Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyApril 3rd, 2009
Today’s Iowa Supreme Court ruling, which struck down the portion of that state’s marriage law restricting marriage to heterosexuals, has provoked an entertaining assortment of reactions from the usual characters. Here are just a few examples.
First up, Matt Barber. He now has a title that is longer than the queen of England (“Matt Barber, Director of Cultural Affairs with both Liberty Counsel and Liberty Alliance Action, and Associate Dean with Liberty University School of Law”). I like his reaction because it fits perfectly with other ridiculous arguments which inspired the very name of this web site. Barber blathers:
U.S. Supreme Court long ago rejected the untenable notion that ‘equal protection’ requires two biologically incompatible persons to be permitted to ‘marry.’ Marriage, of course, by its very spiritual, historical and biological nature, requires binary compatibility. It is no more discriminatory to disallow two men from marrying each other, than it is to prohibit a man from marrying his house plant.
That’s right. We now have the potted plant argument, which I guess is appropriate coming from him. Since the Box Turtle reference may be getting old, maybe we should rename this web site “Pansies for Pansies.com” in Barber’s honor.
Next up, Randy Thomasson. He’s demanding the most rigorous constitutional amendment ever devised by man or beast:
…Iowans should write a rock-solid marriage amendment, one that is much stronger than amendments in California, Oregon and Washington, which still allowed counterfeit marriages and immoral policies forcing insurance plans and private businesses to subsidize pseudo-marriages. Iowans should also take care to prevent the civil institution of marriage from being someday abolished, and must biologically define a man and a woman to ensure that the distinct, God-given genders of a husband and wife cannot be perverted.
owa Rep. Steve King (R-Kiron) wants more than just a constitutional amendment. He also wants to prevent Iowa from becoming a “gay marriage Mecca”:
Along with a constitutional amendment, the legislature must also enact marriage license residency requirements so that Iowa does not become the gay marriage Mecca due to the Supreme Court’s latest experiment in social engineering.
Concerned Women for America aren’t interested in tinkering with laws or constitutions. Instead, they call for the establishment of a theocracy:
Until we rightly handle these issues in God’s house, we will continue to fail in the court house, the state house and the school house. George Washington warned us it would be impossible to rightly govern without the Bible, until we repent and return to those same principles, we will fail to properly govern and succeed as a nation.
And finally, our favorite. Peter LaBarbera gets a two-fer. First, there’s this post on his web site:
Today Iowa becomes the first state not on either of the nation’s two liberal coasts to impose counterfeit, homosexual ‘marriage’ or its mischievous twin, ‘civil unions’ on its citizens through judicial tyranny. To call this decision bankrupt is to understate its perniciousness. The evil genius of the pro-sodomy movement is that it targets noble institutions like marriage and adoption in the name of ‘rights,’ and then perverts and uses them to normalize aberrant and destructible behaviors.
In LaBarbara’s mass email which also included the above statement, he added:
If the people do not respond in righteous anger coupled with effective action, the downfall of our beloved nation is assured — because God (who invented marriage) is not mocked.
Iowa protester Craig Overton (Rodney White / Des Moines Register)
You know, there’s a reason we have an award named for him. One excellent nominee for that award might be one Craig Overton, whose sign was so embarrassing to gay rights opponents that they urged him to put the sign down. It read “Same sex animals don’t mate. God Bless. Culver man up.” Overton refused to put the sign down.
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lindoro
April 3rd, 2009
George Washington warned us it would be impossible to rightly govern without the Bible, until we repent and return to those same principles
A woman, talking? Has she not read the fact that the bible specifically prohibits a woman from talking in front of a man? Has she not read the fact that the bible specifically prohibits women from leaving the house and holding office?
If she wants to live by the tenants of the bible someone needs to tell her she needs to live by ALL, no picking and choosing.
lurker
April 3rd, 2009
“the untenable notion that ‘equal protection’ requires two biologically incompatible persons to be permitted to ‘marry.’ Marriage, of course, by its very spiritual, historical and biological nature, requires binary compatibility”
My 16 year marriage certainly has “binary compatability” . . . there’s two of us, we’re MORE biologically compatable than heteros (after all, we share a gender and are therefore more biologically similar than those that don’t), and we’re spiratually compatable. Just more blather to justify his phobia.
Tara TASW
April 3rd, 2009
I love the way Matt Barber has a zillion titles with “liberty” in them – while he’s trying to take away other peoples’ liberty.
