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07/07/2011
NOM thinks you should read this MIT columnist; us too
The National Organization For Marriage is pushing an opinion piece penned by MIT student Ryan Normadin. An opinion piece that, in just its second paragraph, compares laws banning same-sex marriage to those that ban things like incest or the right to marry one's ottoman:
Opposition to gay marriage has such a negative connotation because advocates have successfully framed the issue as one of equal rights. By this logic, if you oppose gay marriage, you are opposed to equal rights for everyone. They claim that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees them the right to marry whomever they desire, including members of the same sex. To forbid this would, in their minds, be discrimination. But do all people have the right to marry whomever they want already, with the exception of same-sex couples? No; states have laws regulating marriage, forbidding first cousins from marrying, brothers and sisters from marrying, parents and offspring from marrying, and people from marrying animals, inanimate objects, or multiple other individuals.
Opinion: Gay marriage should not be made legal [MIT's The Tech]
Because that's where the "protect marriage" mind always seems to go these days: Not to the marry gays who've been marrying for years without incident or the heterosexual taxpayers to whom these couples should most directly likened, but rather to bestiality, brother/sister schtooping, and folks who seek potential mates on the shelves of an antique store. Either because that's how they actually see us, or because that's the how they want the socially conservative electorate to view our lives and loves.
But wait, there's more! Ryan goes on to parrot the flawed idea that marriage is all about the non-required element of procreation, with the government's interest in banning same-sex couples akin to the lack of subsidization for sexually-involved family members:
It is certainly to America’s advantage to have citizens, so there exists a compelling state interest justifying government subsidization of heterosexual marriage. The banned types of marriage are similarly rationalized; offspring from family members who marry are significantly more likely to be sterile, thus unable to continue the proliferation of society, or otherwise impaired. It is therefore not in the interest of government to encourage these types of marriages.
It should be obvious, by this point, which category gay marriage falls into. Same-sex couples are unable to procreate, meaning that there is no compelling interest to subsidize their marriages.
Opinion: Gay marriage should not be made legal[MIT's The Tech]
And if that weren't enough: Young Ryan also comes right out and states his belief that gay people have some sort of innate "potential to harm any children they might raise":
Gay marriage is not a civil rights issue; it is a question of whether or not there exists a compelling enough interest for the government to subsidize and encourage gay marriage. As same-sex couples cannot procreate and, in fact, have the potential to harm any children they might raise, it is certainly in the interest of the federal government to maintain the stance it presented in the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
Opinion: Gay marriage should not be made legal [MIT's The Tech]
There's something even more perverse about this claim of potential harm, considering Casey Anthony trial coverage is on my TV as I write this. In parenting, there is potential harm -- not in gay parenting, specifically.
Look, NOM loves to talk about slippery slopes and the supposedly vicious things that equality activists say and do towards them. But the truth is that as equality continues its inevitable journey up the mountain, it is the anti-equality facade that is slipping. It is the anti-equality rhetoric that is coarsening. It is the anti-equality movement that is so fully trying to hurt good and decent people for the sake of political opportunism, despite this movement's strategic adoption of their own self-victimization.
NOM wants to push columns that jump at the chance to paint us as intellectually akin to man/dog sex? Fine. It just so happens that we have our own fetish: One that loves to see costly, divisive, anti-LGBT groups screw themselves with their own words and deeds.
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