Remember when Michele Bachmann was challenged to a debate by a high school student and didn’t accept it? There’s probably a good reason for that and it’s demonstrated by her inability to make a coherent argument during an exchange with a couple high school students in Iowa recently. During a campaign appearance at a pizza place, two students questioned Bachmann about same-sex marriage and she babbled incoherently:
She then turned to Jane Schmidt, a Waverly High School student and president of the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance. Here’s their exchange in full.
JANE SCHMIDT: One of my main concerns is government support for the LGBT community. So my question is what would you do to protect GSAs in high school and support the LGBT community.
BACHMANN: Well, No. 1, all of us as Americans have the same rights. The same civil rights. And so that’s really what government’s role is, to protect our civil rights. There shouldn’t be any special rights or special set of criteria based upon people’s preferences. We all have the same civil rights.
JANE SCHMIDT: Then, why can’t same-sex couples get married?
BACHMANN: They can get married, but they abide by the same law as everyone else. They can marry a man if they’re a woman. Or they can marry a woman if they’re a man.
JANE SCHMIDT: Why can’t a man marry a man?
BACHMANN: Because that’s not the law of the land.
JANE SCHMIDT: So heterosexual couples have a privilege.
BACHMANN: No, they have the same opportunity under the law. There is no right to same-sex marriage.
JANE SCHMIDT: So you won’t support the LGBT community?
BACHMANN: No, I said that there are no special rights for people based upon your sex practices. There’s no special rights based upon what you do in your sex life. You’re an American citizen first and foremost and that’s it.
ELLA NEWELL, a junior at Waverly High School: Wouldn’t heterosexual couples, if they were given a privilege then, that gay couples aren’t, like given that privilege to get married, but heterosexual couples are given a privilege to get married?
BACHMANN: Remember every American citizen has the right to avail themselves to marriage but they have to follow what the laws are. And the laws are you marry a person of the opposite sex.
Leaving aside the utter stupidity of the argument that everyone is equally free to marry someone of the opposite gender — the same argument that failed on interracial marriage more than 40 years ago — and the fact that she never offers any actual normative argument for her position, and the fact that she is clearly arguing for special rights while claiming to be against them, she’s also wrong on the legal facts. In Iowa, the law says you can marry someone of the same sex. And because she didn’t even attempt to make a normative argument against that law while simultaneously arguing that it’s the state of the law itself that matters, she defeated her own argument. And she’s not smart enough to recognize it.
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Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort
December 6, 2011 at 1:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I hate this line of reasoning. That gays and lesbians want special rights. No, fuck. Gays and lesbians want equal rights. The right to marry the person who they love!
Also:
Think you meant “different gender”
jjgdenisrobert
December 6, 2011 at 1:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Clearly, she’s coaasted most of her life without he views ever having been challenged. She’s everything like a home-schooled over-protected child going to College for the first time… Hopefully she’ll end up like many people in that situation and radically re-assess her beliefs; of course, she’d never in a million years admit to this, but one can hope…
Aquaria
December 6, 2011 at 1:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
BACHMANN: They can get married, but they abide by the same law as everyone else. They can marry a man if they’re a woman. Or they can marry a woman if they’re a man.
Bachmann is too stupid to imagine the notion that what we’re doing is adding an option, not giving a special right.
So heterosexual people can marry someone who is the opposite gender. Or the same. Just like gay people can!
Brian63
December 6, 2011 at 1:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Heterosexuals have the right to marry the person they love, homosexuals do not. So, no, they do not have the same right. It can be stated that simply.
If a conservative thinks they *should* not have that right, then that is the argument they should be making. Saying that they do currently have the same rights is easy enough rhetoric, but it is not actually true.
Brian
daveau
December 6, 2011 at 1:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“I said that there are no special rights for people based upon your sex practices.”
Well, yes, there are. If you practice heterosexuality, you get special rights, like marriage.
Dr X
December 6, 2011 at 1:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Aquaria:
Following on that observation, it wouldn’t be a privilege granted to gay people. Straight men would also have the right to marry men and straight women would have the right to marry women. There. No special rights. The same rights for everyone.
Ouabache
December 6, 2011 at 1:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
… just like Mr. Bachmann, right?
Michael Heath
December 6, 2011 at 1:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This is a helpful example illustrating how conservative Christians lie to themselves about their being wedded to the principles in the DofI and Constitution when in fact they’re the primary opponents of those very principles.
We often ask whether a particular conservative Christian making a defective argument is:
a) delusional and lying or,
b) merely lying for their own self-interests or their religion-political movement.
It’s frequently impossible to come down on either side. In this example I think we see that Ms. Bachmann is in fact a delusional liar rather than merely a liar. She’s someone whose willing to lie even to themself.
Sadie Morrison
December 6, 2011 at 1:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
An even better example of Bachmann being caught off guard is her reaction to an eight-year-old boy’s revelation that his mother is not only gay but “doesn’t need fixing.” She’s literally left speechless.
eric
December 6, 2011 at 1:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Off topic: here is a case Ed might be interested in discussing.
