Oh thank goodness: Maggie Gallagher was allotted her time yesterday to testify in New Hampshire before the House Judiciary Committee about an attempt to repeal the state’s same-sex marriage, even though she is a) not a New Hampshire resident; and b) would not be impacted in the slightest if the state keeps the law. But hey, free speech and whatever. So what brilliant wisdom did Maggie bestow on the state? “Opposite sex unions … [are] the only unions that can make new life.” Except? Last time I checked? Marriage isn’t required to make new life? Can somebody look that up in a textbook please.
bigots in blue
Maggie Gallagher Explains To New Hampshire Why Marriage Discrimination Is ‘Not Discrimination’
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Matthew
Maggie Gallagher is always fighting about children being raised by the “husband and wife” that made them. It’s her biggest argument against gay marriage but my question that I continue to ask every time I see her speaking somewhere is What about all of the kids that are adopted? Even if they are adopted by a man and woman, her argument says that being raised by people other than your biological parents is wrong. Ugh anyway, Maggie Gallagher is just a wretched woman and is very frustrating to watch.
justiceontherocks
By Maggie’s own logic, divorce, not marriage equality, is the real problem.
Don’t you just love these “conservatives” who think the only legitimate role of government is to involve itself in people’s private lives.
Mark
@Matthew: and she also was knocked up as a single woman – hypocrite much? Sheesh…..
Jonathan
Maggie Gallagher looks like she ate a truckful of doughnuts. She’s huge. More chins than a chinese phone book.
Jeffree
@Jonathan: You must be looking at older photos. These days she looks like a TRUCK full of donuts !
-~-~-~-
@Matthew: Were it not for L/G people adopting, many children in the foster care system would never get adopted, yet you’ll never hear her talk about that. She also will never talk about opposite-gender couples who can’t produce children, because that would show her arguments to be full of holes.
imarko
All her arguments are invalid and she has zero evidence to back up her statements.
greenmanTN
I think I used this argument in another thread, but I’d for someone to ask her if her marriage is worse than it was 5 years ago. Several states and countries have marriage equality and thousands of gay couples have been married during that time. Either her marriage is worth less in some definitive way that’s attributable to those marriages or she and her arguments are full of shit (it ain’t all donuts).
Maggie and her ilk always cite this Best Case Scenario wherein 2 married heterosexual partners have children, no one gets pregnant out of wedlock, no one leaves the marriage by choice or death, nobody abuses their spouse or children, and both are equally committed to the health and well-being of those children. It’s a Leave It To Beaver fantasy beloved by social conservatives everywhere. And who knows, maybe that IS the best case scenario but when has this ever been a perfect world? Maggie Gallagher sure as hell never attained it in her own life so who is she to impose it on others?
Jim Hlavac
Another question these opponents of ours can’t answer is (and why we don’t ask it a bit more publicly, I don’t know) — if there’s so many gay men — OK, just a few million of us — where are the corresponding never-to-be-married women awaiting their swain? Let’s say there’s 5 million gay men — shouldn’t there be 5 million women who will never get married? There aren’t of course, and not even all the Lesbians could make up the shortage of women for the gay guys. And the reason is elementary my dear Maggie — there’s 106 boys born for every 100 girls. And when the 100 marry the 100 there are six of us left without a gal. Though we don’t worry about it, ’cause we’re, um, the gay boys.
Meanwhile, now that I have seen a picture of her I note that she is a sure impediment to any “cure” for me that she could conjure up. And that Bette Midler perhaps had her in mind when she said: “Even ugly girls got to laid.” Yikes, she’s a big’un!
GetBalance
My god she’s huge! Packin on pounds is a sure way to tell ur doin something wrong, like being a str8 gay sex whore. I think it’s time to award her the unrespectable title of Maggie de Hut!
CaliJay73
Very funny. Whoda thought Jabba had a twin sister. Live n learn.
Harrison
I understand that her views are totally repugnant to anyone with a brain and a conscience but why the attacks on her appearance? What does it accomplish, out of curiosity?
(I ask this in all seriousness — I’m not trying to be holier than thou or anything, just want to understand.)
Mark
Can anyone explain to me WHY this woman spends so much time on this issue? Just to be clear, I’m not asking why she’s against marriage equality. I’m asking why her entire life revolves around it. Most of the people who are against us don’t spend every waking moment fighting it like she seems to do. Every time you read about a gay marriage story, there she is. It’s weird.
