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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyAugust 13th, 2009
San Diego hotelier Doug Manchester, whose $125,000 donation to support California’s Prop 8 sparked a boycott against his Manchester Hyatt and San Diego Marriot hotels and Grand Del Mar and White Tail Club Resorts, is divorcing his wife of 43 years.
Manchester said he made his Prop 8 donation to “preserve marriage” because of “my Catholic faith and longtime affiliation with the Catholic Church” — the very same church that condemns divorce. His Catholic faith doesn’t restrain him from thumbing his nose at the Church in ending his own marriage, but it does serve as a convenient excuse for denying others the right to marry. There’s a word for that, isn’t there?
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Ben in Oakland
August 13th, 2009
What is the word?
Pig? Typical? Clueless? Judgmental? Heterosexual? Blind? Stupid? Bigot? Sanctimonious? Asshat?
Does Recto-Cranial-Inversion count as one word or three?
C’mon. give us a hint.
My schadenfruede gland is hyperactive and giving me a rush like you wouldn’t believe. I hope Mrs. M takes him for just about everything, and then donates it to marriage equality in his honor.
Wait. I feel bad. I should never take joy in other peoples pain, no matter how much this santimonious twit deserves to feel it like a sword with a rusty edge stuck where the sun don’t shine.
Oh, never mind. the xanax just kicked in. I’ll enjoy the schadenfruede.
L. Junius Brutus
August 13th, 2009
As a gay man, I apologize to Doug Manchester for destroying his marriage. I really didn’t mean to.
Ben in Oakland
August 13th, 2009
The fault, dear Brutus, lies in our stars.
Giggle.
Ben in Oakland
August 13th, 2009
Whoopsie.
The fault, dear Brutus, lies NOT in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.
So you see, it really isn’t our fault, according to no less an authority than Shakespeare himself.
It’s our boss’s fault,Old Scratch himself. And he’s laughing up a shitstorm in hell over this one.
elaygee
August 13th, 2009
Anyone who can enjoy a good case oif schadenfreude is OK in my book.
Alex
August 13th, 2009
Yet another shining example of how to honor “God’s sacred institution.”
Christopher Waldrop
August 13th, 2009
This reminds me of the previous post here about Sam Schulman’s ludicrous argument against same-sex marriage.
That would be the same Sam Schulman who’s been divorced at least twice and had some pretty snarky things to say about his wife in his very essay defending marriage.
Timothy Kincaid
August 13th, 2009
To be a tiny bit sympathetic:
I assume that “Papa Doug” knows that this makes him look like, well, that word.
When Manchester got into this he didn’t realize just what it was going to cost him: his reputation as a decent guy, a boycott, assigned the title of Hypocrite.
I think the lesson of Prop 8 was this: when your church tells you to give big so you can take away the rights of your neighbor, you’d better be sure that this is the cause you want to become a martyr for. Because we will NOT sit by and act like it’s “just another opinion which should be respected.”
Cole
August 13th, 2009
The sanctity of haterosexual-only marriage.
John
August 13th, 2009
“As a gay man, I apologize to Doug Manchester for destroying his marriage. I really didn’t mean to.”
And this is the best comment on this story that I’ve seen yet. Hilarious too!
Johnson
August 13th, 2009
Is is me, or have a lot of Prop 8 Supporters been visited by Bad Karma since last November?
Burr
August 13th, 2009
The bad karma is because God hates hypocrites. Jesus saved his most wrathful words for them.
paul j stein
August 14th, 2009
When the question of equal marriage rights comes up I just ask the room how many marriages have they have legally and sacredly agreed to and if they are on another marriage was it for the money and benefits provided by law?. The sacred holy union crap goes right out the window. Then the room gets a little quieter.
cowboy
August 14th, 2009
I do agree. L. J. Brutus’ contribution needs an award for best comment of the week. Perhaps BTB should highlight the best comments of the week in a box somewhere.
And mega kudos to Mr. Kincaid for his longitudinal analysis. Did he ace his Statistics classes in college or what?
Saucy
August 14th, 2009
Did you read the story? I’m afraid how I don’t see, with the given facts, how this illustrates Manchester’s own hypocrisy. It’s not clear from the story what precipitated the original separation, but *his wife* filed for divorce. What is he supposed to do: somehow force her not to do this? How?
What evidence do you have that Manchester desired and instigated the divorce?
Requesting a legal separation rather than a legal divorce actually seems to me like a sensible way to put the brakes on a divorce process.
(Now, you may argue he’s only doing so for purposes of $$$ in a settlement…but what’s your evidence for that too?)
You might think he’s a douchebag, but there’s not much here to argue that he’s “thumbing his nose” at the Catholic Church–unless you are privy to some secret information the original story isn’t.
Declan Murphy
August 14th, 2009
Actually, the Catholic Church does not condemn divorce. It’s re-marriage after divorce that is the issue for Catholic theology.
Jim Burroway
August 14th, 2009
Saucy, let me direct you back to the article itself, which gives the chronology of events:
This isn’t exactly Doug playing the passive victim while his wife flees to a divorce lawyer to file for divorce. In fact, it appears that she was trying to prevent being railroaded into what she considered a financial disadvantage, and it was Doug who was pushing for the divorce.
Tim Hulsey
August 14th, 2009
A hypocrite, by definition, is doing something right. The trick is to figure out what it is.
I think the word we’re really looking for here is “cad.”
ravenbiker
August 17th, 2009
HYPOCRITE. I’m sure that’s the word.
I can see Mr. Rogers now, “Okay, kids. Can you say hyp-oh-krit?”
Manchester owes the GLBT community AND the Catholic Church a sincere and public apology! —that scum!
Chris McCoy
August 17th, 2009
Tim Hulsey said:
I think you’re implying definition #2 for Cad:
However, I think Merriam-Webster‘s agrees with Jim’s original diagnosis:
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