As the Supreme Court gets ready to hear arguments about marriage equality, the right wing is out in force trying to make its (impossibly feeble) case against it. Chief among its stars is Ryan Anderson, a 33-year-old scholar at the Heritage Foundation, who is putting a pretty new face on the same old ugly arguments.
Anderson is out making the circuit as the “reasonable” voice against marriage equality. His argument, in essence, is that the state’s right to regular marriage is all about protecting the children who are the product of marriage. Those children, of course, are the offspring of a man and a woman only.
Anderson concedes that this may not necessarily be the only argument about marriage and not even necessarily the right one. But he also argues that the Constitution protects states who agree with him. In other words, states can be wrong, but that’s okay because the Constitution allows it.
“We’re having a national conversation about this, and that shouldn’t be short-circuited by the Supreme Court,” Anderson told the Washington Post in a glowing profile.
How about we take this to the next level?
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It’s a breathtaking jump in logic. The role of the Supreme Court is to make sure that wrong arguments about the Constitution aren’t used to protect states from violating people’s rights.
Anderson is using an old, old argument, but because he’s fresh-faced, he’s been getting away with it. It’s the same argument used to pass California’s Proposition 8, and it has the same flaws. Anderson says that state is not in the business of “consenting adult romance.” But the state also doesn’t administer fertility tests to prospective brides and grooms. It doesn’t disallow post-menopausal women to wed.
The protection of children argument applies only to a segment of the population getting married (which inconveniently includes some same-sex couples). The state doesn’t care about all those people not having kids, but it let’s them get married too. The state’s definition of marriage isn’t as narrow as Anderson would like you to think.
Of course, considering where Anderson works, this logic comes as no surprise. The Heritage Foundation was once a legitimate conservative think tank, but since has become a right-wing hack machine. It’s run by Jim DeMint, the former South Carolina Senator who had a long anti-gay record. Instead of trying to come up with new conservative policies, the Foundation is now all about politics. Being a scholar at the Heritage Foundation these days is comparable to being a security guard in the Mafia.
And a little digging into his past would show that Anderson buys into many of the same homophobic arguments that characterize the worst of the right wing. He’s sung the praises of the ex-gay movement, compared homosexuality to alcoholism and claimed that Glee was corrupting American youth.
In the Post profile, he argues that lesbian relationships are short-lived because women leave relationships when their needs aren’t met. (As if it requires two people to leave the relationship, instead of just one.) Gay men are more promiscuous (where have we heard that one?) and marriage equality will pave the way to polygamy.
Anderson says that time may prove him wrong, but that it’s no time to rush the conversation. “I’m inclined not to rush to a conclusion,” he told the Post. Of course, he’s not inclined to get married yet, either. Anderson is still single.
What surprises Anderson is that people think he’s bigoted. “On the marriage issue, they don’t think you’re just wrong, they think you’re evil,” he told the Post. We’ll leave the judgment to history. That day of judgment is probably a lot closer than Anderson thinks.
Photo credit: Heritage Foundation
Alex Cameron
Gay relationship marriage is the best thing.I’ve got friend I’m single would love this and gay people who have kids give them s stable loving home that’s whatmatters
Cam
I’m kind of done with all of this crap.
Yes, the guy is a bigot, yes of course the Heritage Foundation (The organization that has had multiple scandals with rac-ist employees writing research reports for use by the GOP) has him as their go to bigot on all things gay. That is a given.
What I’m really tired of, and what doesn’t get enough play is, why is nobody going after the media for consistently bringing on these people as “Experts”?
NOBODY would think it is reasonable, if a news show, discussing college admissions policies brought on a member of the Ku Klux Klan as an expert in “Diversity” to discuss the issue.
But when the issue is gay rights are gay marriage, you have the anti-gay versions of Klansmen consistently brought in by the media as somehow being well informed on the issue.
They can’t claim they aren’t aware of this, Dan Savage took CNN to task for it several years ago while appearing on CNN. And it never changed anything.
Even people like Rush Limbaugh and GOP politicians are getting nervous about being blatantly anti-gay. Time to paint the media with the same brush. IF they bring on some guy like this, and paint him as an expert, then they are part of the bigotry.
Andrew Mofukken Coffill
i think they should give up this silly fight. i don’t get how religion can dictate what is and isn’t considered love. they have the right to practice their religion but they don’t have the right to force their views on the rest of the people its beyond rude. religion has no place in politics.
Dennis Richards
Few people argue with the proposition of a legally recognised relationship between same sex couples – good on them – go for it.
The problem is that they wish to use the term “marriage” to describe the relationship.
Sorry – the word ” marriage” is already taken and it means a bloke and a woman – has done for centuries.
I mean, if I ask some bloke if he’s married and he replies yes, do I then have to ask if his “spouse” is a woman or a bloke?
