Wherein a Mat Staver comment ticks us off more than usual

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05/02/2006

by Jeremy Hooper

In a piece on NY's marriage laws and attempts and rulings that seek to legalize gay nuptials in the Empire State, the Liberty Counsel's Mat Staver is quoted by Agape Press as saying of Justice Doris Ling-Cohan's 2005 same-sex couple-favoring ruling:

...there is no fundamental right to "marry" a person of the same sex. "Marriage licenses should not be given to two people who simply say that they have some kind of affection to one another," the attorney says.

To which your humble scribe only has to say:

This is a total and deliberate muddying of the issue. The amount of affection folks of the opposite sex share for one another is not a criteria gauged under current marriage laws. Though the affection is hopefully and ideally there, the issue is the legal ability for two consenting adults to seal their union. Your humble scribe can go grab a lady off the street, head to lower Manhattan, pay a few bucks, and be married by dinner time. However, he cannot do the same with his life, his love, his heart -- the man with whom he shares every one of life's experiences and for whom he would take a bullet. That is wrong and discriminatory, no matter how you offensively spin it.

Mr. Staver, if this truly is a sticking point for you, then work on legislation that DOES require affection to be gauged before a duo can obtain a license. But don't you dare try and make it sound as if the love shared between same-sex couples is innately lesser than that of the warmth known by opposite-sex pairs. This sounds exactly like what you and the Agape writer are trying to do by even peppering your usual "one man, one woman," "protect the children" bullsh*t with this particular statement. But we see right through your tactics and sly ways of stigmatization. The more you keep it up, the more other folks are catching on as well.