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01/21/2014
There is ridiculous far-right 'proof' and then there's this
To make his case that same-sex marriage is not the financial boon that equality activists say it is, Warren Cole Smith of the anti-gay World magazine shares the following doozy of an anecdote:
It’s likely the economic benefits of gay marriage are dramatically overstated. The Sheraton Waikiki has a relationship with the state of Hawaii to issue marriage licenses. Kelly Sanders, general manager of the hotel, told WORLD that on Dec. 2, the day homosexual marriage became legal, the hotel issued 39 marriage licenses. These ceremonies began just after midnight and lasted until 4:30 a.m. However only eight more weddings were currently scheduled, and he would not speculate about how many gay weddings the hotel would do after the initial flurry ended. Since the hotel started issuing wedding licenses on Jan. 15, 2013, more than 2,000 had been granted to heterosexual couples, a dramatically larger share of the state’s $14 billion tourist industry.
Not counting the costs [WORLD]
Okay, so first off, this whole setup is ridiculous. We're using one hotel as proof of nationwide trends? Ludicrous.
But if we want to do so, Mr. Smith's point is itself invalidated. He says that this hotel has booked forty-seven same-sex weddings from 12/2/2013 until the time he wrote his piece. Since he filed his piece on 1/10/14, let's just assume that's the date he talked to the hotel manager, even though it was likely a few days prior. That would mean that forty-seven weddings has been booked in one month. If that number continued, there would be five hundred sixty-four same-sex weddings in a year. But even if that number dropped and there were only eight or so a month for the next year, that would still be substantial. It's all new business. Most hotels consider new business to be a good thing.
And to pit these weddings against the 2,000 that had been done for heterosexual couples? Well again, that's downright ludicrous. None of us are claiming that gay people are anything other than a minority population. We fully admit that there are a lot more heterosexuals on this planet than their are LGBT people. There are few venues outside West Hollywood where same-sex weddings are going to outpace heterosexual weddings anytime soon. But why do we have to? Why is this our burden? In fact, considering the way the anti-gay movement claims (including Mr. Smith, in this very article) that our marriages are designed to destroy "traditional marriage," I actually hope gender-different marriages continue to thrive. Outpace us—please!
It's just absurd the lengths that this increasingly desperate movement will take to undermine us, our unions, and now even the obvious capital attached to our events. They act as if they can keep raising the fiery hoop and demanding we jump through it, believing their constrictive faith and their heterosexuality gives them some dictatorial power over us. They have yet to learn that they do not own the world. Or the future. Or marriage. And certainly not the truth.
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