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03/06/2012
Video: MN For Marriage's most misleading video yet
First watch this two minutes of ridiculous spin while I prepare to destroy it with actual facts about Kalley Yanta's supposed "facts":
Ready? Okay, here we go…
(1) The innocuous sounding Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy is not a mere law publication, but rather a conservative and libertarian law review. It is not an unqualified "scholarly review" -- it is a right-wing publication with a stated purpose of advancing conservative thought. In fact, it is the official publication of the very conservative Federalist Society. Both NOM's current chair (John Eastman) and NOM's co-founder (Robert George) have contributed to the journal (along with names like Scalia, Thomas, and Rehnquist).
(2) This referenced contribution, titled "Marriage Facts," states in the introduction "the conclusion that the package supportive of man-woman marriage is decidedly more defensible." This particular examination was really meant to analyze the legal reasoning that leads judges to either accept or not accept the "facts" that the conservative author has accepted as true, not further debate facts themselves. It was written as a debate for conservatives who had already rejected same-sex marriage to have among themselves, not for proponents and opponents to debate marriage equality on its merits.
(3) Maggie Gallagher's name comes up twelve times in the article's footnotes. Other familiar voices from the anti-same-sex marriage crowd (David Blankenhorn, William C. Duncan, Robert George) are also cited.
(4) The author of the piece, Monte Neil Stewart, is the founding president of the Marriage Law Foundation. This Marriage Law Foundation:
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[Marriage Law Foundation]
The same Marriage Law Foundation that touts (or at least once touted) Maggie Gallagher as a board member. The same Marriage Law Foundation that has filed anti-equality amici in most every modern marriage case. The same Marriage Law Foundation whose recent papers include one (also authored by Stewart) questioning the "intellectual competence and honesty" of the judges who sided with marriage equality in Connecticut, Iowa, and California. Not exactly an objective voice in this debate.
(5) Mr. Stewart was a sponsor of Utah's anti-gay-marriage amendment (Amendment 3) and co-chair of the "Yes on 3" coalition campaign.
(6) A Mormon, Mr. Stewart was formerly on faculty at Brigham Young University. I don't think I need to remind you of that school's LGBT policies or the Mormon church's actions against civil marriage equality.
But of course MN For Marriage won't tell you any of these things about this obviously (and even admittedly) biased article. They just want you to say, "Oh, Harvard said it so it must be true!" They want Minnesotans to have as little information as possible, so that their demonstratively hurtful cause won't crush under the weight of deception that defines their carefully workshopped movement.
Don't let them get away with it, Minnesota!