That poor fellow. He’s reading Atlas Shrugged, which is awful enough, but now he’s also reading homophobic literature about The Harms of Same-Sex Marriage. Massachusetts has had same-sex marriage for a decade, so you’d think we’d now have some solid data on the ghastly consequences … so I appreciate the anti-gay-marriage groups now taking their very best shot with real information.
Their list of terrible outcomes is simply pathetic.
Children are being told that families with same-sex parents are just another kind of family! Lawyers have to learn about marriage law that includes gay people! Homosexuals are allowed to adopt children! Gay people are criticizing ex-gay therapy!
If that’s the worst stuff that can happen if we allow gays to marry, I say bring it on.
Yeah, please consider a Nobel Peace Prize nomination for that brave government.
Far be it from me to be all logicky an’ stuff, but the point of equality, when achieved, is that there are now fewer laws to learn. You know, what with everyone being held to the same set.
<how-the-fuck-is-this-difficult-to-comprehend?>
Wow, so I guess you need to get 100% correct answers on the Massachusetts Bar Exam to pass it.
Those poor lawyers.
*sob*
Yes, yes, but… GOD SAYS IT’S WRONG!!!!
And who are we to argue?
Oh, wait…
Do they have any arguments what’s so wrong about any of these?
There’s a strange and dizzy sensation involved in reading insider arguments which purport to address the common “you.” Why should WE be concerned over this law or policy? Well, because it might promote the evil agenda of THEM, that’s why. And WE don’t want that, do we? Of course WE don’t. That’s just common sense.
If YOU happen to be one of THEM, however, the warm concern for your well-being turns into a looking-glass world where everything is opposite. If gay marriage is allowed … then gay marriage will be allowed!! Failing to gasp in horror is a reflection of outsider status.
Making this sort of non-argument argument to the general reader is a reflection of insular thinking. But it’s even more discombobulating when it happens in person. “Oh, you don’t want to vote for that candidate … he’s in favor of gay marriage.” Apparently you passed for normal to them.
Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes! Volcanoes! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
I heard that if gay people can get married some of them might be happy!
And we cannot have that sort of nonsense now can we?
Louis
Unfortunately, Louis, I doubt the bigots even get as far as concerning themselves with happiness. To people like these, human beings (except the ones they, personally, care for, of course) are just pawns in their ideological pissing contest. Look at how quickly those Catholic adoption services threw the children they were supposed to be placing under the bus when they didn’t get a special exemption from the law.
I don’t know if this sort of thinking is caused by their religious beliefs, but it certainly conforms to it.
If gay marriage is allowed … then gay marriage will be allowed!!
This made me laugh out loud because that’s exactly how I read it too. Well… yes? No real explanation of why that is a bad thing.
I’m guessing the answer is somewhere in the GOD HATES FAGS category.
But fire and brimstone is so…so…so old testament! Nowadays Dog has cleaned up her act and long since abandoned her original manual “How to be a Deity”. What I fear will be the divine consequence of enabling those Evul Fagz™ is a universal flood of custard. The guiltless will find refuge on floating clumps of meringue; this is the formerly popular dessert known as “Floating Island”.
Pray that it’s genuine egg custard and not one of the substitutes like corn starch-based Bird’s custard or that Middle Eastern delight, salab.
If this message does not compute, see your brain technician for a tune up of your sense of humor.
Ex-Gay/Conversion therapy…
Some grey bloke made this hilarious video some time ago:
Ah, Atlas Shrugged.
I remember trying to read that book in high school. About one or two hundred pages in, I came to the conclusion that best thing to do with the book was keep it around in case I needed to prop a wobbly table or start a fire.
Sweden recognized same sex partnerships with equivalent rights and protections to marriage starting in 1995. In 2009 they finally stopped calling it something else and made “marriage” a general designation. I look forward to the day when the US is as “destroyed” as Sweden is. Heck, I look forward to the day when Texas, Louisiana, et al are as “destroyed” as Massachusetts.
if they were really so convinced that god and heaven and hell were so real then I do not really understand why they are not just content to not “sin” themselves knowing that they will go to heaven and be with god after they die. They are not however, they are extremely concerned that everyone must do the same and act the same and believe the same. I guess I do not understand how that would effect their salvation. I do not remember learning anything in catholic school that would indicate that it would jeopardize my salvation that involved what anyone else was doing. In fact I was encouraged to do what was right regardless what “the world” was encouraging me to do or believe in fact to just live the sinless life regardless of what anyone else was doing.
there are so many contradictions in the thinking I sounds like they should seek professional help.
uncle frogy
@microraptor
The problem is that the book is like a million pages long. A piece of furniture requiring “Atlas Shrugged” has gone from “wobbly” to “sideways”.
