More bullshit from the so-called "Christian Right."

[NightTrain]

The Dangers of Redefining Gay Marriage
Author unknown

Just found this in my e-mail box. It's off the Religious Right mailing list that I somehow got onto.


(A scene at City Hall in San Francisco)

"Next."

"Good morning. We want to apply for a marriage license."

"Names?"

"Tim and Jim Jones."

"Jones? Are you related? I see a resemblance."

"Yes, we're brothers."

"Brothers? You can't get married."

"Why not? Aren't you giving marriage licenses to same gender couples?"

"Yes, thousands. But we haven't had any siblings. That's incest!"

"Incest?"

No, we are not gay."

"Not gay? Then why do you want to get married?"

"For the financial benefits, of course. And we do love each other. Besides, we don't have any other prospects."

"But we're issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples who've been denied equal protection under the law. If you are not gay, you can get married to a woman."

"Wait a minute. A gay man has the same right to marry a woman as I have. But just because I'm straight doesn't mean I want to marry a woman. I want to marry Jim."

"And I want to marry Tim, Are you going to discriminate against us just because we are not gay?"

"All right, all right. I'll give you your license. Next."

"Hi. We are here to get married."

"Names?"

"John Smith, Jane James, Robert Green, and June Johnson."

"Who wants to marry whom?"

"We all want to marry each other."

"But there are four of you!"

"That's right. You see, we're all bisexual. I love Jane and Robert, Jane loves me and June, June loves Robert and Jane, and Robert loves June and me. All of us getting married together is the only way that we can express our sexual preferences in a marital relationship."

"But we've only been granting licenses to gay and lesbian couples."

"So you're discriminating against bisexuals!"

"No, it's just that, well, the traditional idea of marriage is that it's just for couples."

"Since when are you standing on tradition?"

"Well, I mean, you have to draw the line somewhere."

"Who says? There's no logical reason to limit marriage to couples. The more the better. Besides, we demand our rights! The mayor says the constitution guarantees equal protection under the law. Give us a marriage license!"

"All right, all right. Next."

"Hello, I'd like a marriage license."

"In what names?"

"David Deets."

"And the other man?"

"That's all. I want to marry myself."

"Marry yourself? What do you mean?"

"Well, my psychiatrist says I have a dual personality, so I want to marry the two together. Maybe I can file a joint income-tax return."

"That does it! I quit!! You people are making a mockery of marriage!!"

[Skip Intro]

1. oh brother

If the (semi, at best) religious right in this country would put half the effort into running their own lives as they do into trying to run the lives of others we'd all be a lot better off.

The government doesn't exist to force the people to live by the rules of any religion. Practice your beliefs, but get the hell outta my business, you know?

[liberalhistorian]

To paraphrase what was said about

the so-called "Moral Majority" :puke: , the Christian Right is neither! And the same goes for the "religious right" as well. And I LOVE their whining about gays making a "mockery" of marriage, what a crock of pure unrefined horseshit. HETEROS are the ones making a mockery of it, I'm straight, I should know.

Why is allowing two people of the same gender who love each other and are committed to each other and who, in many cases, have been together far longer than a lot of hetero marriages, to marry making a "mockery" of marriage?????

Will someone please please PLEASE explain that to me, because I just can't figure it out.

And for those who use their Bibles as justification, as a liberal Christian I can unequivocally say that the New Testament and Christ say very little about homosexuality at all.

And that's a RELIGIOUS justification, anyway. Marriage is first and foremost a LEGAL committment in the LEGAL realm. Many legal marriages would not be accepted as marriages in a particular church because each church sets its own rules and boundaries for marriages within it, as is their right. Churches already have the right to refuse marriage to any couple they want. What churches do NOT have the right to do is to determine for a society at large what the LEGAL qualifications and rules for marriage are!

[kitkatrose]

7. I'll try

Why is allowing two people of the same gender who love each other and are committed to each other and who, in many cases, have been together far longer than a lot of hetero marriages, to marry making a "mockery" of marriage?????

That's not love; gays and lesbians can't have relationships outside of steamy passionate gay sex, which is wrong and immoral. Unless of course, you're Lynne Cheney, then it's okay for you to write lesbian porn.:eyes: </sarcasm>


Thse people have problems. I've never figured out the "gay marriage undermines the sanctity of marriage" argument. I personally think that straight people have done that well enough without any help. I think that these people are deeply afraid that gays will upstage them, so to speak, with their commitment. At the very least, the wedding ceremony will be the height of fashion and style. ;)

[liberalhistorian]

13. The arguments they're making

are exactly the same arguments they made against interracial marriage, just change the word "black" to "gay" and there you have it. And I don't see how interracial marriages have "undermined or destroyed the sanctity of marriage", either!

