This week’s ruling striking down Oklahoma’s ban on marriage equality hit the right wing especially hard. After all, Oklahoma can lay claim to being the buckle on the Bible Belt, so if same-sex marriage can happen there, it’s game, set and match. Needless to say, the ruling elicited the usual outburst of nonsensical reactions. Here’s a rundown of some of the zaniest responses from the fever swamps.
Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern: “Homosexuality is not a civil right. It’s a human wrong…Homosexuals are saying this is who we are. This is how we’re born. You tell a lie long enough, people start to believe it.”
Pastor Paul Blair of Reclaiming America for Christ: “It’s time for us to stand with men like [abolitionist minister] Charles Finney in opposition to slavery and with [Nazi opponent] Dietrich Bonhoeffer to opposition to totalitarian government in Germany, we’re facing much the same thing.”
Oklahoma Pastor Doug Passmore: “If you push gay marriage far enough, you destroy a nation, or destroy a world because no babies will be born. So how can anything be totally good from a rational standpoint if it ultimately destroyed a nation.”
How about we take this to the next level?
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But the gold cup has to go to Rep. Louis Gohmert (R.-Texas), who seems to be competing for Michele Bachmann’s crown as the nuttiest of the wingnuts in Congress. At an event held at the Heritage Foundation, Gohmert suggested that judges who favor marriage equality should spend more time understanding biology–or at least Gohmert’s version of it. He complained that the judges were, in his words, saying, “‘Basically, we haven’t seen any biological evidence to support marriage being between a man and a woman.’”
But Gohmert has a way to fix that. The judges “need some basic plumbing lessons.”
To which we tell Gohmert, time to get your head out of the toilet.
DShucking
These bitches. I swear.
Dakotahgeo
These BibleBelt conservative jokers never cease to amaze and amuse me. American christian Taliban in a bottle… 25 cents a bottle or two for $5.00. Suuuch a deal!
gaym50ish
So now our minority community is going to destroy the world. Who knew? Everyone will be gay and no babies will be born! That is, if we don’t first destroy it by bringing on enough of those natural disasters that Pat Robertson blames us for.
One wonders if these guys really believe the nutty stuff they say. If they do, Oklahoma has far worse problems than same-sex marriage — like finding enough intelligent people to govern.
Now, who’s going to volunteer to demonstrate for Gohmert that the plumbing really does FIT?
Chris-MI
What these guys are saying is that gay sex is soooo much better than straight sex that if we didn’t stigmatize it no one would ever manage to have straight sex again.
Ask the nearest straight person if they agree with that and draw your own conclusions.
Tom Anderson
Not correct to call such idiocy “right wing.” The proper term would be “religious traditionalist.” If by “Right Wing” one means favoring individual rights, limited government, what on earth do religious folk have to do with anything?
I am queer, I favor individual rights, and find that Republicans, at least in the past, have been far more favorable to my position than Democrats and Liberals. Barry Goldwater came out opposing religious intervention into politics as well as a strong supporter of individual rights for queer Americans, including those in his own family. The Democrats once called him a “right wing extremist”.
Try to use political rhetoric a little more carefully.
2eo
@Tom Anderson: Right wing is the correct term. Although I understand you lack the grey matter to understand the nuances of incredibly simple concepts.
Tom Anderson
@2eo: If you cannot make a plausible case for your viewpoint, there is always the age-old fallacy of making an ad hominem attack in its place.
Dakotahgeo
@Tom Anderson: Thank you, Tom! There is no room for second opinions, just ad hominems. There must be a PhD program somewhere for that ;-). Kudos!
Dakotahgeo
@Dakotahgeo: ad hominem responses*
2eo
Nice to see all the right wingers are teaming up, Dako, Tom, Shucking and the anti gay rights movement clowns BJ, Bryant and company.
Tom Anderson
Insults only work on people who value your opinion, 2eo. I don’t.
DShucking
@2eo: Moron. You’re a coward and an embarrassment to our community. Complain about abusive posters after you’ve been abusive yourself. Everyone who doesn’t act like a gay stereotype must be an anti-gay homophobe in disguise. Explain why it is that you called me a r*cist even though I never said anything r*cial? Why are you afraid to answer? Is it because you’re embarrassed that you misused the term?
