I’ve always found the arguments against gay marriage to be absurd on their face, but most of them at least leave some vague, tenuous assertion that would allow for the conclusion.  For example, the wingnuts always seem to think that, once legalized, all the straight dudes will suddenly turn gay, and there would be no more kids, and society would collapse.  If you set aside the fact that the premise is horribly, absurdly stupid, the rest of it isn’t quite as idiotic.  But comparing gay rights activists to Bull Connor?  What.  The.  Fuck.  As if somebody asking you if you could please, maybe see them as a human being with rights, who loves someone they are legally barred from marrying, had even the slightest thing in common with one of the most notorious bigots of the civil rights era.  Methinks they are projecting a bit.

The anti-ERA folks made same sex marriage (and adoption and teachers) a lynchpin of their efforts. If 38 states legalize SSM, then it’s going to be that much easier for the ERA to be reintroduced and ratified. It’s not just about treating gay people like human beings, if SSM becomes legalized in a majority of states, then they might have to treat women like human beings, too. And that’s just too much for a patriotic ‘murcan male to take.

Hold it gay rights activists are Bull Connor?  So, gay rights activists are Southern Super-Jesus?  Odd tack for the bigots to declare their enemies are the exact same as your patron saint.  I guess the KKK will call Obama the modern day Nathan B. Forrest next

As society has become more accepting of queerfolk, a lot of the second-order-bigotry arguments (they’ll be vulnerable to blackmail, people will be uncomfortable, their children will be stigmatized, look at all their correlated-with-poverty-and-stress health issues) have been peeled away. So you’ve pretty much only got the first-order bigotry left.

Personally, I am rather intrigued by the supposedly straight rightwingers’ obsession with homosexual sex.  Do they perhaps protest too much?

The key to conservative fear of gay marriage is in the term “traditional marriage.”  Traditional marriage isn’t just marriage between a man and a woman, but a relationship with two roles - husband and wife.  The legal distinctions between the man and woman in straight marriage have been eroding for over a century, but the “traditional” marriage is patriarchal.

So the threat to “traditional marriage” is that a gay marriage has no obvious “husband” and “wife.”  Kids raised in a world where two men or two women can marry will see marriages in which, inherently, the roles and tasks and obligations of the two partners are negotiated and worked out between the two of them. That *is* a threat to “traditional marriage.”

#1, considering that the gay marriage activists tend to be screaming misogynists, it totally makes sense.  Why would ANYONE want to spend time with a woman if it wasn’t absolutely required?

Do they perhaps protest too much?

I assume that’s a rhetorical question, considering the many instances we’ve already seen.

By the way give a listen to our would-be First Guy. I hate to reinforce stereotypes, but the sound of his voice is… interesting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8oyA5JV7kA&feature=player_embedded

Unfortunately, there are over 20 states with amendments to their constitutions outlawing same sex marriage. Remember the 2004 election? That was the boogeyman that got the bigots out to the polls. The 2010 election gave republicans majorities in many of those states so it’s going to be harder to overturn the bigots on this issue than a lot of people think. And I know there are court cases winding their way up the ranks, but I have no confidence in the Supreme Court, which continues to ignore the rights of average Americans in favor of corporations.

Having said that, it is refreshing to see the bigots finally backed into a corner where they have nothing left to say but the naked, ugly truth of what they really believe. Forcing them out into the open and shining a spotlight on their hate is what got Civil Rights legislation passed. At every opportunity, LGBT people and their allies should keep calling out the hatred so we can speed up the day that everyone has equal rights.

#2 mighty ponygirl, I admire your optimism about the ERA. If only.

But comparing gay rights activists to Bull Connor?  What.  The.  Fuck.

Surprising indeed for two reasons - the absurdity of it that you point out, and the fact that it implies wingnut disapproval of Bull Connor.

serious bette—not so terribly optimistic—I suspect that full legalization of gay marriage is going to halt along the same state lines as the ERA. Misogyny and Homophobia share too many chromosomes.

Unfortunately, there are over 20 states with amendments to their constitutions outlawing same sex marriage.

What’s the strategy going to look like here? I can see two approaches: challenge the State amendments before the US Supreme Court, or repeal the amendments by the same process they were ratified.  I don’t really know which is a more reliable route.

#7 - wha? “screaming misogynists”? I feel like I’m missing something here.

Unfortunately, there are over 20 states with amendments to their constitutions outlawing same sex marriage.

It’s also worth noting that most of these were ratified either by legislation or during low turn out off-election years.

