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08/19/2014
Marriage equality's main legal opponents now outsourcing fearful visions to Hollowood
The film The Giver, currently in theaters, tells of a futuristic society that is presented as a utopia but that ultimately reveals itself to be a totalitarian dystopia. Most critics have compared it to other fearful visions like The Hunger Games, due to overlapping themes of young protagonists who reveal truth in a world run amok.
But to the anti-LGBT activists at the Alliance Defending Freedom, the organization that leads the opposition in most every major LGBT court case, there is a more fitting comparison: gay people and our marriages, naturally. ADF's Eric Porteous writes:
No need for diversity. No need for emotion. No need for love. Just plain, passionless people whose sole purpose is to protect a community of sameness disguised as perfection.
This is the glimpse of what such a society could look like in the movie The Giver, now playing in theaters. It’s a society that, for the sake of avoiding conflict and all that comes with it, everything is decided for you.
...
It doesn’t take much to realize we are heading down this path right now as, little by little, we are forced to sacrifice our beliefs on marriage and the family all for the sake of tolerance and sameness.
We can see this clearly in cases like:
Washington v. Arlene’s Flowers, where florist Barronelle Stutzman is forced to go against her beliefs by participating in a same-sex wedding ceremony or face lawsuits from the state attorney general.
Bishop v. Smith, where two same-sex couples sued Tulsa County Clerk Sally Howe Smith after she declined to issue them marriage licenses because Oklahoma’s laws affirm marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
Brooker v. Franks, where Emily Brooker, a student majoring in social work at Missouri State University, was charged with the highest level of academic violation for not endorsing adoption by same-sex couples.
These cases are real. This problem is real in our own society. And while this tolerance may not have reached the totalitarianism depicted in The Giver, we can’t sit idly by and wait until we get there.
Marriage is the foundation of society. Love is the foundation of marriage, and that love is so strong it forms a family through procreation. And children deserve a stable family relationship and the diverse benefits that both a mother and a father bring.
Without these ingredients, we can’t have a strong and healthy society.
See the movie. Discuss it with your friends and family. But don’t just make this about awareness, for awareness only gets us stirred up enough to think about the issue. This is about supporting marriage—the foundation of society. We must do something.
It’s about how we vote.
It’s about making sure our marriages represent real, true holy matrimony to the world around us.
And it’s about protecting the family and the home now.
FULL: THE FUTURE OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY, ACCORDING TO THE GIVER [ADF]
On one hand, I'm glad these folks are now turning toward the genre of science fiction dystopia. For years the made us sound like an all-out horror film. This is comparably better, I guess.
On the other hand—is this guy for real? I this ADF employee seriously suggesting that the mere acceptance of same-sex couples and our legal rights is going to turn society into some sort of dictatorial fear-world where tax-paying Americans' loving "I dos" are going to impose an national "YOU CAN'T!" on others? Is Eric Porteus really that far into the far-right fear narrative that he is now using Hollywood fantasy as his template for rational commentary? Is he actually comparing our marriage equality future to a world where one of any pair of twin babies born is forcibly euthanized? Is the next phase of the anti-equality movement one where anti-LGBT Christians are seriously planning to take their flailing ability to discriminate and turn it into catalyst for their heroic rising-from-the-ashes so that they can save us all, Katniss Everdeen style?
To be clear, I'm totally fine with it, if that is the plan. I'm just checking; I want to know if I can declare victory even sooner than I thought.
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