Attmay
April 3rd, 2009
Ironic that they would go to war with Iran in a heartbeat (I would support such a war, and they are worse than Iraq ever was) while supporting most of the same things the Iranian government does in its gay policies. I doubt they’re smart enough to see the cognitive dissonance.
cd
April 3rd, 2009
Hmm, that’s quite wish list the antis have. Even if they get all of it, in 10 years or so at very latest Iowa will have a pro-marriage majority.
As for that genius protester, he’s some kind of parody of the “Overton window” concept. :-)
HappyCat
April 3rd, 2009
I can’t help but laugh every time I see that picture of Bam-Bam. He could have his title printed on the front of his shirt and have room for more.
All the uproar from them is fitting. The great news is it will take a few years to even get an amendment on the ballot there.
By the time it might get to the voters, the sky will not have fallen, and the people there will probably not even give a damn about it. It will be interesting to watch how long they keep up the presure. It seems they have forgot about Connnecticut.
JJQR
April 4th, 2009
LOL. Gays in New York and California are furious that Iowa has shown them up. Destroys their mean-spirited wishful fantasies that middle America is stupid and primitive.
Emproph
April 4th, 2009
Unrepentant gluttanist Matt Barber: “It is no more discriminatory to disallow two men from marrying each other, than it is to prohibit a man from marrying his house plant.â€
My house plants always read the fine print, I don’t even allow them to sign contracts anymore. They learned how to forge my signature, in fact one of them still insists it has power of attorney. Ugh, never again.
Randy Thomasson: Iowans should also take care to prevent the civil institution of marriage from being someday abolishedâ€
by people who want to increase it.Rep. Steve King (R-Kiron)“so that Iowa does not become the gay marriage Meccaâ€
Iowa’s a state?
Peter LaBarbera article: the law itself becomes perverted by punishing people of faith for their proper opposition toward deviant sex.
I’d say that’s a call to theocracy too.
Richard Rush
April 4th, 2009
I’ve been pondering that photo of the Divine Matt Barber. Sometime in the future, after his gay-bashing career is no longer lucrative, he could earn a few bucks playing the role of Edna Turnblad in a local theater production of Hairspray.
MiniMan
April 4th, 2009
Theo-judgement trollops at their fat balding best….
Richard … Barber could go play Jaba the Hut’s stand in. Or he could go float in a toilet from whence he came? Not sure which to recommend, there are so many more possibilites.
hb
April 4th, 2009
What gets me is that when the Connecticut Supreme Court did the same thing last October, I remember barely a ripple. Be nice if states kept slipping under the radar like that until all of a sudden, they were the majority. Wouldn’t that be fun to see?
Tavdy
April 4th, 2009
He should have met my evangelical mother’s two Border Terrier bitches – two sisters who spent several years enjoying mutual cunnilingus before having a somewhat disastrous falling out.
cd
April 4th, 2009
What gets me is that when the Connecticut Supreme Court did the same thing last October, I remember barely a ripple. Be nice if states kept slipping under the radar like that until all of a sudden, they were the majority. Wouldn’t that be fun to see?
The anti activists have in essence despaired of prevailing in the Blue States after the SSM legalizing verdict in California. About a year ago. Prop 8 was a slight reprieve to them, but they saw the drop from 61% to 52% support for their view. They know it’s over soon in New England, the West Coast, and probably the MidAtlantic states. But they’re South-centric, so that hurt them mostly as impersonal political defeats. And is just proof positive in their eyes of the large numbers and malign nature of “liberals”.
This verdict in Iowa is in a Purple State, a swing state in a political and cultural sense. They can “sacrifice” Iowa in their worldview and political calculations, but it’s painful and they thought they had the upper hand there. Gay Marriage is now a fact in the middle of the region they consider their cultural possession, from the Sierras to the Appalachians. It’s like the Settlers and US Army planting a fort in the center of a hostile tribe’s territory 150 years ago. The tribe feels violated and helpless.
I like to think there are three phases of political games on the losing side, easily phrased in the form of Laws of Thermodynamics.
1. You can’t win
2. You have to lose
3. You can’t get out of the game
California and Massachusetts convinced them of 1. Iowa is part of 2. And some Southern state legalizing, or the Supreme Court making it law of the land, is 3.