Tom Anderson
@DShucking: Strikes me that 2eo is not the sort of chap who’d feel embarrassment about much of anything, much less uncivil behavior. Probably he’s just very, very young and lives in his mother’s basement and receives little recognition or respect from those who know him.
Naturally if he hasn’t earned respect, that could be a real problem for him. Does he have a paid job, do you think? Anyone know? He probably is jobless you know. Probably should feel sorry for him, not angry. Consider what his poor mother has had to go through!
Dakotahgeo
@Tom Anderson: “Insults only work on people who value your opinion, ***. I don’t.”
AMEN! Pehaps this is why there is a dearth of responses to those comments. Boredom has finally kicked. Perhaps ignoring the problem IS the best answer!
Dakotahgeo
@Tom Anderson: *** had a mother??? Who whudda guessed?!
2eo
How sad, the latest tactic of posting as a team. Pathetic.
2eo
I don’t expect civility from conservatives though.
2eo
I grow weary of arguing with right wing nutters, I think I’ll just stop posting here, and carry out what I was planning to do to… one of you after all.
Tom Anderson
I agree that there must be forums in which your sort of invective would be welcome. Happy trails, 2eo!
Dakotahgeo
I agree, Tom. Absolute best wishes in his future journeys… we will be a happier, more intelligent group in the process.
SteveDenver
All the right wing objections fail to answer two basic questions:
WHY? and HOW?
Homosexuals getting married will end reproduction. WHY and HOW? Does this mean heterosexuals will find homosexuality so enticing they’ll give up?
Homosexuals getting married will destroy the nation. HOW? Come on you god-fearing religious LIARS, tell me HOW. It’s so remarkable to listen to Christians tell LIES LIES LIES and feel no guilt.
Some with the rest of their right wing bullshit. Someone hold out a Bible and make them swear on it. Then hold a gun to their heads and make them swear on it.
SteveDenver
@2eo: or truth
Tom Anderson
@SteveDenver: What is the point of asking such questions to people who rely on faith rather than reason to guide their life and actions? This has nothing at all to do with something called “the right wing”–since that is a category that covers such a diverse group of people and ideologies?
You might be interested in my recent rant about Christians on Facebook, to a self-confessed Christian woman who declares that she would never “shun” queer folk, that she is, in short, no hater:
Even in their own terms, Christians have much to answer for. But you can pretty much justify anything you want to do if you’re a religious person, since faith cannot define or limit human evil in the way reason can. It is not strange that there may be some moral Christians, but you don’t hear of too many who defend queer folk, or their right to do what they do, just as you hear very little from the so-called “good” Muslims who reject jhihadism.
My hope would be that you might extend yourself to help those young people, to protect them and their self-image, from the ravages and hatred of other Christians. If you doubt me, just open up any conservative blog, any commentary on the religious right, and there you will find unreasoning hatred of queer folk, of arbitrary and insulting smears, of attacks against queers as pedophiles, as advocates of bestiality, of wishing to destroy “true marriage”, that is, exclusively between a man and a woman. These are all forms of hate against a class of people for the way that they were born.
In so-called Christian nations abroad, Christians from this country visit and encourage genocide against queers, hatred, and the worst forms of cruelty imaginable. There just is no end to Christian evil.
I have not the slightest doubt that there are a great many Christians in this United States, who, if they could, would have the military round up queers and exterminate them, just as the Nazis did the Jews. This is hatred engendered by Christian doctrine. I don’t know how any “good” Christian could live amongst a “community”, if that’s what to call it, who sought to murder queers, the only force stopping them, the thin blue line and the willingness of queers to protest, as they did at Stonewall, appealing to mankind’s higher instincts.
https://www.facebook.com/Okeechobee.Tom/posts/10151899219391918?comment_id=28861414&offset=0&total_comments=6¬if_t=share_comment
As for the Christian homophobes, it should be clear that there’s not much point in arguing with them. There is no real sense to their positions. You need to understand them emotionally, not intellectually, just as you would try to figure out how any other person who rejects reason for faith might interpret matters.
You will probably not be successful, of course, but I would that you would spare yourselves any angst over longing for things that will never be, at least probably not in this lifetime.
Your only duty, if you choose, is simply to argue your case, if you must, lest your silence be taken as assent.
You accomplish much more with your opponents through your manner and attitude than with your words and moral outrage. Always remember that some people are color-blind and can make no sense of the rainbow.