Given that it’s probably not socially acceptable (in most places) to outright advocate that LGBT people simply be killed in the streets, the bigots are forced to attack them through other means.  Opposition to equal marriage rights and further official recognition of the existence of non-hetero people (file taxes jointly?  Visit one another in the hospital? - OMFG!) is really all they have left.

Whether the gay-phobia is driven by their own closeted feelings, or not, is an interesting question, but probably impossible to prove one way or another.

If there is one thing that without a doubt characterizes the Reichwing it’s the idea that only certain people have certain rights and privileges and others do-not or should-not have them.  For example, because the wealthy are obviously genetically and morally superior to the unwashed poor, it is simply unconscionable to expect them to pay taxes, some of which monies will inevitably be spent on the undeserving.

Attempting to prevent LGBT people from having all the same rights and privileges as a Wealthy White Protestant Male is just plain normal conservative modus operandi, no different from trying to control immigration in weirdly draconian ways, trying to bring about the de facto end to legal abortion for all except the worthy elite, or making sure that women are never Constitutionally recognized as being fully equal to men.

After all, of everyone was treated equally, and recognized by the law and society as equally worthy of respect and protection and compassion, where would America be?  (This is probably what the Kochs ask themselves every day as they figure out where next to spend money to stir up the proles and keep them under the jackboot…)

@shade: I think what’s missing is the “anti” in Siobhan’s comment. as in “anti-gay marriage activists tend to be screaming misogynists.”

We used to have the Communist Menace to the American Way of Life back when I was growing up in the late 60s/the 70s.  There use to be a mandatory class in Florida schools called Americanism Vs. Communism, did you know that?.

With the Berlin Wall falling and the infection of Communism now limited to brown and yellow peoples it isn’t a real threat, so the wingnuts have to find something to set their souls afear and trembling.

The essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics’ is still relevant, 38 years after it was first given form:

The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms — he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization . . . he does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated — if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.[4]

...........................................................................................

Laura Miller writes in Salon.com that conservative commentator Glenn Beck is a contemporary example of the “paranoid style”:

 
          “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” reads like a playbook for
          the career of Glenn Beck, right down to the paranoid’s “quality of pedantry”
          and “heroic strivings for ‘evidence,’” embodied in Beck’s chalkboard and piles
          of books. But Beck lacks an archenemy commensurate with his stratospheric
          ambitions, which makes him appear even more absurd to outsiders.[9]

David Greenberg writes in Slate that the essay is invoked too often, and “ought to be used carefully and sparingly….sometimes [pundits] appear to be endorsing a psychological diagnosis of conservative activists—a reading of Hofstadter’s work that he pointedly disavowed”.[10]

I’m not a pundit, so fuck that shit.

But comparing gay rights activists to Bull Connor?  What.  The.  Fuck.

Surprising indeed for two reasons - the absurdity of it that you point out, and the fact that it implies wingnut disapproval of Bull Connor.

Perhaps those reasons, perhaps also it is an attempt at a “dogwhistle” reference, in this case to target black people. Black churches in particular are perceived as being hotbeds of homophobia. There may be, statistically some truth in this, even if it is exaggerated.

Maybe they also just decided that Hitler references were getting tired.

But now the pressure is on and their true natures are coming out.  You learn so much about people when they’re squeezed a little.

You know, it’s funny.  Because even down here in Texas I’m surrounded by Republicans who - when asked - will happily reply “I do not care one way or the other.”  Now that homosexuality is becoming normalized, people who aren’t raging bigots don’t have to put up the facade of bigotry to shield themselves from being called homosexual themselves.

The very word “gay” is losing its slur appeal.  The bottom is really falling out.

@MikeEss #15:  Whenever WASPs complain about losing some privelege, it make me think of the old Twix commercials, with the line, “Two for me, none for you”.  These people really just hate sharing anything.  They don’t want to give up their wealth, so they game the tax system and lobby (read:bribe) Congress for favorable tax exceptions and loopholes.  They don’t want to give up political dominance, hence voter ID restrictions and disenfranchisement efforts.  They don’t want to give up control of their wives, thus we get abortion and contraception restrictions and absurd Supreme Court rulings stating that gender discrimination doesn’t exist.  The still hate all those icky brown people, so they propose racial profiling, anti-immigrant laws and amendments to the Constitution stating that one’s parents must be citizens when they are born to become citizens themselves (also related: aforementioned voter disenfranchisement, primarily against poor, urban blacks).  They hate foreigners, and believe that their natural resources should be ours to exploit for as cheap as possible, and don’t care how many of them are murdered in the pursuit thereof.  Hell, they even hate other WASPs who don’t toe the line on all of the above issues.  It just amazes me that a person’s heart can be filled with so much hatred.

