I’d like to try an experiment. I’ve started reading The Political Brain, about the role of reason and emotion in political campaigns and decision-making. It could be useful in figuring out the best way of working toward full civil equality. My plan is to blog about it as I read it, and I thought it could be fun and illuminating if any interested readers were following along and discussing it in the comments section.
Here’s a caveat: I don’t know whether this book is any good. It could be an exercise in neuroscientific overreach and nothing more. At the very least, though, it ought to be thought-provoking.
By the way, I’ve linked to the hardcover version of the book on Amazon. For some reason, it’s cheaper than the paperback. You can read more about the book there.
I’m not in the mood for outrage today. I feel like something a bit lighter, like poking fun at our opponents. Sometimes they really do deserve it. Take the Ruth Institute, which is NOM’s attempt at youth outreach, founded by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse. I’ve already had a chuckle at their youth-oriented slogan (“Making marriage cool again!”), but there’s a lot more fun to be had. For example, their logo, their name, and their rhetoric.
Start with the logo. The words say, “One Man, One Woman, For Life,” so why does the graphic look like an ad for polygamy? I see three men, three women, and no kids. It’s a big group marriage without any offspring. I picture a branding meeting with Morse deciding, “Hey, this graphic is the opposite of everything we stand for. Let’s use it!”
Then there’s the name. Morse says she christened her group after the biblical figure, Ruth. The Book of Ruth is much loved, and in it you’ll find a treasured verse that’s become a traditional wedding vow:
Whither thou goest, I will go,
and where thou lodgest, I will lodge;
thy people shall be my people,
and thy God my God.
But here’s the thing: Ruth said this to a woman, her mother-in-law Naomi, after the death of Ruth’s husband (Naomi’s son).
That’s right. NOM and the Ruth Institute consistently claim that same-sex relationships simply are not comparable to straight ones. But those Biblical words — the words countless straight couples have seen as the perfect expression of marital love — those words were said to a woman by a woman. The woman whose name Morse chose for an “institute” dedicated to smearing same-sex relationships.
And finally, there’s the rhetoric. In Annapolis, during NOM’s “Summer for Marriage” tour, Morse said this about same-sex parenting:
We’re asked to believe that a mother, a biological mother, will have no problem sharing the care of her child with another woman. Moms, do you believe that? No!
Just one problem. The Bible does give an example of a mother who had no problem sharing the care of her child with another woman. Can you guess who it was? Any ideas? It was — wait for it — here it comes — it was… Read more…
Brian Brown is enough to make me (almost) respect Maggie Gallagher. Brian has taken over some of Maggie responsibilities at the National Organization for Marriage, and he just posted this on NOM’s blog:
In Great Britain, thanks to a new ruling, the principle of nondiscrimination now trumps religious liberty and common sense. Catholic adoption agencies will be closed unless they agree to place children with gay couples on an “equal” basis. No preferences for the natural family are permissible any longer, even if it means fewer orphaned children find good homes. The sky is not falling, because the sky never does fall, but there is a large crack opening up in our civilization’s foundations.
I didn’t even bother to see whether Brian has the story right, because it’s ludicrous and nasty even if you take it at face value.
First, the ludicrous part. Brian thinks expanding the pool of potential adoptive parents will result in fewer orphans getting adopted. However, this reasoning — oh heck, I’m done. I can’t point out the illogic any better than that.
The nasty part was this:
No preferences for the natural family are permissible any longer…
Emphasis added. Now when Maggie says crap like that, she’s using making some offensive (and wrong) comparison between biological and adoptive parents. But Brian here isn’t making that particular distinction. He’s saying opposite-sex adoptive parents make families that are natural, while same-sex adoptive parents make families that are…not.
When Maggie ran NOM, she tried to maintain the fiction that the group had nothing against gays or our relationships. NOM’s primary concern was allegedly to create the best environment for children (even if she couldn’t back that up with facts). Animus against gays had nothing to do with it. Here’s Brian, though, not only telling gay couples that they’re, well, unnatural, but telling kids that their whole family is unnatural, too.
(Am I being unfair here? “Unnatural” is such a loaded term. This is usually the part of the interview where Brian sweats and cackles and stammers, “I didn’t mean, uh, unnatural, I just, uh, meant, not natural.”)
