Remember? “There’s a storm gathering. The clouds are dark and the winds are strong and I am afraid.” This was the widely mocked anti-gay marriage commercial for the National Organization for Marriage put out in 2009. “But some who advocate same sex marriage have not been content with same sex couples living as they wish,” the spot continued. “Those advocates want to change the way I live. I will have no choice. The storm is coming. But we have hope, a rainbow coalition of people of every creed and color are coming together in love to protect marriage.”
That “rainbow coalition” has been hard at work trying to convince Americans that gay marriage is a threat. It will hurt children! That if we give same sex partnerships legal recognition it will destroy opposite sex partnerships. Then once straight marriage is obliterated, according to right-wing bloviaters, everyone will marry their cat/horse/dog/child, have sham gay weddings for benefits and people who publicly denounce sodomy will be prosecuted.
This is the foretold storm: hetro-singles, bestiality, pedophilia and JAIL for homo-haters.
This week, by default of its inaction, the Supreme Court made gay marriage a reality in five more states. Same-sex nuptials are now legal in a majority of these United States. Last year they overturned key provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act and this year they punted. So consenting adults can have their love recognized throughout most of the country. They also get to use the word marriage. It’s not separate but equal; it’s equal (unless you move to the southeast).
And so it’s now time to ask this question: Where’s the storm we were promised?
This homo-portending has been a decades-long pet issue for the right-wing-o-sphere; cautioning us about the malevolent homosexual agenda! If these conservatives were not just cynically trying to terrify ignorant people into trusting right-wing policies, and were instead actually concerned with the consequences of legal gay marriage””then lets see this storm they forecasted.
Has anyone’s freedom been taken away? When do I get invited to my first legal human and schnauzer wedding? When do all our kids turn gay? When’s the decriminalized pedophilia start? It was supposed to happen when gays won the right to marry. Those marriages started ten years ago in Massachusetts. It’s almost everywhere now. So?
Crickets. Silence. Bupkis.
Gee, I guess this whole gay marriage trepidation was just a sleight of hand trick.
“They’re going to turn your kids gay unless we deregulate business!” “Straight marriage won’t exist unless the wealthy get more tax breaks!” “People will marry llamas unless we cut government spending!”
And when the history of gay marriage and oddball Republican opposition is written, nothing will be as bizarre and arbitrary as the first-ever Mormon presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, saying, “I agree with 3,000 years of recorded history. I believe marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman.” When a mere 120 years ago his faith openly practiced plural marriage. It’s cringe worthy.
So a small fraction of tax-paying, law-abiding, sometimes military-serving Americans can have their country recognize their romantic partnerships? So what? How does that have anything to do with the rest of us? It doesn’t. The terror of it has been used as a Trojan House concealing an anarcho-capitalist agenda.
You’ve been duped.
The Republican Party’s gay marriage to the religious right seems to be wedded on the alarm of what happened this week: gays marrying legally. Now that we’re here and none of the things predicted have come to fruition, maybe it’s time to start talking about gay divorce for them.
Republicans and the religious right have had their mutually exploitative union for the last 30 years. Gay marriage hasn’t hurt any marriages except for theirs. It’s time to start thinking about a trial separation; see how they fair living separate lives.
Because together they’ve lost credibility on protecting us from anything.
Image via screengrab