Summary: Md has a laws stating that pregnancy counseling centers which don’t offer birth control or abortion services must post a sign saying they don’t offer them. The centers are suing, claiming this requirement infringes on their 1st amendment free speech right.
Its heading to Federal appeals court now. Thoughts?
MikeMa
December 6, 2011 at 1:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Bachmann, like Santorum, seems to focus on the sexual act, not sexual orientation. And so they get that icky feeling all over and miss the point.
Randomfactor
December 6, 2011 at 1:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re: off topic…my thoughts on the “abortion counseling” thing is that whatever restrictions apply to real family-planning clinics (in terms of medical degrees required of staff, width of corridors or whatever) should apply equally to the phony ones. Make it too expensive for them to pull their little shenanigans.
And hell yes, put up a sign with required wording. What they want is the right to deceive people.
Randomfactor
December 6, 2011 at 1:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Mad-Eye Michele’s argument can be paraphrased as “hey, the water tastes just the same from the colored fountain–or so I hear.”
yoav
December 6, 2011 at 2:08 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
In the same event she also repeated the lie about christian kids not being allowed to pray or mention jeezus while muslims are allowed to pray and then got seriously twisted in her own words when someone tried to explain the difference between individuals praying (allowed to everyone including christians) and having the school force a particular brand of prayer on all students (forbidden even for christians).
anandine
December 6, 2011 at 2:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The right to marry the person who they love!
Tere’s that damned gay agenda again. Next thing you know, they’ll want to be protected from being fired or beaten up for being gay. After all, gays and straights both have the same privilege of being beaten up if they’re gay.
Bronze Dog
December 6, 2011 at 2:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Very yes.
A couple weeks ago, I got involved in sending some form emails about DOMA to my congressmen, and one of them replied with boilerplate nonsense about tradition. I sent back my own reply that an attack on same sex marriage is an attack on all marriage: If the government can say homosexuals don’t have the right to marry the person they love, it sets a precedent for the government to take away my right to marry for similarly frivolous reasons.
Stevarious
December 6, 2011 at 3:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
They have the privilege of being beaten up if they are perceived to be gay.
I’ve seen a number of fundies argue that bullying is acceptable if it’s used to enforce ‘normative behavior’. People get bullied when they act ‘differently’. Since there’s only one proper way for men and women to act, it’s ‘normal’ for people to act ‘differently’ to be bullied, beaten, lynched, regardless of who they actually want to have sex with.
Here’s an example of this repulsive attitude.
frankb
December 6, 2011 at 3:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This is tragically true. Heterosexual boys have been beaten up when bullies thought they were gay.
lofgren
December 6, 2011 at 3:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t like this line of reasoning because heterosexuals don’t actually have the right to marry the person they love. They have the right to marry a person of the opposite sex who is a willing adult. Love, sexual compatibility, desire for procreation – none of these things matter in the eyes of the law, nor should they. It’s more accurate to say that there is no legal obstacle to a heterosexual marrying a willing adult who they love and is willing to marry them.
This right here is the nail in the coffin for Bachmann’s stance. Just like opposite-sex couples, same-sex couples should be welcome to marry regardless of love, sexual compatibility, or procreation. That’s all any gay person wants, an equal opportunity to find the person they love and define their own family in the eyes of the law. The only time I have ever heard a gay person argue that they should have a “right to marry the person they love” is when that person is already picked out.
Same-sex marriage doesn’t give anybody special rights. It increases everybody’s freedom.
Timothy (TRiG)
December 6, 2011 at 3:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Stevarious,
I followed your link. *shudder*
~~~
Anyway, is it actually true that a gay man has the right to marry a woman? If that woman was a foreigner, and he tried to sponsor her for immigration, would the government not challenge the marriage?
Oh, but I forgot, they want us all to be closeted too.
TRiG.
lofgren
December 6, 2011 at 3:11 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Actually, it’s MORE COMMON than homosexual boys getting beaten up because they are gay. Just like same sex marriage, hate crime legislation protects all of us. (Except the ones doing the beating, I guess.)
d cwilson
December 6, 2011 at 3:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Or we could, you know, change the law. We being a democracy and everything.
You’d think someone whose official job description was “lawmaker” would understand that laws can be changed.
Marcus Ranum
December 6, 2011 at 3:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’d vote for her!!
By which I mean the high school student.
eric
December 6, 2011 at 4:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
[this is]…the same argument that failed on interracial marriage more than 40 years ago…
I gotta say, this almost bugs me more. I take her bigotry as a sort of given. Annoying, yes, but at this point its background noise. But a U.S. lawyer who didn’t study/doesn’t understand Loving vs Virginia? Disbar her or revoke her law degree, please.
sunnydale75
December 6, 2011 at 4:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Is there a way to dumb it down for Bachmann so that even she can understand the issue at hand?
Or would praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monster yield more results?
Tony
Hercules Grytpype-Thynne
December 6, 2011 at 4:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
To be fair to Ms. Bachmann, it’s very very difficult to make a coherent argument against gay marriage. I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard it done.