Jon Lashier
So sick of this woman.
Jason
@Harrison: Posters are unable to defeat her argument, so they poke fun at her appearance.
Hank
“It is not discrimination to treat different things differently.”
Uh, here’s the definition of discrimination: the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, esp. on the grounds of race, age, or sex
She is one of the stupidest people ever who, unfortunately, has a voice. Please, just stop…
Hank
Also, if she doesn’t want her children to learn about same-sex marriage, she can feel free to live in a cave or something. I mean, I don’t think schools are going to actively teach kids everything about being gay… And if they do, it would only be to educate them and stop them from discriminating against gay people. People like her are just the worst.
Soupy
Jason, is your argument her argument?
Kev C
From behind, it looks like she’s wearing a Star Trek science officer uniform. Spock Blob.
Steve
She’s like Pinocchio. Except when he lied his nose grew. When she lies she gets fatter.
GetBalance
@Harrison
Leno Letterman easy models for comic understanding cracking jokes at the expense of others. In this case of an impossible female whatever De Hutts are, it’s called comic relief. Laughter is good for the soul, especially in depressing times. Make sense?
GetBalance
@Mark
I think if we knew anything about her emotional history, we’d find she has a severe ax to grind w men/commitment/betrayal, we just happen to be readily available for her to project her unresolved insecurities.
alan brickman
there’s no discrimination because she ate it!!!…look at her!!!
TJ Parker
She’s become as loathsome physically as she is intellectually.
Pete
Maggie Gallagher’s Madam Mao hair-do show off all her chins beautifully.
the crustybastard
FTFA: Last time I checked? Marriage isn’t required to make new life?
Indeed, and Maggie would know this fact intimately because she wasn’t married to the father of her child.
Her bastard child would be damning evidence that Maggie herself is one of those fornicators, whores, and “sexually immoral” people the Bible outright condemns to death and perdition — right alongside gays.
Further, since the Bible clearly states that illegitimate children must be shunned by the godly believers*, applying Maggie’s own logic, there should be a law that prohibits her descendants from entering all religious establishments — and from receiving any government benefits (since the Bible should dictate our the civil code).
As usual, Bible bangers don’t think the Bible literally applies to them — somehow it only applies literally to gays.
* “A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD. ” Deuteronomy 23:2
Geoff B
To the people complaining about others making fun of her appearance, Maggie Gallagher is a hateful, evil, bigoted cunt. See, nothing about her appearance. Is that better?
TheRealAdam
@Jason: Basically.
There was another thread featuring Maggie Gallagher on anal sex, and people couldn’t refute her arguments there. So they poked fun at her appearance and attacked anyone who didn’t go along with it.
Shannon1981
This bitch is evil, and also obsessed with gay people. Why is she in NH at all? She needs to spend some of the time she spends trying to ruin our lives in a gym instead.
Kev C
@TheRealAdam: Maybe because there is nothing to refute. What sort of argument was that? Arguemuntum ad populum followed by some kindergarden biology lesson. And the same courts found that marriage is a states right for states to decide. And that’s why she left DC (Diabetes & Cholesterol) to travel to New Hampshire where she isn’t a legal resident and shouldn’t be speaking.
adman
@Soupy: Jason’s argument is defeat for everybody! Then we all ignore it by saying we won. Isn’t that genius? Right wing “statesmanship” in a nutshell. No taxes, all volunteer civilization, currency and commerce itself comes directly from the asses of magical unicorns, and we don’t need government! It’s kind of like believing in sky people, but a little more childish.
TheRealAdam
@Kev C: I know. I’m not really talking about this story. My comment was really directed at the anal sex story.
I agree that there is nothing to refute about this story. But I don’t really think the attacks are necessary. I cringe when I read that kind of language here. It’s just heartless and unnecessary.
And no, I’m not overweight/obese. I’m pretty damn fit, TBH.