Each has a politics. 1. is hyperpartisanship, about inflicting conspicuous and demoralizing defeats on the other side. 2. is all about trying to subvert the other side’s allies. 3. is all about trying to find legalistic and political dodges- libertarianism, hyperextension of religious liberty claims to create a de facto tyranny of the minority, etc. Until that collapses too.
Sanna
April 4th, 2009
Good news from Sweden, btw.
First of April the Swedish parliament voted yes to a Marriage Equality law which will take effect from first of May this year.
The result was:
Yes 261
No 22
Refrain 16
Absent 50
Notable is that this proposition was a parliament proposition, not a government proposition.
KZ
April 4th, 2009
It’s funny how LaBarbera can play the victim when gays counteract his efforts. He calls us viscious and intolerant (talk about irony!).
“The evil genius of the pro-sodomy movement is that it targets noble institutions like marriage and adoption in the name of ‘rights,’ and then perverts and uses them to normalize aberrant and destructible behaviors.”
pro-sodomy? perverts? targeting NOBLE institutions like marriage and adoption?
I can almost reach out and touch the hate originating from his words!
Swampfox
April 4th, 2009
God grief, that is a current picture of Matt Barber? He needs to learn some self-control when it comes to his calorie intake.
Patrick
April 5th, 2009
But same-sex animals do mate.
Perhaps it’s time we enact laws requiring anti-gays to be educated so that they can stop embarrassing themselves with ignorant statements.
Joel
April 5th, 2009
“But same-sex animals do mate.
Perhaps it’s time we enact laws requiring anti-gays to be educated so that they can stop embarrassing themselves with ignorant statements.
”
Must you forget that all we need is the bible. Everything else is superfluous. Reason and worldy knowledge must not trump god’s standard and if they attempt to do so, it must be irrevocably shunned and denied. All for the glory of God.
David C.
April 5th, 2009
In the formulation of public policy, almost the last thing we need is the Bible. We need to realize that if God really is Alpha and Omega, and the totality of the universe including all of us, we have a responsibility to use what we have learned over the millennia of our existence to get beyond our own fantasies, petty hatreds, and ignorance in order to truly love one another.
What we need is more reason, science, inquiry, and a healthy dose of skepticism. Man’s advance depends on cutting through the ignorance that underpins far too much of what is done in the name of religion irrespective of the god worshiped or the content of allegedly sacred texts. The Iowa Supreme Court ruling is just such a reasoned act.
Any God deserving glorification does not require or expect us to stay ignorant or refuse to use our minds for critical thought. Reason and knowledge are the hallmarks of humanity. I’ll take that over blindly following a possibly unsound, dated, and often self-contradictory canon any day.
Jason D
April 6th, 2009
“Must you forget that all we need is the bible. Everything else is superfluous. Reason and worldy knowledge must not trump god’s standard and if they attempt to do so, it must be irrevocably shunned and denied. All for the glory of God.”
Joel, please show me two things:
The part of the Constitution and or Bill of Rights that mentions the words God, Jesus, or The Bible.
The part of the Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, or Constitution that establishes this country as a Theocracy.
Because that’s what you propose, “All we need is the Bible”. I beg to differ. Not in America, the land of the FREE and the home of the BRAVE.
Perhaps all YOU need is the Bible, and you’re welcome to it, but this is a Constitutional Republic, NOT a Theocracy.
Michael
April 6th, 2009
Don’t forget kids, never leave home without your sarcasm tag. ^_^
Richard Rush
April 6th, 2009
Was Joel really serious? Wow, I assumed he was doing parody. I should have known better.
The world of religious fanaticism seems unique in that parody never seems able to get beyond the excess of the real thing. I remember the first time I stumbled onto the Trinity Broadcasting Network and saw the women with the enormous pink hair. I thought it must be a Saturday Night Live skit (maybe an updated version of their classic Church Lady). But no, it was really the wife of TBN’s founder, and she always looks like that.
Michael
April 6th, 2009
Assuming Joel is the regular I believe him to be, then no, he’s not serious. In fact, such a comment would be wildly out of character except as sarcasm. But without that context, yeah, it would be no immodest proposal to assume he was serious.
A swift tag *almost* allows sarcasm to translate over the internet.
Michael
April 6th, 2009
*a “sarc” tag
PSUdain
April 7th, 2009
To that fellow with the fun sign about same-sex animals not mating, I would strongly recommend the book Biological Exuberance. It is, as a friend of mine put it, “A field guide to gay animal sex and couplings.”
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