Good As You links to a press release from Paul Madore and Mike Heath, two repulsive bigots from Maine who are organizing a campaign to prevent marriage equality in that state. Even by religious right standards, this is disgusting.
“It’s time to get serious with society on the issue of homosexuality and the practical effects that are very harmful to society that this distorted and perverted lifestyle will have. It’s time to take the gloves off,” said Paul Madore. “Good people just keep moving the line back regarding homosexuality. But not anymore.”
Madore continued, “Maine people are coming together to say ‘enough is enough’. Marriage does not belong to homosexuals. It never has and it never will. Even if people get tired of saying no, and end up caving on the issue.”
“On that note,” said Madore, “The only reason why the number of supporters for same sex ‘marriage’ may be increasing is because people are sick and tired. Homosexuals have made people sick and tired. Homosexuals have absolutely nothing good to contribute to family life, which is what marriage is all about. A sterile union (between same sex couples) is never in need of marriage, and has nothing good to contribute to marriage or family life – absolutely nothing.”
The only thing that comes to mind to say is: what an asshole.
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jayarrrr
April 5, 2012 at 9:42 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
My girlfriend and I are both in our 60′s. she’s post menopausal and had her tubes tied when she was 35 anyway.
Am I to assume that in the Gospel According to Mike Heath, that we should not be allowed to get married?
How about those stories everybody goes “SQUEEEE!” over about the centenarians getting married at their nursing home?
And are we to assume that as soon as menopause arrives that hetero couples must get divorced, since the possibility of them producing more children is nil?
dingojack
April 5, 2012 at 9:44 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What comes to my mind is:
“the issue of homosexuality and the practical effects that are very harmful to society that this distorted and perverted lifestyle will have“.
Citations required.
“Homosexuals have absolutely nothing good to contribute to family life, which is what marriage is all about. A sterile union (between same sex couples) is never in need of marriage, and has nothing good to contribute to marriage or family life – absolutely nothing.”
Citations required.
Would these ‘sterile unions’ include those unable to have children (for whatever reason), those who don’t wish to have children (for whatever reason) or those whose children die (for what ever reason)?
Dingo
dingojack
April 5, 2012 at 9:46 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Also I’d point ot that ‘Mike Heath’ is (as far as I am aware) not related to the regular commenter here, Michael Heath.
Dingo
Bronze Dog
April 5, 2012 at 9:46 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Funny, I thought a big reason I supported same sex marriage was that I was sick and tired of fundie Christians trying to impose their nihilism on society: It’d irritate the bigots if we had laws that show that we care about fairness and justice, therefore I support marriage equality.
rjmx
April 5, 2012 at 9:50 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I love it when arseholes like these say “Maine people want (this)” or “Americans are tired of (that)” when what they really mean is “me and a couple of my dickhead friends think (this)”.
Apparently being an arsehole gives you the right to speak for whole groups of people.
sanban
April 5, 2012 at 9:52 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And if marriage is “for” producing children, what of all those people who have produced or are rearing children without marriage? Are they to be forced to “marry?” What if they’re (gasp) gay?
nigelTheBold to the power of nigelTheBold
April 5, 2012 at 9:54 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
From a strictly pragmatic standpoint, marriage is a stabilizing force. Two people are better able to handle life together, pooling resources and taking care of each other. I know I would be lost without my wife.
It seems logical that extending that stabilizing option to more people would result in a more stable society, not a less stable society.
Chiroptera
April 5, 2012 at 10:00 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Marriage does not belong to homosexuals.
That is true. On the other hand, it doesn’t belong to Christians, either.
I’m just sayin’, is all.
Raging Bee
April 5, 2012 at 10:09 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Y’know, I remember back in the ’80s when people were saying straight people sought out committed loving relationships, while gays only wanted indiscriminate sex, and that’s why gayness was supposedly bad. Now the gays are showing, in no uncertain terms, that they want committed loving relationships — and the bigots are saying that’s bad?!
Just goes to show how totally insane these haters really are. Like Mad magazine said, “you never can win with a bigot!”
matty1
April 5, 2012 at 10:13 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
In fact the copyright on marriage is owned by Newt Gingrich, he bought it from the previous owners so he could rewrite the definition “one man, a succession of women”.
dingojack
April 5, 2012 at 10:23 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What amazes me is that anti marriage equality bigots keep wheeling out these tired ol’ weak, idiotic arguements in the hope that, evan though the arguement was throughly debunked and ridiculed all those other times, somhow this time it’ll be killer!
Paging Drs. Kruger and Dunning, paging Drs. Kruger and Dunning…
Dingo
unbound
April 5, 2012 at 10:39 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
After reading that I guess I need to tell my wife that we need to divorce, and that we should have divorced years ago. She needs a strong contraceptive so that her periods can brought to reasonable enough levels that she doesn’t become anemic (iron supplements weren’t enough). And, since reproduction isn’t possible under this condition, we have nothing good to contribute to marriage or family life. Not sure what to tell the kids…
raven
April 5, 2012 at 10:49 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
40% of all children in the USA are born to unmarried parents.
