being made from behind the microphones. “How would outlawing gay marriage encourage heterosexual fathers to stick around?” asked the first wire service reporter to be called on for questions. “Why not outlaw divorce?” another scribe asked Allard later.
They can’t answer these questions because it’s not about “strengthening the family.” Or if it is, they’re too timid to take steps that will affect a majority of their constituents; they’d rather pass a law that they know will never affect them. People don’t want to criminalize adultery because someday they might be adulterers; they don’t want to ban divorce because they might want a divorce someday. But they don’t mind banning gay marriage, because hey, they’ll never be gay.
This is a complete failure to try and see the world through the eyes of a human being who is different from you. That’s the root of the world’s problems, really. It’s been true throughout human history and probably even before then. It takes effort to see the world through someone else’s eyes; it’s easier to just be ignorant and afraid of those who are different. People don’t like to leave their comfort zones.
So we’re seen as The Other. We’re expendable. Who cares that a gay marriage ban will prevent certain people from achieving full protection for their relationships? I’m not gay, so I don’t have to worry about it. It affects them, not me.
People are so ignorant.
On the other hand, perhaps “we just watched the death of the opposition to gay marriage.”
You ignore the holy roller component. That’s what it’s really about — everyone is the OTHER to somebody, even to gay people there are OTHERS. This issue is specific to the “Bible says it’s wrong” factor. Yes, God-fearing people do several things the Bible says are wrong, and even aren’t aware of some others.
But men being less than men (which comprises kissing a man, or taking it anally from a man, according to many folks) — even if it weren’t in the Bible that would strike folks as something to deride, to mock. “The Bible says..” offers these people the tool to do so with shamless temerity.
And also, no one wants to be “No. 2” or even tied for No. 1, in faith or in orientation or anything else. These folks also don’t want to lose some semblance of “moral authority” that would occur if gays got such an equal footing with straights.
For a good number of Americans (and everyone else for that matter), absent other people they are confidently “better” than, and can feel superior to, life’s pretty darn unrewarding. Yes, it’s that petty for these folks, yes our culture does little to disabuse them of this, yes it’s part of the human condition.
Yes, it’s all ridiculous.
Kbc got it right, Religious folks always want to feel superior to other people. They used to demonize godless communists, but that kinda ended in 1989. So then it switched to gays/lesbians. I personally could really care less about rules laid out in some 2000 year old book.
Religious folks always want to feel superior to other people
Two things: one, categorically not true, humility and egalitarianism are bedrock principles of Christianity and other religions. That some people of faith struggle with feelings of superiority more or less successfully is to be expected. Two: my, don’t WE feel superior to religious folk.
Oh, and a third thing: not all people of faith are anti-gay. Just last week I attended a rally at Temple B’nai Jeshurun for people of all faith traditions in support of legalizing same-sex marriage in the state of New York. The author of this blog was also present, and can attest that the place was PACKED TO THE GILLS.