Surprising indeed for two reasons - the absurdity of it that you point out, and the fact that it implies wingnut disapproval of Bull Connor.

They know Bull Connor’s the bad guy because everyone says so, and they know they’re not the bad guy now, so whatever they’re fighting against has to be the bad guy, as usual. Not much of a leap.

@Zifnab

I saw some of that in NM and Wyoming. In some places there is still the “live and let live” or “stay out of my fucking business and I’ll stay out of yours” attitude that used to be the theme of the Western states. Not acceptance or support, of course. It’s strange that the same attitude that often allows domestic abuse and sexual assault to hide in plain sight also engenders a tolerance (again, not acceptance or support) of gay marriage.

“and of course, there were endless insinuations that people will be fucking in the streets.”

No, that will happen when there is an AIDS cure as Bill Hicks said.

In other news, Rhode Island just passed a civil unions bill, and bigots are still upset. I simply cannot believe that people go around feeling all that strongly about the definition of marriage in their daily lives, but they do hate gays and get mad when society is fairer to them about stuff.

there were endless insinuations that people will be fucking in the streets

To be fair, the only issue I have with this kind of celebratory event is that, where I live, this time of year, the street reaches 150F.  Call me vanilla, but I prefer NOT 1st degree burns with my orgies.

Now that homosexuality is becoming normalized, people who aren’t raging bigots don’t have to put up the facade of bigotry to shield themselves from being called homosexual themselves.

People shouldn’t underestimate that part of the problem.

I was in the Canadian Forces just before our Supreme Court ruled they had to accept openly homosexual troops, so being gay was still considered a risk. At one point I was given a routine interview by a security type on the subject of another officer-cadet, just a chat to identify if the potential officer-to-be had issues that might be problems (just as I assume someone else had a chat about me). At the time the Forces were pretty much in a de facto don’t ask don’t tell policy—this was before the Clinton presidency when the term was created—so he couldn’t ask me outright if I thought the cadet in question might be gay, but from some of the questions it was obvious that he was trying to ferret out if it was a possibility.

When we were done I asked point blank if that’s what he’d been doing, and off the record he admitted it was the case. When I asked why it mattered, I was given the “Well, someone who is gay could be blackmailed” argument, and I responded with the obvious “He could only be blackmailed because people in the chain of command care if he was gay” argument.

Years later, thinking back on that, I have no doubt whatsoever that saying something like that could have easily resulted in my file being flagged as a potential homosexual. And had I thought about it at the time, with my future career to care about, I might very well have kept my mouth shut, which would have made me passively complicit in being biased against gay troops.

It seems like an awful lot of modern conservatism is just unhinged outrage by American white people that other people (foreigners, gays, African-Americans, Latinos) _don’t know their place_.  They lather up into an absolute fury that someone not of their group can believe that everyone deserves the same status, privilege and rights as them.

Jake- I’d say that’s true for values of “an awful lot” that closely approximate 100%. I can’t see any other “principle” at all behind contemporary winguttism (it doesn’t deserve the respectable name of conservatism).

Sincere question: can someone please explain to me why this is such a big deal? Is it the fact that Republicans played such a big role in the decision?

I’m just confused because it’s legal in 5 other states and DC already (? my count may be off), so I don’t get the big deal. People seem to be acting like this is the first state ever to do this and I just don’t get it.

Steve, there’s another large component that overlaps the “don’t know their place” feeling, and that is the authoritarian personality type.  John Dean and Robert Altemeyer have written about this, about two related psychologies where people either want to rule over others or bask in the power of those rulers.  It’s not a value or principle exactly, but I think it explains much of modern conservatism in a different way.

#29 antiope, it’s such a big deal because New York is such a big state. If you look at the size of the other five states, they have really small populations compared to New York. There will be more applications for marriage licenses from LGBT individuals in New York than in the other five states combined. And Iowa (unfortunately) is the only one of the five that is of any large political significance in national elections. That’s one of the reasons why this is such a huge deal. If California and Florida (wishful thinking I know) follow suit, then a full 1/3 of the U.S. population will be able to legally marry whoever the hell they want to.

I dont think its because straight people truly think anything bad will happen to them but that they will lose their privilege. Its mainly the guys who are opposed to same sex marriage and I think it has to do with archaic misogyny (revolving around gay men) rather than truly worrying that something bad will happen to you if same sex marriage is allowed. I wonder if people were asked just to make same sex marriage legal for lesbians if you’d see more approval? That would def point out it had more to do with male insecurity than anything.