I guess those aren’t Real Children born to Real People.
greg1466
April 5, 2012 at 10:52 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Chiroptera wrote:
I was going to make the same observation. And add that obviously Churches should no longer be allowed to perform marriages…
dingojack
April 5, 2012 at 10:54 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Raven – not that I doubt you* but, citation(s) please!
Dingo
—–
* It’ll come in handy for arguements with bigots at a later stage
Anri
April 5, 2012 at 11:03 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
dingojack:
Nah, you’re looking at it wrong.
It’s not an argument, it’s a mantra. It isn’t supposed to be true when you start saying it, it’s supposed to become true if you just say it enough!
louismotherball
April 5, 2012 at 11:16 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
dingojack –
Table 7. Births to unmarried women, by age: United States, final 2009 and preliminary 2010
…
Number Percent
Age of mother 2010 2009 2010 2009
All ages …………………………… 1,633,785 1,693,658 40.8 41.0
National Vital Statistics Reports, Volume 60, Number 2 November 17, 2011
whheydt
April 5, 2012 at 11:32 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t know if it’s still true, but in the past, the statistics on “births out of wedlock” were badly skewed.
In California, there is nothing on a birth certificate specifically indicating whether the parents are married or not. Couple that with the increasing trend of women *not* changing their surnames when married, the people gathering the stats used the criterion of the parents having different surnames to determine that a birth was to an unmarried couple…which was, in a lot cases, a false assumption.
–W. H. Heydt
Old Used Programmer
Michael Heath
April 5, 2012 at 12:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
dingojack writes:
No effective relation; ‘effective’ since we’re all related to extant life. E.g., worms, which I hope is the point of our relatedness. ;)
That Mike Heath was also an employee of Ron Paul’s Iowa campaign in this election season, IIRC he played a senior role. Which is another validation point that Ron Paul hides behind “states’ rights” when it comes to his bigotries.
D. C. Sessions
April 5, 2012 at 1:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, that’s as good an excuse as any to explain why $HERSELF and I aren’t married — she’s been out of the “fertility” game for a long time.
Although, married or not, we seem to be doing a lot of “family life.”
interrobang
April 5, 2012 at 2:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, Almost Diamonds just has a thread right now where some religious bigots more or less did come out and say that even if the parents are heterosexual and married, families formed by adopting children aren’t “real families” anyway; and I’ve heard of people being told similar things by Catholic priests, so yes, it’s a safe bet that they don’t think adoption gives you a “real family.”
Which, if you think about it, isn’t actually that far off how the culture at large thinks and talks about adoption anyway. Personally, I think the stigma is only getting worse, as adoptions are getting rarer, and people willing to spend themselves into the ground for fertility treatments are getting more common (because everyone knows it’s better to have your own kid and so on and so forth). And then there are all those “you’re adopted!” jokes floating around out there. Don’t get me started.
eric
April 5, 2012 at 3:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Interrobang: you got me curious, so I went to the CDC pages on adoption. From their 2007-08 report, adoption statistics for the year 2008 was 58.3 adoptions per 100,000 adults. In 2000, it was 61.5. So, a decrease, but not a dramatic one.
What the CDC says has dropped dramatically in the last 20 years or so is local (i.e., in-county, in-state, or in-country) adoptions. But they cite the reason for this is drop in supply, not any drop in demand: there’s been a drop in teen pregnancy rates over the past several decades, and among American women who do have kids, fewer are choosing to put them up for adoption. [Note this is from a different report, also published in 2008 but dealing with records up to 2002.]
All of this is just FYI.
fifthdentist
April 5, 2012 at 4:54 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ eric
Just another reason to end “baby murder” and contraception (which is also baby murder). Why should those Chinese and Bosnian babies get families that should instead be adopting American babies? Hell, some of them foreign babies might be Muslims!
No, American families should adopt domestic, Christian babies born in shame to teenagers who had never been told about birth control and would have been denied it even if they had.
The logic for this is simple: 5,000 years ago a rib-woman ate an apple after talking with a snake, so this childbearing thing is their curse and their duty.
leonardschneider
April 6, 2012 at 1:00 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m not a violent man.
However…
I am suffering from a bit of cabin fever, and right now what sounds like fun (for me, anyway) would be getting stuck in a broken elevator with Mike Heath for about ten minutes. I’d like to ask him what issues he has with my uncle, his husband, and the three healthy, intelligent, well-behaved adopted children they are raising. Basically, you got a fuckin’ problem with my family, junior?
Oh, and Mr. Heath gets stabbed in the neck with a ball-point pen every time he invokes the Bible as an excuse for his bigotry. No bible references, no neck wounds… But I don’t think he can pull it off, so he’d look like a Water Wiggle by the time we were in motion again.
joe_k
April 6, 2012 at 10:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Those of you who are worried about having to divorce an SO due to one of you being post-menopausal, you are probably safe: Sarah, after all, managed to give birth to Isaac – if you have faith, you can still have children…
pa747sp
April 6, 2012 at 9:08 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
A million dollars for anyone who can prove how marriage equality will damage society.