Sunday Facepalm: A Look Back.


Last Sunday was the first anniversary of marriage equality. Right Wing Watch has a comprehensive look at all the dire predictions made by the religious right, none of which came true. We’ll start with a video, of American on Fire, Oh No!

On to the predictions of dire woe!

1)War’s A-Brewin’

Many “mainstream” Religious Right leaders said that if the Supreme Court were to strike down state bans on same-sex marriage, Americans should prepare for a revolution.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, for example, said there would be an anti-gay “revolution” that would “just break this nation apart” if marriage bans were overturned, warning that such a ruling would “literally split this nation in two and create such political and cultural turmoil that I’m not sure we could recover from it.”

Mat Staver and Matt Barber of the Religious Right legal group Liberty Counsel made similar statements, with Barber declaring that “revolution is at hand” and Staver claiming that there would be a “new American Revolution” resisting marriage equality. Former House GOP Leader Tom DeLay insisted that “all hell” was “going to break loose” if the court sided with LGBT activists on marriage.

“We’ve got to fight to our deaths to save this great country,” said Cliff Kincaid of the conservative group Accuracy In Media, while Vision America’s Rick Scarborough vowed that he was willing to “burn” in defiance of gay marriage, which he said would “unleash the spirit of hell on the nation.”

One year later, no anti-gay revolution has occurred and Rick Scarborough has not self-immolated.

2)Secession

Just before the ruling, WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah called on governors “to secede” from the union in order “to offer a refuge” for the “millions of Americans” who he believed would flee the country as a result of marriage equality. “The rewards could be great. I would certainly consider relocating. How about you?” he asked. “If not a state, are there any nations in the world interested in a pilgrimage by millions of Americans?”

[…]

Conservative activist Alan Keyes said the ruling amounted to “a just cause for war” and was “likely to produce the separation and dissolution of the United States,” while one author, former Reagan aide Douglas MacKinnon, called on a group of Southern states to form a new country called Reagan that would not tolerate gay rights.

We are still waiting for such a brave governor to threaten secession.

3)God’s Punishment

Gay marriage would lead to a divine reckoning, many conservative pundits predicted, possibly in the form of a global financial crash, a nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack or “a fireball from space.”

“It is just a question of how soon the wrath of God is going to come on this land,” televangelist Pat Robertson warned. Florida-based pastor Carl Gallups, now a staunch Donald Trump ally, maintained that “this ruling may prove to be the final death knell of divine judgment upon our once great nation.”

Radio host Rick Wiles predicted that “God will cut off America’s food supply and this nation will be hit with disease, pestilence, drought, natural calamities and a great shaking” and urged people to flee the country.

4)Pedophilia

Following the passage of the 2009 law that expanded hate crime protections to LGBT people, many right-wing politicians and analysts falsely claimed that the act legalized pedophilia. Of course, it did nothing of the sort and child abuse is still a crime.

Many of these same people claimed years later that the Obergefell ruling would also legalize pedophilia, which, obviously, it did not do.

Robertson said the ruling would turn pedophilia into a “constitutional right” and permit “relationships with children ” (along with “love affairs between men and animals”).

DeLay warned that the ruling would pave the way for a secret government plan to legalize “12 new perversions, things like bestiality, polygamy [and] having sex with little boys.” Ben Carson, then a GOP candidate for president, suggested that NAMBLA would benefit from the ruling.

5)OutlawingReligious Belief

Predictions about the government throwing pastors in jail, outlawing the Bible, and even murdering Christians came flooding in after the Obergefell decision.

Mike Huckabee said that America was witnessing “the criminalization of Christianity” and that any pastor who didn’t want to officiate a wedding for a same-sex couple would be liable to face criminal charges

[…]

No pastor has been arrested for refusing to officiate a same-sex couple’s wedding, reading from the Bible or preaching against homosexuality, all things that conservatives predicted would happen.

Some right-wing pundits even thought that the ruling would lead to forced gay relationships and parents losing custody of their children.

You can read the whole mess of predictions at Right Wing Watch.

Comments

  1. says

    I was amused by Farah:

    “The rewards could be great. I would certainly consider relocating. How about you?” he asked. “If not a state, are there any nations in the world interested in a pilgrimage by millions of Americans?”

    It wouldn’t be immigration if it was ‘mericans, oh no, just a pilgrimage. A permanent one.

  2. says

    These were predictions made last year, about gay marriage specifically. Trump would not have been part of the upset.

  3. rq says

    It wouldn’t be immigration if it was ‘mericans, oh no, just a pilgrimage. A permanent one.

    A colonization.
    I know at least one country that would initially welcome the influx -- and I’m not even sure how signs of not-leaving would be perceived. :/ Idolizing countries, doesn’t always work out well.

  4. blf says

    (Adjusting sarcasm slightly and trying again…)
    Typical eejits, didn’t predict the actual unfolding disaster.

  5. says

    Blf:

    Apologies for being so slow today. Trump didn’t make the list because they don’t view Trump as a bad thing. Trump’s gonna make the country all white and christian again. Yep.

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