I can see two approaches: challenge the State amendments before the US Supreme Court,

And given the current Supreme Court, I could see a 5-4 opinion that gay marriages violate, I dunno, the third amendment about quartering soldiers - and are therefore illegal.  But this shouldn’t be used as a precedent for anything else.

here in Iowa it appears that opposition to gay marriage is, at least for some people, just a good way to make money.  There’s a failed GOP politician who is living off having an opposition group.  As long as the contributions keep flowing in, he’ll keep railing about “the horror, the horror” while the majority of the state yawns.

I’m pretty sure the Bull Connor BS is just a rather pathetic and crazy attempt to try and turn liberal rhetoric against liberals.  Something like the bit where people who point out racism are the real racists.

It’s more “Ha, ha, you stoopid liberal are just like that guy you hate!” than “Bull Connor was bad and so are you”.

Bean Slap @32

I actually expect that lesbian marriage would receive less support rather than more.

The male insecurity reaction to homosexuality seems to play itself out in being freaked out by gay male sexuality and lesbian relationships.

Two men fucking or two women in a long-term happy marriage with no need whatsoever for men are two concepts that cause misogynists to freak out because it hits home at the major insecurities related to misogyny. That is the idea that a misogynist could be treated as a woman like they treat women in sexual contexts complete with the whole optional notion of consent and the “predator/prey” vibe. As well as the fear that since men can barely stand women and that women only stick around for the emotional relationship crap that’s for chicks and so if they have another outlet to get that, they’ll all go for that much better option and men will have no one left.

Female lesbianism is only cool when its threesome-interested bi-curiosity where they are just looking for a man to bring into a menage a trois. This is why this type of man is often trying to hit on lesbians and often see lesbians as a personal affront to their masculinity.

This same fear of either losing their prey or being treated like women is also the reason why transgender issues gets so closely linked to the sexuality stuff. A transwoman is a direct male to female transformation which triggers all sorts of “feminization” by the “gynocracy” conspiracy theory freakouts and a transman is seen as just another woman who thinks they can escape their role and gain male privilege and male lives. And those who blur the lines are just an affront to the system which they’ve been trained to see as equivalent to forced feminization and the loss of “masculinity” from society.

And agree with Ponygirl earlier on, gay marriage becoming common is a pretty damn strong blow against patriarchal marriage and the notion of “inherent gender roles”. Fuck, just the struggle has bolstered up a lot of feminist arguments and aided making common the feminist view of marriage as a meeting of equals as an expression of love.

And yeah, they are losing bad and there could be all sorts of positive responses to people finally digging themselves out of the patriarchal view of society and actually thinking about who they are as people.

@progrocker: It doesn’t really amaze me anymore that a person can be that filled with hatred. There are too many of them. They’re just too common to be shocking.

What does surprise me is a person that basically would have no problem grinding up 90% of humanity if it meant being able to punish that 90% for the high crime of existing think of themselves as “good” people. I mean I get that pretty much everyone thinks they’re a good person, but shit, isn’t there a limit?

The anti-ERA folks made same sex marriage (and adoption and teachers) a lynchpin of their efforts. If 38 states legalize SSM, then it’s going to be that much easier for the ERA to be reintroduced and ratified. It’s not just about treating gay people like human beings, if SSM becomes legalized in a majority of states, then they might have to treat women like human beings, too. And that’s just too much for a patriotic ‘murcan male to take.

I wish this was true, but I am afraid that the development of abortion as a polarizing political issue basically prevents the ERA from passing. Pro-lifers (who don’t think much of women’s rights to begin with, of course) are going to block anything that might make it harder to overturn Roe, and an ERA would do this (by specifically guaranteeing a constitutional right to gender equality).

As a student of history I feel safe in saying that the general trend of American history is towards greater equality of rights.  Those who stand in the way of equal rights are inevitably on the wrong side of history.  But history also always has a significant faction that stands against the expansion of equality for others.  Those people never give a second thought to how ignorant they will appear within just a few years.  They were the same people who thought the 14th Amendment was a bad idea, women’s suffrage was a bad idea, etc.  It isn’t that they are stupid.  That would be an unfair blanket judgement upon them, and history will judge them harshly enough as it is.  They are simply insecure and governed by their fears.

I was alive and sentient for the last ERA battle, and I can assure you that conservatives will do their damndest to defeat it, with simplistic, stupid arguments that will sway their base into fullon frothing, and zealot-like energy.