I’d just rip out pieces of the book until I’d gotten the table level.
@12/RFW
No, they are not Old Testament. They are explicitly New Testament. That is rather the point here. The Jews didn’t have much of a belief in an afterlife beyond Upper and Lower Sheol (you can see and hear your descendants from Upper Sheol, you freeze and disappear in Lower Sheol) until the Babylonian Exile, when they more or less swallowed Zoroastrianism wholesale. Including, I might add, the idea of a universal savior (the Saoshyant).
Give me the Old Testament Yahweh any day. At least the worst he could do to you is rip the ground open under you and send you plunging to Lower Sheol, to be forgotten and dissipate like mist on the wind. OT Yahweh is quite literally infinitely less evil than NT Yahweh, and I say that with Numbers, Joshua, and Deuteronomy almost memorized.
@16/uncle froggy
They’re concerned because they’re decent human beings deep down. If you thought there was a seriously credible threat of any other human being thrown into eternal burning torment, you would do all you could to save from from it, because you too are a decent human being (from what I’ve seen anyway).
It makes me physically sick to see how the basic, simple, and good human concepts of empathy and fellow-feeling are twisted and co-opted by these people. Everything they touch turns to shit.
My copy has snot all over page 32. It’s where the (2nd)* hero makes the train run on time.
*She’s not the main character, she doesn’t have a penis.
unclefrogy #16 wrote:
When it comes right down to it, they’re worried about their kids — the next generation. They know darn well that once something becomes legal it becomes common and turns into ‘no big deal.’ It becomes hard if not impossible to isolate the children so well that what’s normal in the wider culture is still jaw-droppingly horrifying and thus Christianity gets once again watered down into a humanistic everybody-be-nice form of religion.
The reason they want the discrimination against gay people to continue is that it seems to set their own religious views down as the default way to see the world. Sure, they can try to turn being against gay marriage into one of those distinguishing and difficult ‘tells’ — like a dietary restriction against pork or a luddite antipathy towards some modern convenience such as electricity or modern medicine — but keeping that going outside of an isolated cult is an uphill battle. Kids want to adapt to the mainstream of what’s mainstream for kids. If that includes being cool with Mary and her wife and Bob and his husband, then they’ll adapt. And leave their uncool religion behind.
Nobody feels distinguished by belonging to a religion which says “we’re against stealing.” Too general. And being too specific (“we don’t eat meat on Friday”) just looks arbitrary. What you want is something which is mainstream enough to be recognized as High Morality by outsiders. “I’m not a Christian, but I really admire their strict morals — I could never do it.” Gay marriage gets legalized they turn into bigots, not role models. No more envy … or fantasies that they are envied.
And how exactly is this new Nigerian law going to help fight AIDS? Seems that forcing moderately risky behavior underground turns it into very risky behavior.
One cannot be allowed to flout Gawd’s laws about where you stick your naughty bits without punishment – even though Gawd is supposed to be taking care of the punishment bit himself.
Well, I’ve read most of the Old Testament, and Gawd seems to be pretty heavy into collective punishment.
So libertarianism is ultimately about keeping the government out of everything except those which uphold and protect my own personal theocratic conceits?
Since the child-parent relationship has nothing to do with the orientation of sex your parents enjoy (yes, most peoples parents actually do have sex) one quick word to Atlas Shrugged.
I actually kind of like that book. It immediately reminded me of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Emile”. Both books investigate an idea and go to the extremes in portraying the presuppositions and consequences of that idea. Or to say it with Rousseau ” You have to paint this concept to the full extent in order to contemplate about its putative impact on society. Although we are aware it is not possible to do so.”
And that’s what Atlas Shrugged did. It proposed that the underlying idea of the book is not practical. Same is true for Emile’s education experience. It is nothing but a figment of theoretical idealism.
Libertarianism .. . a mad delusion with a strange, siren-like appeal. The idea of “live and let live” and “let everybody do their own thing” appeals to many. But it’s a phantom. Without government to keep the playing field level, anyone who gains a bit of leverage will tilt the table in their favor.
____________________
As for the gay marriage issue. invite me, as long as it’s chocolate cake with white buttercream frosting you’re having.
That’s a war crime, innit? Right… *scribbles furiously in small notebook*