Just about the only time we are willing to listen to the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins spill his ideology is in situations like we find ourselves this week, wondering WTF happened in Maine. Sitting next to Freedom to Marry’s Evan Wolfson, Perkins throws his weight behind the explanation that it was lawmakers who initially OK’d same-sex marriage legislation were the ones with a special interest agenda. Which is why voters undid it!
Oh, also: Wolfson is awesome. See 3:55 to see why.
Attmay
Not only are they moving the goalposts, they’re moving the field.
They are not against gay marriage because a court ruled the ban unconstitutional, which did not happen in Maine. It was approved by the legislature. They are against it because it is non-breeder. The mob undermined the legislature.
These people don’t give a shit about the proper role of judges. It’s all a red herring to distract from their real agenda: Heterosexual Supremacy.
If Gay is The New Black™, then Christians are the new Ku Klux Klan.
naghanenu
The only similarity between Gay marriage fight and interracial is that there was a time it was prohibited by law.
But the similarity ends there and honestly it sounds..(im gong to get killed for this)…off as the fight was for straight marriage.
I ve heard racists say they would rather see a black woman and a white man holding hands than two white men together. So you see my point???
If put to vote today you betcha people will vote 90 to 10 to allow interracial straight marriage. So if you want to compare please do not use that as they kill that argument..quite well..every time. It does not help that black people feel insulted when their struggles are compared to gays that many assume are an abomination to all that is good and normal(my dad).
Its time to rethink the strategy for sympathy winning coz it aint working.
Go after marriage on a Federal level…force the govt to protect this under federal law and u have solved ur problem
Adrian
I don’t understand why when someone says “marriage is between a man and a woman” no one’s ever rebutted with “are you suggesting a person get a sex change in order to fit your definition of what marriage should be? because you know, it is perfectly legal for a man to marry another man if one of them undergoes a sex change.”
YellowRanger
I’d bet money you could get interracial marriage banned again in at least a third of the states in this country if you worded it the right way.
reluctantcommenter
way to oversimplify the issue, naghanenu. if a majority of states don’t support equal marriage, then it logically follows that a majority of the federal legislature (who represent those states) also wouldn’t support equal marriage. legislation doesn’t appear out of thin air.
and the comparison between gays getting married and miscegenation is entirely valid so long as it’s limited to the idea that acceptance comes over time. 40 years ago, when loving v. virginia was decided, portions of the country were widely opposed to miscegenation. now, they’re less so. hopefully it won’t take 40 years, but at some point people won’t be widely opposed to equal marriage rights. though packaged differently, we’ve seen this process before. and that’s the point wolfson was making in an attempt to undercut perkin’s argument that popular bigotry is valid.
hyhybt
#2Adrian: No, because they don’t believe in sex changes either.
SteamPunk
Screw the definition of marriage. That changes all the time: From property to child-bearing to love, etc.
As my grandfather puts it, incarcerated heterosexual prisoners have the right marry under. Law-abiding gay citizens do not.
It’s not about re-defining what’s “traditional”; it’s about justice and equality.
Tylertime
thank goodness we had evan wolfson speaking for us and not perez hilton or dan savage! finally someone who is qualified to speak.
Vivek Golikeri
No, the analogy between gay marriage today and interracial marriage a half-century ago is very valid. The real, root reason there is so much vehement opposition to gay marriage and equality is fundamentalist Christianity. Christianity has been the cause of so much injustice and opposition to change in US history.
In western countries like Canada, Holland, Denmark or New Zealand that are more tolerant and practical rather than ideological, the hold of Christianity over the public mind and culture has been quite weakened relative to the United States. America’s Puritan origins are why we lag behind the rest of the West in attitudes and public policy.