Monday, June 15, 2015

LGBT myths revealed and debunked

This video about the debunking of LGBT myths may either make you laugh or have you saying "no kidding!" However consider that the totality of our struggle for equality has been and currently is people with money and influence believing these lies or fooling an enormous amount of folks to believe these lies and then conflating them with their faith. The question becomes how do we combat that?

'Anti-gay archbishop resigns in disgrace' & other Monday midday news briefs

Anti-gay Archbishop Nienstedt just resigned in disgrace.
Southern Baptist Manual Offers Suggestions on How to Get Around LGBT Anti-Discrimination Laws - How about just obeying the law? One thing has never changed in this world. Those who claim the loudest to be on the side of the angels do so in order to divert attention away from their horns and tails. 

44,500 People, Including Two Presidential Candidates, Vow To Defy The Supreme Court On Marriage Equality - Y'all, perhaps you should wait for the court to rule before making such plans. It's not like the ruling (if it goes on the side of lgbts) will force you to marry someone gay. 

 Archbishop John Nienstedt, Deputy Resign After Archdiocese Of St. Paul and Minneapolis Charged With Sex Abuse Coverup - No happy karma here. Just sad truth. I know an archbishop who directed so much attention to stopping gay couples from getting married, that he may have failed to protect the children from monsters, like he was supposed to. 

 Rupert Murdoch: LGBT Advocacy In Clinton Speech "Almost Fascist" - Murdoch accuses Hilary Clinton of saying something she never said. Just in case where you wondered where Fox News gets it from, look towards its founder.  

Rick Santorum Interviewed By Gordon Klingenschmitt, Colorado's Premier Anti-Gay Demon-Hunting Legislator - And there was no spontaneous combustion involved. Darn.

Family Research Council's Peter Sprigg - Marriage equality IS segregation

Peter Sprigg
Loving Day is an annual celebration held on June 12 and it commemorates the day the Supreme Court struck down laws against interracial marriage via the Loving vs. Virginia ruling.

The lgbt community has taken this day and the Loving vs. Virginia ruling to heart because it gives us hope that anti-marriage equality laws will be defeated in the same manner.

However, leave it to the Family Research Council, and one of its spokespeople, Peter Sprigg, to attempt to claim that laws against interracial marriage and laws against marriage equality are different.

And Sprigg's attempt at doing so should leave you scratching your head or laughing your proverbial butt off.

In a column, What Loving Means, Sprigg goes through the history of Loving Vs. Virginia and then compares that to what he seems to think marriage equality entails. It's a boring, legalese-filled piece until this hilarious sequence of paragraphs (bold emphasis added by me):

The clear purpose of the bans on interracial marriage was to build walls between two groups of people in society, blacks and whites. Such laws were designed to reinforce a system of racial segregation, keeping the races apart from one another.

In contrast, defining marriage as the union of male and female has exactly the opposite intent and effect. Rather than building walls between two classes of people, it creates a bridge across the most fundamental gap in humanity -- the gap between male and female. Bridging the divide of the sexes by uniting men and women in marriage is common to all human civilizations, and serves the good of society.

Interracial marriage does not change the definition of marriage, and laws against interracial marriage had as their only purpose preserving a social system of racial segregation.

Homosexual "marriage," on the other hand, changes the fundamental definition of the institution, and would form at least three segregated forms of marriage: male-only unions, female-only unions, and opposite-sex unions.

In addition to  me saying "that don't make a lick of sense," allow me to go into short detail as to why. In his first statement, Sprigg is accurate. Bans on interracial marriage were to enforce a system of segregation. But that's the only thing Sprigg gets correct.

The problem lies with his sleight of hand. Defining marriage solely between man and a woman does have the same effect as banning interracial marriage, particularly because gay couples do exist and these couples have children. Keeping the rights and privileges of marriage away from them and their children does in fact reinforce a system of inequality designed by animus to tell gays that they are second class citizens. Neither Sprigg nor anyone else on his side of the argument has been able to prove that such animus does not exist

Furthermore, there is the simple fact that allowing gays to marry does not prevent the "uniting of men and women together." At no time does allowing gays to marry prevent heterosexuals from marrying each other.

Which of course means that Sprigg's claim that marriage equality would create "three segregated forms of marriage" is just plain stupid. More than that, Sprigg comes across as a high school student spinning odd theories in order to fulfill a quota of words in a class writing assignment.

If that were the case and I was Sprigg's high school teacher, I would give him an "F" for that paragraph alone.

Hopefully the Supreme Court will be as strict of a teacher to Sprigg and all of those on his side of the marriage equality spectrum who would try to pass his hokum as any degree of truth.