Simple answers to stupid questions

Disco. Inst. blogger and staff member for the Kentucky affiliate of Focus on the Family wonders:

Are gay rights groups turning into hate groups?

No.

This has been your simple answer to another stupid question.

Cothran's argument is actually much stupider than it might seem:

For all their rhetoric about tolerance and diversity, when it comes right down to it the Tolerance Police really don't give a rip about anything other then imposing their own political agenda. And if you don't go along with it, they'll call you names, question your integrity, and now this.

The link originally attached to "this" goes to racial profiling and Japanese internment advocate Michelle Malkin, who notes that some blogs got pretty angry about the passage of Prop. 8, and said intemperate things. Fearsome.

Cothran proceeds:

Most gay rights groups have not explicitly called for violence,

Indeed, none have, to the best of my knowledge.

but they positively glory in hurling hateful epithets like "bigot" at their opponents

Bigotry is indeed hateful. Trying to take away people's marriages, simply because one is prejudiced against those people's sexualities, is bigotry. And that's hateful. If Cothran doesn't like it, he should stop the bigotry.

and accusing them of all sorts of malicious motives simply because they don't want to be forced to repudiate their beliefs about sexuality.

Oh, for the love of… Believe whatever you want. The question, less stupid than the one Cothran originally posed, is whether you should be enacting discriminatory social policies on the basis of those personal beliefs. The answer is still: No.

That leads to things like the eugenic anti-miscegenation laws struck down in 1967's Loving v. Virginia (several years after our biracial President-elect's parents were able to marry in Hawaii), and before that in a California Supreme Court ruling from the 1940s which was the basis for the decision which (all-too-briefly) allowed full marriage equality in California. Cothran's argument would apply equally well (modulo small changes in wording) to those earlier laws, which suggests that it is not the way we should be making policy.

More like this

As part of our multi-part colloquy regarding whether Martin Cothran is, in fact, a gigantic bigot for wanting to take away marriages from 18,000 gay people married in California, the Disco. Inst. blogger wonders: Isn't the whole debate about whether they are marriages in the first place? No. As…
I know I said that "all you need to know about [Martin] Cothran" is that he managed to misidentify both my employer and my profession and then repeat those easily corrected errors many times. But it turns out there's more to Cothran. Sure, he's bigoted, has an odd fascination with the word "faggot…
Debra Saunders, in today's Chronicle, decries Intolerance 2009. She is trying to claim that it is hypocritical for groups seeking gay equality to oppose Rick Warren while supporting Obama. Both oppose gay marriage, you see. That Obama opposed Prop. 8 and has repeatedly stated his desire to see…
Last year, we spent a lot of time mocking the self-righteous bigotry of Martin Cothran. Cothran, who works for the Kentucky affiliate of Focus on the Family and blogs for the Disco. Inst., objects to gays having an equal right to marriage, and thinks it's hateful to call him a bigot for his anti-…

This is a good rule of thumb for evaluating the arguments in favor of the gay marriage ban. If the same reasoning could be (or was) used against Loving vs Virginia, then the argument is clearly bull. No further analysis required.

Shorter right-wing: "Help Help! I'm bein' repressed! Come see the violence inherent in the Liberals!"

The right doesn't do nuance. Not all anger leads to violence, so you do have to read the actual words. 'Hate groups' might be defined by a call for discrimination. What does that make the Mormon church?

They fear because they are afraid. Without the strength a true belief would provide, they need to strike out at anything and everything they feel diminishes their faith. They are hollow, empty and devoid of the least shred of decency their so-called religion espouses. True faith and a real moral fiber wouldn't need to denigrate others.

The bumper sticker, KANSAS: AS BIGoted AS YOU THINK, should now read Kansas: as bigoted as California.