Birthday Wish: Let's End the Anti-LGBT Fairy Tales

It’s my birthday this month. I’m going to tell you what I’m wishing for, because there’s absolutely no way I’m going to get it.

I wish for a better debate about marriage equality.

See? I told you it was never going to happen. Actually, what I’m wishing for is a better opponent. An honest, challenging disagreement with someone you respect can be incredibly fruitful. But that’s not what we’re having here. Mostly, gay marriage opponents are just throwing tantrums. Pat Robertson says gay marriage will lead to bestiality, molestation, and “all the things we consider to be abhorrent.” This is also the man who blamed the 9/11 attacks on gays in New York City. William Tam, the prominent Prop 8 supporter, testified this week at the Federal Prop 8 trial that he supported LGBT civil unions, rights, and protections — but he also thinks we’re all pedophiles, that we’re 12 times more likely to molest children than straight people, and that legalizing our marriages would deliver California into the hands of Satan. What part of this is “supportive”?

Mr. Tam, in earlier videotaped testimony, stated that legalizing gay marriage would cause children to be gay. “If it’s in the air they think ‘why not?’” he said. Does Mr. Tam honestly imagine that young people today are drawing up pro-and-con lists and deciding on their sexuality consciously? Or that homosexuality is so much more desirable than heterosexuality that hordes of them would flock to it if only that little marriage barrier were taken out of the way? This is all so jaw-droppingly illogical and divorced from reality that a response is impossible.

The child angle gets much more distressing when you hear anti-marriage advocates using children as a weapon. They claim to care only for our country's young people, but as the New York Times has reported, they're also happy to throw the children of same-sex couples to the dogs.

Worse, as my compatriot Maia Spotts has pointed out, most of the arguments used against our cause aren’t even honest positions from true believers. They’re the cold, calculated advertising messages of a couple mercenary firms which have cornered a sleazy niche to get rich quick.

Now, I’m in marketing, myself, so good spin impresses me. But these guys are making my whole profession look bad. They’re just lying. And they’re dragging us all down into the trap of having the argument they want to have, as opposed to the argument that makes sense, or that would help further this process.

Rather than educating, we are reduced to defending ourselves against fairy tales. Rather than talking about how extending marriage rights might benefit all of society, we have to waste time debunking these idiotic accusations.

I really, really hope this situation changes before too many more of my birthdays pass by. Really, is a modicum of sense and logic too much to ask of our advanced, generally pretty sophisticated nation?
Apparently so. But hey, that’s what wishes are for, isn’t it?

Photo credit: Elena777