[kitkatrose]

14. Neither do I, but they're not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer.

Some also tend to be the same people who were against interracial marriage.

[northzax]

15. now be careful

I am sure that there are just as many gays and lesbians who will do a crappy job of being married as Heteros, just as many will make bad decisions, cheat, steal, abuse and divorce as heteros do, let's not idealize gay relationships, just as many are disfunctional as hetero relationships.

But why shouldn't gays and lesbians have the same chances to fuck up their lives as straight people? Why should they be legally excepted from making the same dumb mistakes as the rest of us?


oh, I know, because the right is deeply afraid that the same percentage of gays as heteros will figure it out, make the right decisions, find a life partner who complements and enhances their lives, who, despite all the mistakes, muddle through together. That's what they're afraid of, that gays and lesbians might be *gasp* normal human beings, with all hte promise and failings that the rest of us do. Can't have a bogeyman that looks a lot like you, can you?

[Supormom]

2. OMG

That may be the stupidist thing I've ever seen!

[camero]

3. I saw that

Someone here put up the link to it on FR. It's probably where you got it from.

[NightTrain]

10. Actually, no.

I didn't get it from FR. Though I'm damned if I know how it happened, I got onto a "religious right" e-mail list, whose moderator sent that piece of shit to "the flock" tonight. And I couldn't resist the opportunity to share it with other folks who I knew would get the joke (unlike the guy who wrote that tripe)!

[camero]

11. Ah, hope you're not getting hacked

It just boggles the mind the kind of hyperbole they come up with isn't it? An old aquaintance of mine actually tried to argue this right after the Santorum comment and his line of reasoning was what I would call the mary jane argument.

You know how they say that mary jane is the gateway drug (tripe), he said that homosexuality was the gateway perversion. But I've seen too many examples of homosexuals being lifetime partners. If only we heteros could emulate that.

I figured maybe someone from FR somehow got your e-mail address and sent it to you. I was wrong of course. :dunce:

[boobooday]

4. Speaking of mockery . . .

http://www.wgoeshome.com

[BlueJazz]

5. My, My...I think it's adorable the way the right-wing.......

...comes up with these cutesy-wutesy little stories every time they want to get their grade-school followers to understand what's going down in life.

[liberalhistorian]

6. That's because that's the only

way their lock-step drones will ever understand anything!

[kitkatrose]

8. Hey, I know that when I was in grade school,

I was much smarter than they are now. :)

[scottcsmith]

9. Stupid

Why do people think once you allow homosexual marriages, it'll open the door to every conceivable bizarre scenario right-wingers can dream up? And isn't it telling that it's from the minds of conservatives these scenarios are created? It kind of makes you wonder.

Current law prohibits marriage of siblings and polygamy. I don't see how a decision to allow two same-sex adults to enter into marriage is going to change anything.

[Streetdoc270]

12. Whats really stupid

you take this same letter back 30 years and reword it to interracial and you have the same argument from the 'Religious Right', how IR marrages will erode society and that it would destroy morilaty.

Same song different verse, and the Lyrics still suck!

[La Lioness Priyanka]

16. now i really wanna throw up!

:puke:


so just because people will use us as an excuse to get married we should also not get married...this is the worst argument every,...

[shekina]

17. bleh

This is why I consider myslef part of the Christian Left. I'm having trouble buying this whole slippery slope argument I've been hearing.

[geniph]

18. Oh, they missed two of their usual strawmen!

They forgot the one where somebody wants to marry his dog and someone else wants to marry an 8-year-old child! (We'll ignore the obvious problem there - neither a dog nor an 8-year-old child can sign the license, or any other legal agreement.)

The law prohibits marriage of persons too closely related to one another (the degree of consanguinity that's prohibited varies from state to state). The law prohibits the marriage of persons too young to sign the agreement. The law prohibits marrying more than one other person. (The sole spouse is too silly to bother to refute - besides, who cares? would he draw more in health insurance benefits? have a larger joint tax return? in what way would that affect ANYONE?) The law only prohibits same-sex marriage where the bigots have panicked and pushed through a discriminatory ordinance in a hurry - just as they did with "interracial" marriages. The law in most states says nothing about the genders of the prospective partners.

Strawman arguments are the last resort of those who know their main contention is too weak to debate by legitimate methods.