So what is expected? – we invent TWO new words to differentiate between hetero and homo “marriage
Dennis Richards
”
Think of another word.
Nikki Hatch
yawn.
jwtraveler
Once gay couples can get married in all 50 states, what will gay couples do in the 29 states where they have no right to a job or a home or an education or service in a restaurant, etc.? It’s a romantic notion, but we CAN’T just live on love.
jeffsmith60
Marriage law is not about protecting children. Historically, it has been about protecting property. The idea of commoners marrying out of a sense of love was a foreign idea. A man married for economic reasons and to produce male heirs to redistribute family wealth according to tribal customs and religious law.
Xzamilio
@Cam: Who are you telling? CNN has always tried to present this facade of being “balanced” and presenting “both sides” of an argument, even though in some cases, there aren’t two sides, but one side with evidence and then a fringe minority on the other. They’ve done this crap ad nauseum with climate change, gay marriage, vaccines, religion, you name it. You’re not the only one who notices the media’s love with these idiots, Cam… glad you can see it, too.
tricky ricky
@jeffsmith60: when your definition of marriage is permission to have sex it is a little hard to let the true definition of it being contract/property law get in the way and destroy your argument to smithereens. it never dawns on these conservative jerks that you have to go to court to get the contract dissolved and not a church.
Colin McCoy
http://www.theonion.com/video/gop-maintains-solid-hold-on-youth-that-already-loo,36778/
Wilberforce
@Cam: As Ricky Ricardo would say, let me ‘splain.
The media have been using us as a distraction from political and financial corruption for decades. They can do this because, surprise, they are the media, and no one with brains or integrity are allowed in the club. Plus, our leaders are either incompetent or hoping to get on TeeVee themselves. And our community are too busy with celebrity worship to get involved.
It’s called divide and conquer. And it still works because the public, including our community, are dumber than a bag of hammers.
Moritz
The fact that the guy thinks we haven’t had a long enough national discussion tells me that he will never think enough time has passed. We have been discussing gay rights for over forty years, and SSM for over fifteen. How long is long enough? Our country spent 78 years discussing women’s suffrage and well over a hundred years discussing civil rights. The time has come.
As far as the word marriage always meaning a man and a woman, well, how far do we want to go back. In the old testament there was one man with many wives. Solomon had 300 plus 600 concubines. Even today in many parts of the world, men with multiple wives is not uncommon (from Utah to Saudi Arabia). The word marriage has no copyright for heteros. Yes, and some day you will have to ask if they have a husband or a wife. Or maybe we can just call them spouses from now on?
Ron King
Her gay parents must b so proud!
Harold Vera
Good luck with that…
Steve Johnson
oh please, this dude’s sucked more dick than I have
Lee Morris
He’s a foot tapper
Paul Limandri
Closet case written all over him#jussayin
teloric
@Dennis Richards:
that whole “Think of another word thing” perhaps you are right… I mean it’s not like other words are used to describe closely related overlapping concepts.
I assume you have a phone, but is it an iphone? Android? Samsung? Hp? most of the time it doesn’t matter because they all do basically the same thing and the details rarely matter. someone calls you and your phone rings. Occasionally it does matter for one reason or another… and then shockingly, someone asks a question.
The english language is filled with words like that… even the word marriage is filled with such things. So you are married? Is your spouse of the same or different social caste? country? race? are they perhaps blind or deaf? Maybe they are much older or younger? Was it an arranged marriage, did you produce children before you got married? was the marriage for love or money? are they the same gender, the same sex? These questions are rarely asked because usually they don’t matter. Occasionally it does matter for one reason or another… and then shockingly, someone asks a question.
Chris
Of the many words would I use to describe this individual, scholar is not. Hukster is the nicest one that comes to mind.
NoCagada
@Dennis Richards: Marriage has been redefined several times, as when fathers stopped trading their daughters for two goats and a mule…unless you’re republican…and/or live in the south.
Saint Law
@jwtraveler: Marriage confers a number of rights that are crucial and makes arguing for others far easier: tax, leases, inheritance, visitation, adoption – these are not just airhead Romantic notions.
I mean jeez it’s like inveighing against equal marriage is the new frontier in gay activism.
mdhess
I have to take exception with the characterization of the Heritage Foundation as once having been a “legitimate conservative think tank.” Its founders include Paul Weyrich, Edwin Feulner and Joseph Coors; all rabid, hard right-wing ideologues with no boundaries when it came to pushing their agenda. The foundation’s purpose is at it has always been — to produce right-wing propaganda couched in (faux) intellectualism that always, miraculously, comes to the conclusion the right desires.
AtticusBennett
this is why their side is losing – they have no reasons, only excuses, and flimsy ones at that.
he’s an idiot, but he’s a republican so it’s to be expected.
Ra Hill