Bigotry revealed
There’s a storm gathering.
The clouds are dark and the winds are strong and I am afraid.
Some who advocate for interracial marriage have taken the issue far beyond mixed-race couples. They want to bring the issue into my life. My freedom will be taken away.
I’m a California pastor who must choose between my faith and my job.
I’m part of a New Jersey church group punished by the government because we can’t support interracial marriage.
I’m a Massachusetts parent helplessly watching public schools teach my son that blacks marrying whites is okay.
But some who advocate interracial marriage have not been content with interracial couples living as they wish. Those advocates want to change the way I live. I will have no choice. The storm is coming.
But we have hope, a rainbow coalition of people of every creed and color are coming together in love to protect racially pure marriage.
Paid for by National Organization for Marriage which is responsible for the content of this ad.
This is NOT the content of the ad paid for by the National Organization for Marriage, because they are advocating against same sex marriage, rather than different-race marriage.
Nevertheless, the ad I have adulterated above is presented with soft, reasonable sounding voices and soothing music, all designed to make it sound reasonable, and it really requires a change like the one I've made above to truly see how vile this hatred and bigotry is.
Just because you can say something in a reasonable sounding way does not mean that it is inherently reasonable.
If you are homophobic and a bigot and can't support gay marriage, that's fine, but don't try to tell me that your argument is any more reasonable or righteous than the anti-miscegeny arguments of the middle of the last century.
Liam, really peeved on behalf of his gay friends and neighbors.
posted by Liam at 4/13/2009 07:31:00 AM
4 Comments:
Slight correction. Having viewed what seems to be the original ad on Youtube, the first complainer is a California doctor, not a pastor. I'm having trouble understanding how a doctor's job is directly affected by gay marriage ... unless it's that she feels it's immoral to treat AIDS patients or something? "Your naughty bits were touched by another man? No medicine for you!!"
(At first I thought it was telling that they disabled comments on the Youtube video, but it turns out that that poster (who posts all kinds of ads) always disables comments.)
Monday, April 13, 2009 11:43:00 AM
I agree, I don't understand the doctor line either. I changed it to pastor because... it made more sense.
I think whoever put the "I'm a doctor who..." bit in there was confusing the gay marriage issue with the abortion issue, and hoped that enough people have heard the "it's immoral to require doctors who believe in the sanctity of live to perform abortions" argument and won't question it...
The "I'm a California Doctor" in the original isn't the only non sequitur moment in there.
"Some who advocate same sex marriage have not been content with same sex couples living as they wish." They wish to be married (well, some of them do). So who is it again who isn't content to have them live as they wish?
Also, how does it change how I live or alter my choice in the slightest if two other people can marry each other? I don't care if it's perfectly legal for Rush Limbaugh to marry Andrea Dworkin or not in terms of any effect on my life. I may think it'd be a really bad idea, but it's up to them, not up to me.
Also, calling it a "rainbow coalition" of people. Do they honestly think that by saying that, they'll convince ANYONE that the organization called "The Rainbow Coalition" somehow supports their side of the argument?
And then there is the claim that they're coming together "in love". They're coming together "in bias and hatred".
And what church groups have been punished because they don't support same sex marriage? I'm pretty sure it's still up to churches to decide which marriages they recognize and which ones they are willing to perform. In my case, for instance, because I've been divorced and it was not annulled, the Catholic church would have been unwilling to perform my second marriage ceremony, but the local Congregational church was perfectly willing to. That's just fear mongering. "Oooh, they're going to come into your church and MAKE you perform gay marriages".
Ridiculous.
But yes, I knew it was a doctor originally, but it seemed to me that if there was a similar ad relating to miscegeny instead of gay marriage, it would have been a pastor, so I changed it.
Thanks for keeping me honest!
Liam.
Monday, April 13, 2009 11:54:00 AM
Oh, I see. Sorry then, didn't mean to make you seem anything less than honest.
From the youtube link I wandered around to a few video responses and parodies of the ad, some very funny, some almost painfully earnest. One of them (can't remember which one) gave this explanation of the church group that was punished. It said that the NJ case involved a church group which owned a pavilion in town, which it made available to the public (for weddings, etc.), and received a tax break for doing so. A lesbian couple requested permission to use the pavilion for a civil commitment ceremony (or whatever NJ calls them now) and they refused. So the couple sued, and the church group's tax break was threatened (according to the explanation given; I have not researched it further myself).
Monday, April 13, 2009 11:07:00 PM
This, to me, is a legal issue wider spread than gay marriage. My guess is that if the KKK had wanted to use the pavilion and had been refused, they would have had an equally good case.
So the issue here isn't with gay marriage per se, but with the church wanting to both get the benefits of making the pavilion available to the town but also keeping the right to control that use, and that to me seems wrong.
I don't have a problem with the church having the right to control their pavilion... if they get no benefit from it. I also have no problem with the church making the pavilion public in exchange for tax breaks, but then losing the right to decide who it is "public" to.
Really, the only reason this relates to same sex marriage is because that happens to be the group that asked to use the pavilion. It's really stretching things to try to make it that same sex marriage is the reason this church was punished.
Heck, if Planned Parenthood decided they wanted to use the pavilion for an event, I'm pretty sure as a "public" pavilion, they'd have had the right to use it as well, and the church would have risked losing their tax break if they'd tried to refuse the rights.
But I don't know why I'm getting all indignant about the truth being shaded in this example, when the entire ad is one big case of misleading and falacious arguments, one more shouldn't even be a blip on the radar.
Plus, it's amazing how non-Christian some Christians can be. ;-)
Liam.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009 6:13:00 PM
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