Video: Almost every word of this video is wrong -- and it's important we hear it

« Go back a post || Return to G-A-Y homepage || Haul tail to next post »

03/01/2011

by Jeremy Hooper

It's easy to laugh at the ignorance in this, a video suggesting that gay people already have civil marriage and are now seeking the right to have church weddings:

But honestly, I think it shows how fully some people in this country don't understand (a) the difference between civil and religious marriage, (b) the lay of the land as it exists for LGBT people, (c) what the current push for civil marriage equality really entails, and (d) what sort of effect this push for civil marriage equality will have on houses of worship (hint: none). There is so. much. confusion. out there.

And why are people so confused? Well, one big reason is because our opposition forces have done everything with their "culture war" power to ensure obfuscation. Looking at this YouTuber's channel, it's clear he follows news. The problem is that of the hundreds of videos on this person's page, all but a handful of them are clips from one source: Fox News. This is an outlet whose pundits are nothing if not complicit in this game of marriage-muddying. Because that's the thing about our punditry and its pushers: The two sides on issues like (but not limited to) marriage equality don't differ only in the realm of opinion. Instead, we have folks on the pro-equality side doing everything they can to connect the factual, civil dots for a perplexed public, while voices on the so-called "pro-family" side work to construct a misrepresentative firewall through which accuracy will not fully pass. The marriage "culture war" is not just about differing ideas: It's quite literally a battle to secure a pure flow of information!

So I encourage you to not see the above video as coming from a fringe, hostile person who's deliberately out to confuse his followers. It could be that. But more likely, it's from a person who's been willfully misled by a negligent conservative machine. And there are countless people in this country who have also fallen victim to the great "protect marriage" lies. We must be louder than the noise.

space