purchasing redemption with the easy coin of other people’s lives.

There’s no zealot like a convert.

None so obsessed with the morality of others than those who have learned nothing from their own shortcomings.

If Maggie can “save” us, then maybe it means she didn’t screw up.

However, so what? I also know a few straight single men who do not believe in marriage either. Just because a few people are against marriage is not grounds for denying the right to all of the people who want to get married.

When someone has a personal crisis most people deal with it in two ways: one is to work through is, calmly and patiently dealing with the emotions and repercussions. This is the was psychology works. The other is to repress the crisis. Specifically with the religious right they tell people to pray really hard and God will swoop down and take care of everything for them. This is quick and offers a fuzzy feeling of happiness, rather than the pain and misery of having to work through an issue.

Hence you have someone like Star Parker who had four abortions and lived on welfare her whole life find Christ and become an anti-abortion, anti-welfare activist. Or Maggie Gallagher who can’t see her own shambles of family life and ethics, focusing only on the dreaded gays.

In fact, we can believe that for Mag to open that door in the first place, then shut it when asked for elaboration, begs questioning her credibility. She’s so proud of herself, and feels very confident in what she’s doing and who she knows, this isn’t the time to suddenly be concerned with the privacy of people who have been quite public about what they do.
She’s mentioning it for the effect, but not the substance of her case.

Indeed, perhaps people like David Benkoff have simply renounced being gay altogether and don’t consider themselves gay, and can’t be qualified AS gay, let alone speak for ALL gay people on the issue.
But she uses the beliefs of those few to qualify what ALL gay people SHOULD be about?

But for someone like Mags, who likes to throw it in front of us just how OVERWHELMING the majority was of people who don’t support marriage equality, she’s flipping the script as if to say the tiny minority of gay people who don’t support marriage equality qualifies as validating HER side of things.

I know we could find a large percentage of heterosexuals who don’t believe in marriage for themselves either. There are certainly enough straight couples who don’t bother to marry, even if they have children.
And we also know of married straights who divorce and don’t want to experience marriage ever again.

But she doesn’t consider THIS the reason to ban marriage for heteros, whether it’s for the first time or next.

One can always find a member of the discriminated group who will agree with it, but in ways spun in direct opposition to their opinion.
Even during Jim Crow, there was a black man (newspaper editor Jackson Greene) who didn’t agree with integration.
However, it wasn’t because he thought white people were in fact superior or society would degrade from it, but because he didn’t believe in the sincerity of desegregation, nor saw any benefit to blacks if integration was brought about SO grudgingly and by force of government.

Of course, the segregationists wouldn’t report THAT part.

And Mags and many other anti gay individuals are committing a similar omission. There are gay people who see the patterns of laws and decisions on their lives, and don’t want to be churned up in it. They don’t trust that whatever gains will stick and there certainly is no reason TO trust that they will. Prop. 8 and the outcome of that certainly validates this feeling.
And for some gay people, they are the sort of people who don’t like to offend, challenge or confront the issue and would rather stay private and silent on it.
But just as there are heteros who don’t support marriage either, they aren’t confronted or criticized by the likes of Maggie because of it.

Yes, we see this a lot, anti gay people who claim gay friends.

Racist segregationists made such claims too, and with a straight face would say how well they ‘got along with nigras’ and were good to them.

I’m sure Maggie thinks she could get along with gay people too, as long as they know their place and don’t interfere with marriage between men and women. Eunuchs like David Benkoff, for example.

And I think of her and her patronizing ways the same way I do about racists doing it.

Maybe she can fool a lot of people with this act she’s got going, but not the smartest, the bravest and the most intellectually honest.

Maggie, on the near 100% possibility that you are reading another ego-massaging blog post about you, you, you

your actions on same-sex marriage are evil, and make you an enemy of humanity.