I’m ready to believe Maggie agrees with Brian on this. She’s savvy enough not to say it, though. Savvy enough to spin her message in positive terms. She talks about what NOM is for and tries to avoid saying what they’re against. But Brian’s clumsy. His real feelings are easier to see, and under his leadership NOM will find it tougher to duck charges of bigotry and hate bias and disdain.
Maggie Gallagher recently vented — dishonestly — in a column decrying Judge Walker’s “judicial tyranny,” quoting Rush Limbaugh:
Rush Limbaugh had his finger on the truth. In the nearly half-hour speech he gave after the Proposition 8 ruling (“the American people are boiling over!”), Rush said that Walker “did not just slap down the will of 7 million voters. Those 7 million voters were put on trial — a kangaroo court where everything was stacked against them. … Those of you who voted for Prop 8 in California are guilty of hate crimes. You were thinking discrimination. That’s what this judge has said! Truly unprecedented.”
Rush is completely wrong, but that doesn’t matter to the anti-gay echo chamber. He might just have veered into over-the-top hyperbole, but now Maggie is repeating the lie in print. It suits her purpose: the big new goal of the National Organization for Marriage is to paint anti-gays as victims of intolerant homosexuals who persecute good, sweet, gentle Christians. If that means telling lies about hate crimes, then so be it. Fortunately, you can refute this sort of paranoia with 3 simple facts.
The 3 Facts
1. Hate crime laws don’t make anything illegal.
Hate crime laws merely provide enhanced penalties for actions traditionally recognized as crimes, but motivated by bias. That’s all. Don’t believe me? Ask the FBI:
[H]ate crimes are not separate, distinct crimes; instead, they are traditional offenses motivated by the offender’s bias (for example, an offender assaults a victim because of a bias against the victim’s race).
In other words, if it wasn’t a crime before the hate crime law was passed, then it’s still not a crime afterward.
Do you know what people are doing when they claim American hate crime laws will criminalize the Bible or send pastors to jail for preaching homosexuality is a sin? They’re lying. Or, at the very least, speaking from ignorance. They may give you examples from Canada or Sweden or other countries that don’t have a First Amendment, but they don’t apply to the US.
2. Homosexuals don’t get special protection from hate crime legislation. Read more…
Maggie Gallagher must really be struggling in her search for good news. She posted this yesterday:
Gay marriage advocates are now hoping for a technical knockout — for the 9th Circuit to rule that the voters of California have no standing to challenge Walker’s ruling. This may be a sign they understand how extreme and weak Walker’s ruling actually is, how unable it is to withstand substantive review by higher courts. Ted Olson goes on TV claiming he has proved there’s no possible case for opposing gay marriage. Now he’s in court trying to block any higher court from reviewing his handiwork.
Does that sound like the behavior of people with an airtight logical case to you?
Actually, Maggie, it sounds like the behavior of a lawyer who won a spectacular victory against your side, achieving everything he wanted (and more), and who would love for the decision to stand exactly as is. Seriously, Maggie, have ever heard of a lawyer who wanted his complete and utter demolition of his opponent to go on to appeal?
Here’s an old piece of advice Maggie should keep in mind next time she’s tempted to write a column: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
Oh, the “traditional” marriage people are upset. So upset. And this sentence from Judge Walker’s ruling on Prop 8 has them especially upset:
Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage; marriage under law is a union of equals.
Here are some upset reactions from those upset people:
I believe gender matters, and I believe that gender plays a role in what makes marriage different from relationships. But Judge Walker has decided that his interpretation of the Constitution trumps all that.
If gender is no longer “an essential part of marriage,” then marriage has been essentially redefined right before our eyes.
Can you believe you are reading these words, not merely as the private opinion of a moral reprobate, a cultural revolutionary, but as the conclusions of a “judge” in the United States of America? … This kind of homosexual propaganda has no place in the legal system of a moral culture, but there it is.
Apparently they think Walker is advancing some radical theory and that his opinion introduces a new concept of marriage into our legal system.
They’re talking nonsense.
Walker is merely noting an indisputable truth: traditional gender roles in marriage used to be mandated by law — the man was legally put in charge of his wife, and his wife’s rights were severely limited by the law — but this is no longer the case. Marriage today, in the eyes of the law, is a union of equals.
Who can claim that this change hasn’t happened? Apparently, it’s invisible to those who believe marriage has been constant and unchanging since Adam and Eve. They need a little history lesson, so here goes. Read more…
