April 9th, 2012
Remember when I said that anti-gay activist Mike Heath’s return to Maine was great news for advocates of marriage equality? Heath and Paul Madore announced plans for a news conference on the campus of the University of Maine. Their press release, I presume, tells you what their message will be:
“It’s time to get serious with society on the issue of homosexuality and the practical effects that are very harmful to society that this distorted and perverted lifestyle will have. It’s time to take the gloves off,” said Paul Madore. “Good people just keep moving the line back regarding homosexuality. But not anymore.”
Madore continued, “Maine people are coming together to say ‘enough is enough.’ Marriage does not belong to homosexuals. It never has and it never will. Even if people get tired of saying no, and end up caving on the issue.”
“On that note,” said Madore, “The only reason why the number of supporters for same sex ‘marriage’ may be increasing is because people are sick and tired. Homosexuals have made people sick and tired. Homosexuals have absolutely nothing good to contribute to family life, which is what marriage is all about. A sterile union (between same sex couples) is never in need of marriage, and has nothing good to contribute to marriage or family life – absolutely nothing.”
And sure enough, Madore and Heath lived up to their promise:
The men distributed pledges to passers-by that ask potential voters to oppose “sodomy-based marriage” in November and contribute to the political action committee.
I do hope “sodomy-based marriage” remains their talking point all the way up to the election. I even hope they can get TV air-time. If they become the face of the opposition to marriage equality, they’ll end up having about as much success as Scott Lively had back in the old Measure 9 days in Oregon.
Update: It only gets better. ThinkProgress has a copy of the pledge. Items 3 and 11 are priceless:
3. Use the term “Sodomy Based Marriage” and avoid the deceptive terms “same sex or gay marriage.”
11. Pray that God will deliver our State and Country from this attack by demonic force, and that marriage between man and woman will be restored to its rightful place of honor, to the glory of Almighty God.
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Dante
April 9th, 2012
“Use the term “Sodomy Based Marriage†”
Ah, they’ve caught on. Not all the way, though. Someone in the anti-equality team has realized that the more they say ‘same-sex marriage’, the more they strengthen the conceptual link between marriage and same-sex couples.
But it is too late now – that link is so well-established that changing to ‘sodomy based marriage’ just comes across as malicious and nasty.
If they’d come up with a term that seemed polite, but still separate – ‘same-sex pair bonds’ or something, ten years ago, they could have diverted same-sex marriage for a very long time. Or if they’d used a disparaging ‘shacking up’ or ‘playing house’ consistently starting 20 or 30 years ago –
but the conceptual link is well-establish, people in general understand that the phrase ‘same-sex marriage’ means something.
CPT_Doom
April 9th, 2012
I’ll ask the question again, were Mr. Heath or Mr. Madore in a car accident & injured, would they be ok with a “perverted sodomite” saving their lives? And should the “perverted sodomite” be required to assist them?
homer
April 9th, 2012
That’s Mr. Perverted Sodomite, thank you.
Tony P
April 9th, 2012
I sent Heath a little message ridiculing Sodomy Based Marriage.
Told him that he and bigots like him should go back into the woodwork where they belong.
Timothy Kincaid
April 9th, 2012
Tony P,
Normally such an effort would be counter-productive. It would certainly not change Heath in the slightest and would only serve as evidence he could show others that gay people are hateful name-callers who have no tolerance.
However, in this instance, encouraging Heath to rant and rave is only in our best interest.
Hyhybt
April 9th, 2012
Wow. Even leaving their existing views and tactics alone, I’d have thought they’d at least word things better than to leave the impression that they want God to act “by demonic force.” :)
In all seriousness… the more effectively they spread this message, the more certainly good will win. Help them shout from the mountaintops!
PJB863
April 10th, 2012
Has anyone ever thought to bring about a coordinated campaign to bring out the “best” of the anti-gays? I see from other sites, that Rev. Wooden has helped in making a commercial against marriage equality in NC, which is a start.
I’m not talking about those who appear on CNN, or other mainstream media, but the hardcore nutcases: Linda Harvey, LaBarbera, Barber, Judith Reisman, etc. These are people who appear sane on the surface, but when you dig beneath a very thin veneer of quasi-sanity, the loon emerges with a little encouragement.
