Our old friend Bill S. is on vacation this week, and why he decided to spend it at Townhall I couldn’t say, but he was kind enough to stop in at the Gift Shop and pick us up a lovely, handcrafted sachet full of batshit crazy. And it’s all local catch; you can’t get it this fresh and steaming in L.A.
Take it away, Bill…
So hold your nose and keep a barf bag handy. Which, if you’re visiting the Townhall Site, you probably already did.
Not too long ago, conventional wisdom seemed to dictate that gay marriage in America was inevitable.
And then it actually became legal in four states, which proved such wisdom was correct.
But something has changed. Carrie Prejean has had an effect on us.
For some of us, that effect was nausea. For others, a desire to point and laugh.
That’s the argument made by my friend, Maggie Gallagher…
Kathryn, Maggie and Carrie. Sounds like a wingnut version of Heathers. I think we know which role each has, too.
…the gay marriage movement took a blow this past November, when proposition 8 passed in California…The sea change just may have come when pretty, empathetic face came onto the national scene.
Appearing on the Miss U.S.A. pageant in April of this year, while Prop 8 was passed in November of last year. Time’s Arrow just took a U-turn.
A young beauty contestant was asked about her position on gay marriage…
And proceeded to toss out a garbled bit of :
“I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land that you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage and, you know what, in my country and my family I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anyone out there but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be between a man and a woman.”
…heterosexual culture has not done what it should to protect marriage. But our falling short-individually and culturally-is no reason to call the whole thing off and erase a cornerstone of civilized society.
Okay. For the one millionth time: allowing gay couples to legally marry will not ERASE the rights of heterosexual couples to marry. Why do people have such a hard time grasping that? Oh, and K-Lo, you do realize that what you just said was: “Just because we’ve proven that heterosexual couples aren’t better than gay couples doesn’t mean they aren’t.”
Gallagher writes: “Same-sex unions are really not just like opposite-sex unions when marriage is in question. Celebrating all forms of adult romantic love equally is not a very good justification for redefining a fundamental institution whose public purposes reach far beyond the affirmation of romance.”
Wow, it’s not every day you see someone get beaten up by their own strawman. Now, it’s possible that I’ve failed to follow her tortured line of reasoning, but I’ll try. She seems to be saying that even if gay relationships are equal to heterosexual ones, that’s irrelevant. Marriage is about legal rights that have nothing to do with the nature of a couple’s relationship. Therefore, marriage laws should be based upon…the type of relationship they’re in.
Did I get that right?
…it’s not impossible to find members of the non-heterosexual community with an ambivalent view of marriage.
Ah yes. The ambivalent are so fiercely vocal.
…fashion designer Valentino Garavani was asked if gay marriage should be legal. He answered: “For myself, all these years, I never thought about it in terms of changing the laws…I am neither for it legally, or against it, so I have no personal agenda here.”
Not particularly political, this answer can’t be taken as an outright opposition to gay marriage.
In fact, it’s so neutral, only an idiot would try to spin it that way.
But to these ears, there seems to be an acknowledgement of an inescapable truth: There is something transparently different between two men who decide to spend their lives together and a marriage.
Like I said…
And unlike the most strident advocates of gay marriage, who spent the time during and after the proposition 8 campaign intimidating and punishing those who supported the measure…
Yeah, and the supporters of Prop 8 took the high road of lying their asses off.
…most of us who oppose gay marriage are not looking to exclude anyone from any type of happiness.
Except for the type they don’t personally approve of, even if it doesn’t take anything away from them (the footage of that marriage ceremony is quite possibly the sweetest thing I’ve watched on the internets all year.)
Carrie Prejean is now a face of that kind of tolerance. The contrast of her measured, mildly offered opinion to the angry, ugly Internet response from beauty-contestant judge Perez Hilton, who asked Prejean the fateful question, was striking.
In that his was more coherent. K-Lo seems unaware that, to most of the LGBT community, Perez is a colossal jackass, an embarrassment to us all. I can sort of understand why that’d be a hard concept to grasp for someone who maintains a friendship with Maggie Gallagher.
While Republicans were tripping over themselves to pose with the party’s Log Cabin branch…
In what frakkin’ parallel universe?
…a beauty queen made it okay to confidently acknowledge reality
Namely, that there’s a sizable chunk of Americans who are ill-informed, gullible, fearful of progress and easily impressed by anyone who affirms their prejudices, no matter how badly they express them.
…in a loving and beautiful and tolerant way.
And let’s not forget . (Caution, the following program contains beauty queens and Hannity. It is not intended for mature audiences. Adolescent discretion is advised).
We leave you now with a little palate cleanser: Michael Callen’s rendition of “.”