Ed Brayton
December 6, 2011 at 5:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
anandine wrote:
That is Colbert-level brilliant.
meg
December 6, 2011 at 7:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@lofgren
“I don’t like this line of reasoning because heterosexuals don’t actually have the right to marry the person they love. They have the right to marry a person of the opposite sex who is a willing adult. Love, sexual compatibility, desire for procreation – none of these things matter in the eyes of the law, nor should they. It’s more accurate to say that there is no legal obstacle to a heterosexual marrying a willing adult who they love and is willing to marry them.”
That’s an excellent point I hadn’t considered at all, and with your permission plan to use it in the next argument re this issue with conservative family members. Thanks!
vmanis1
December 6, 2011 at 7:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
A McGill University ethicist named Margaret Somerville captured the argument against same-sex marriage back when Canada was debating (and ultimately adopted) marriage equality. In an op-ed in the Globe and Mail, she and a co-author articulated the following argument.
1. Marriage is about procreation, and even though many procreators aren’t married, and many married people don’t procreate, well, you know.
2. There are norms that marriage must conform to, and even though we won’t define those norms, or even say whether they are normative or statistical, well, same-sex marriage transcends the norms. (I always thought transcendence was a Good Thing, but leave that aside.)
3. The co-author of the piece (I forget his name) is gay, so this isn’t simply anti-gay bigotry.
4. Therefore, same-sex marriage ought not to be approved.
Now, Dr Somerville is the Founding Director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics, and Law at McGill’s Faculty of Law. The fact that a distinguished academic could actually want to write an article which would earn a Philosophy 101 student an F suggests to me that no sane, reality-based argument against marriage equality exists.
(I exclude the argument `my religion condemns same-sex marriage’. That is indeed reality-based, providing the faith community in question does in fact condemn it. It’s an argument that deserves respect—if we believe in freedom of religion—but its impact is limited to the faith community in question, and is therefore useless in helping establish public policy.)
timberwoof
December 6, 2011 at 8:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I my decades of being out and aware of fundagelical arguments about special rights for gay people have convinced me that the underlying argument works like this:
Gaah. I have to wash my hands now.
Michele Bachmann has obviously not learned that special skill that some (most? Not all.) people learn by the time they are eighteen: empathy. She cannot think of a situation from the point of view of another person, especially not one whose world-view she does not understand.
I do not want such a person making or enforcing laws.
dudleychapman
December 6, 2011 at 9:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This is a shameless plug for my blog article on Bachmann’s interview if anyone is interested.
http://mobileterrasistema.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/16-year-old-girl-challenges-bachmann-on-same-sex-marriage/
Happiestsadist
December 6, 2011 at 11:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think the thing at heart is that in their minds, they cannot imagine a relationship based on love. There has to be some kind of ownership going on. So they possibly actually think they’re being fair, offering everyone a chance to be part of the same wonderful consent-free D/s they are.
Craig Pennington
December 6, 2011 at 11:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Sunyydale75:
No.
Usernames are stupid
December 6, 2011 at 11:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Questions to ask Ms. Bachmann:
Q. Since you say marriage is between a man and a woman only, do you believe the marriage of Rebecca Louise Robertson and James Allan Scott is valid, even though Robertson is now male (born female)?
.
Q. Since you say marriage is between a man and a woman only, do you believe the marriage of Justin Graham Purdue and Thomas Araguz is valid, even though Purdue is now female (born male)?
.
.
Will she reenact that part in scanners where that guy’s head exploded, or that part in Indiana Jones when that Nazi guy’s head melted? *cackle*
Lycanthrope
December 7, 2011 at 1:36 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
MikeMa:
Of course she does. They don’t believe that homosexuality is a real orientation; they’re inexplicably convinced that it’s a deliberate choice.
matty1
December 7, 2011 at 6:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Like how Marcus chooses to keep going back to that bar, the one he thinks Michelle doesn’t know about?
unbound
December 7, 2011 at 8:49 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Actually, the first two words in the title of this post would always suffice for Bachmann news…
democommie
December 7, 2011 at 8:59 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Unbound:
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I read a whole bunch of the comments here and they were all, like, reasonable and shit and that drives me nuckingfutz, I’ll tell you!
So, I was glad to see you break the ice so to speak. Someone mentioned, upthread, that Missy thinks that teh butsekx is skeezy. I’m guessing that she KNOWS what it feels like.
Picture, if you will, the domestic blissitude of the Bachmaniac’s KKKristian home. Marcus is praying over Missy as she, on her knees, ministers to his needs. Marcus sez, “Umm, yeah, just like that. Hey, you know, Michelle; if you were to let me indulge in a bit of um, ‘entering on the exit ramp’, well, that would make it unnecessary for me to travel to that crappy motel (at least quite so often).
I’m sorry if I’ve offended anyone’s sensibilities. Then again, Michele Bachman is a walking offense to human decency, so, fuck it.
abb3w
December 7, 2011 at 10:19 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ll see your stumping by a teenager and raise with her being boggled by an eight-year-old.
» A Plague Of Mice
April 15, 2012 at 4:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
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