It might take a little basic manipulation of these folks, but once the ducks are lined up, the rest should be a piece of cake.
Reilly
April 10th, 2012
What really struck me about these latest right-wing rants is the statement that same-sex marriage “has nothing good to contribute to marriage or family life – absolutely nothing”. Aside from being an extremely hateful statement, it also seems to imply that “marriage and family life” is some centralized, bureaucratic undertaking… rather than a part of life enjoyed by individual married couples and families, each in its own way.
I wonder how these right-wing whackadoos would react if someone pointed out how absolutely… well… *socialist* they sound! :-D
RavenBiker
April 10th, 2012
Sodomy based marriages.
I like the sound of it. Owning disparinging word such as these takes the power away from our detractors.
Sodomy based marriages.
I think I’ll start using it.
Kelly
April 10th, 2012
So, they’re fine with lesbians marrying?
Priya Lynn
April 10th, 2012
Once again Kelly they’re showing the only true motivation they have is that anal sex is icky.
Regan DuCasse
April 10th, 2012
There was a run by shooting that occurred in a Los Angeles neighborhood that’s had a tough time shaking off gang related killings.
The victim was a young, college educated professional black father, who died shielding his eight year old son from the hail of bullets.
Yet another black man has died from gang violence, another little black boy is fatherless because of it.The perpetrators, who witnesses say might be Latino, remain at large.
I wish I could laugh at the hyperbole people like Heath use to describe gay people.
Such preoccupation with the lives of law abiding, tax paying citizens who don’t happen to spontaneously procreate, as ‘destructive’ to civilization, is just such an example.
When the likes of Kirk Cameron, the reps of NOM or FRC and their cohorts, are so vocal and adamant in using such words of conflict about gay people and their intentions, it does beg the question: HOW?
HOW can homosexuality be more destructive to family life than domestic violence or poverty?
HOW can homosexuality be destructive to civil life or at the expense of safe neighborhoods more than gangs?
Being gay, of course is NOT a ‘lifestyle’, but life itself.
A gay person is not dead, nor doomed, but gang members most definitely are.
As are the random victims of their constant and indifferent violence.
I want people like Heath to NAME the destructive and dangerous threats that homosexuality is supposed to be to the normal function of life as we know it.
As they are offended by comparisons of systemic injustice like Jim Crow, Nazis or other supremacists to minorities, Heath and his ilk are quick to compare gay people and homosexuality to the betrayal, abuse and violence of another.
They truly cannot make accurate and fair comparisons, literally, if lives depended on it.
My own exposure to the most depraved of human behaviors, gives me license to criticize Heath’s casual misinformation about it.
That he paints the most responsible of behavior from gay people as ever suspect, and none of it to be trusted or respected is so utterly cowardly and evil a distraction from necessary and practical matters and terms.
It is they who are so very selfish to require the public be distracted by something that doesn’t really exist.
Let them speak often in their way, it never hurts to counter with the very real and commonly tragic occurrences that have nothing to do with the acts of gay people, but an opportunity to be each other’s allies against near universal threats of violence or other tangible abuses.
Gary Brewton
April 10th, 2012
When I read the comment by Madore that “Homosexuals have made people sick and tired,” I was reminded of the words of a famous American who said his people would “wear down” the ones who brutalize and oppress them:
“Come into our homes at the midnight hours of life and take us out on some desolate highway and beat us and leave us there, and we will still love you. Run all around the country and send your literature, and say that we aren’t worthy…, that we are too immoral, that we are too low, that we are too degraded, yet we will still love you. Bomb our homes and go by our churches early in the morning and bomb them if you please, and we will still love you. But we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. And in winning the victory, we will not only win our freedom, we will so appeal to your heart and your conscience, that we will win you in the process. And our victory will be a double victory. We will win our freedom, and we will win the individuals who have been the perpetrators of the evil system that existed so long…. If we do this, we will be able to bring into being, by the grace of God, this new world.”
–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Some Things We Must Do,†address delivered at Holt Street Baptist Church December 5, 1957
Timothy Kincaid
April 10th, 2012
wow. tears.
And that is why Dr. King is revered.
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