The last time around the big argument against ERA was: “The law will mandate that men and women must use the same bathrooms!”

Nevermind that many restaurants and other businesses already had only one bathroom, which would be used—in turn—by men and women, and there was, of course, nothing in the ERA that would mandate women and men be forced to defecate together.

It was a stupid, lying, devisive argument: and it worked.

Not looking forward to the new generation of stupid lies.

“The law will mandate that men and women must use the same bathrooms!”

I have to wonder if none of these people have ever lived in a single bathroom house/apartment.

The key to conservative fear of gay marriage is in the term “traditional marriage.”  Traditional marriage isn’t just marriage between a man and a woman, but a relationship with two roles - husband and wife.  The legal distinctions between the man and woman in straight marriage have been eroding for over a century, but the “traditional” marriage is patriarchal.

This is the most important point.  Marriage equality is a feminist issue because homophobia is largely rooted in misogyny.  There is actually an extreme Christian fundamentalist blogger who claimed that equal marriages basically are same-sex marriage.  She believes that any marriage where a woman isn’t submissive is basically a woman acting like a man instead of fulfilling her God-mandated female role of doormat, and therefore the husband is basically married to a man with female parts.  Most homophobes don’t state it this explicitly and they probably don’t even realize that they feel this way, but they certainly DO NOT want to preserve the type of marriage that is an equal partnership between a man and a woman.

I also once saw a commenter on a blog who went on a very long spiel about same-sex marriage asking, “Who would make the dinners and who would fix the cars?  Who would earn money and who would stay home with the kids?  Who would initiate sex?”  This literally went on for at least 3 paragraphs.  And the worst part is, he actually expected this to be a convincing argument.  He wasn’t even trolling or rude about it; he simply could not imagine a scenario where a woman made a decision or a man took care of his own kids.  And he expected the rest of us to be horrified by the idea of men and women acting outside of their Patriarchal roles.  I think he was extremely naive and expected to waltz into that blog and convert all of us with his impeccable logic, and he never imagined that some people actually aren’t horrified by people acting outside of their roles.  And this is where the bigots are actually right to be afraid.  Gay people will get married.  Everyone will know that there must be a man changing diapers or a woman having the last word in an important decision.  And yet the world won’t collapse and those families will be as happy as other families.  And suddenly these people won’t be so naive and they might not care so much about keeping up the strict roles within their marriages.  When a traditional wife sees that a man cooking dinner isn’t horrifying, then she might not accept her own husband’s excuse that he can’t or shouldn’t do it.

Surprising indeed for two reasons - the absurdity of it that you point out, and the fact that it implies wingnut disapproval of Bull Connor.

It’ll probably be no shock that at the time, the National Review said the demonstrators who got the crap knocked out of them in Birmingham had it coming because they “provoked” the cops “beyond the limits of human endurance.” By, you know, standing there and being black.

I remember the whole “same bathroom” argument when I was a kid in the 70s. My parents were pretty much liberals but voted mostly voted in the Republican primaries because Texas has open primaries and they wanted to see anti ERA candidates taken down. Texas ratified the ERA. Texas was pretty badass progressive in the 70s and early 80s, at least in the urban areas. We wanted to leave our former Confederate brethren in the dust and attract investment from other parts of the US and more importantly, from foreign countries. We had the “Strange Demise of JIm Crow” movement in Houston. We got Barbara Jordan into the US House.

I had excellent comprehensive sex education in CFISD in the 80s. CFISD is now the second largest school district in Texas after neighboring HISD and is today a conservative hellhole. What happened to the futuristic Texas of the seventies? I blame those folks who came here from up north.

Somewhere the dream died. Where did it all go wrong? Of course, we do at least have a gay mayor. Parker’s sexual orientation was not much an issue until the runoff. Houston elections are non-partisan, a candidate cannot even obliquely mention the name of a party. Elections are held in years when there are no state or national elections. Don’t give any credit to those stories that Parker won with low turnout. Every mayoral candidate is bumped to an early morning Saturday election runoff. You get your posse there, you win. Gay baiter posse didn’t show up, we got us a dyke mayor.

This makes me think that the progressive Texas of the 70s might rise again. We also have a hybrid primary/ caucus nomination system. Hillary won the primary in Texas thanks in part to Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” and our open primary laws, but I attended the caucus and voted for Obama. We tipped Texas to Obama.

When will Texas get back to it’s 60s and 70s progressive roots? We could be the most awesome of swing states if we do.