Raven S Hawthorne-Lockett
Please, I don’t think we need to resort to name calling. I think what Geoff is trying to say is that this Maggie is person of easy virtue, a purveyor of pulchritude, a one-woman Sodom and Gomorrah, if you will. A slimy, slithering succubus, a concubine, a street walker, a tramp, a slut, a cheap whore. :0P
FlopsyMopsyCT
Part of the reason I find the social-conservatives’ arguments for marriage suspect is simply because I don’t know what grave change they think adding gays and lesbians to the list is going to appear. Gallagher and others keep saying that marriage will be further distanced from the concept of family, and that marriage will become less and less about obligation to one’s spouse and more about individual wants. I just simply don’t see the connection between these results and the addition of gays and lesbians to the marriage mix. If a heterosexual union is special because it creates, or has the ability to create children, that’s fine and great, but how does same-sex marriage affect that distinction or that ability? I don’t think people, children or adults, are all of a sudden going to forget that two men and women can’t “naturally conceive” a child, and that heterosexual pairings can. While there is certainly a distinction, I don’t see what the relevance of that distinction might be.
GregorVonK
@FlopsyMopsyCT: Very good point. The audio to this clip is pretty terrible, but if I’m not mistaken, it ends w/ some kind of concession (and this may be new) of Maggie’s part that something else can or should be done to provide recognition of gay and lesbian relationships. In other words, she’s implicitly acknowledging that the “different thing” that should be treated “differently” is not being treated fairly. This would seem to lodge her somewhere close to the real world (as opposed to those fundies who seek to re-criminalize homosexuality and whose “kindest” option for us is some kind of reparative “therapy”).
But in a way, it’s easy to deal with the nonsense that fire-and-brimstone fanatics put out than with the pseudo-moderate palaver of a Maggie Gallagher. If she acknowledges that some people are indeed gay and really would be happier in a same-sex relationship than a marriage of convenience with someone of the opposite sex and the same religion, then the KIND of societal acknowledgement (full marriage or the hypothetical “something different” for that “different thing”) becomes something akin to hairsplitting.
Maggie is, of course, very vague on what can or should be done to recognize committed gay relationships, and I can’t help think that what she REALLY thinks is that it’s “nothing at all.” It may just be that she’s politically savvy enough to know that you probably can’t get away with saying that in the Northeast these days.
the crustybastard
@FlopsyMopsyCT:
If the social and legal benefits of marriage are no longer a special reward for heterosexuality, then how will people like Maggie prove that they’re better than you?
If people like Maggie cannot use the law to deny you the equality and happiness of marriage, how else can they impose their religious beliefs on you?
Kev C
@TheRealAdam: Welcome to the internet, where Maggie Gallager has an fat problem and Rick Santorum has a Google problem.
TheRealAdam
@Kev C: LOL, OK then :). That’s one helluva welcome.
Pitou
Someone above asked why she has devoted her life to harming LGBT’s. It’s simple.
Much like the HRC, Maggie Gallagher will be UNEMPLOYED when the Gays have what they seek. It is completely and utterly simple as that.
Once SSM is applied to the NATION, she will have nothing to spew about. It will be a done deal. Shes slowly watching the COUNTRY turn against her and her ilk in a matter of years, and not decades like she might have assumed. She has spent so much time devoted to this that she has essentially typecast herself into this bigoted antigay position and there will be no shovel big enough to dig herself out. She’s watching her “career” being flushed down the toilet, including the lawsuits with various States Ethics commissions. She’s done.
If your “employment contract” was to essentially fight, and fight to the death or its the immediate loss of your livlihood, I’m guessing you’d fight to the death and devote whatever you could to it. It’s the same here.
If you had to fight for your job like Maggie, You’d be as big as a Mac Truck too!! OX’s
FlopsyMopsyCT
@GregorVonK: I noticed Gallagher’s comment at the end as well and I found that to be a big difference from her past speeches. I’ve never met Gallagher nor actually attended any of her live speeches, even though she used to come to my school quite a bit. However, from what I know from her writing, she is not part of the “anything but marriage” crowd. This is the first time that I’ve ever heard and willingness to compromise. Although I may be incorrect, I believe she has actually said any kind of governmental recognition of a same-sex relationship (marriage, domestic partnership, reciprocal beneficiaries, etc.) would bring catastrophe.
I’d agree that, generally speaking, it is easier to diffuse religious-based arguments than the kind that Gallagher suddenly proposes. However, marriage conservatives open to compromise still have to get over the major hurdle of explaining why including gays in marriage will have a deleterious effect to the institution as a whole. Even conservatives on both sides of the marriage debate have started to realize that a lot of what marriage traditionalists argue is either complete speculation, i.e. weaken the institution of marriage (what does that even mean?) , or it’s something about which we simply don’t care.