Check your backwards hypotheticals, Backholm

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09/24/2012

by Jeremy Hooper

Joseph Backholm, one of the main laborers trying to rollback *CIVIL* marriage equality in Washington state, is hoping to rally his local pastors. To do that, Mr. B is taking President Obama's support for equal marriage rights for same-sex couples and directly equating that with the President's theoretical support for divorce and non-monogamy:

Imagine a scenario in which the president of the United States used his bully pulpit to declare to the country that divorce was a good thing, beneficial to spouses and good for kids who would be saved from contentious households. Certainly some people feel that way.

Or, imagine if the president of the United States told the country that monogamy was unnatural and that it was not actually our urges that needed to be overcome but our petty jealousies over sexual exclusivity. I'm certain there are people who share those sentiments.

Now, imagine that he not only took these positions but he said that his conclusions were informed by his Christian faith.
...
Of course the president did not condemn monogamy or encourage people to divorce. But he did, earlier this year, tell the nation that his Christian faith helped inform his belief that marriage should be redefined to include same-sex couples.
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We are in the process of a moral revolution. It is not a revolution on simply the issue of homosexuality, but sexuality in general. A moral revolution requires the thing that was once condemned to be approved and the thing that was once approved to be condemned.
FIRST-PERSON: The great need for pastors to address gay marriage [BP News]

Right, because why not take a concept that is, by design, meant to encourage more stability and monogamous coupling and then position it as having a direct correlation to relational dissolution and/or freer boundaries? And hey, why not do so through the vehicle of a President who, by all accounts, is part of a strong family unit that seems to exemplify "traditional family values" better than just about any public image we've seen in recent years? After all, Mr. Backholm has a conservative Christian point to make here—don't you know that this means projecting any number of things onto the political opposition without any seeming concern for accurate witness or Golden Rules? That's the game, dear.

Except for the fact that, for us actual gay folk, this stuff is no game. These are our lives. These are our marriages. This is our America too. Mr. Backholm might yearn for a time when a certain kind of American person "was once condemned." Some of us simply yearn for love, rights, families, and fairer shakes at this whole American dream thing that we've heard so much about. And we're not going to let faith-motivated voices like his attach unrelated theoreticals to the tangibles we are ably seeking or the arguments we are ably making.