All in all, she represents the danger of someone who reads and processes anti-gay propaganda. However in a recent debate on News Channel 4′s Flashpoint, Scott Hamilton, Executive Director of the Cimarron Alliance Equality Center, demonstrated what happens when we match such nonsense with intelligence instead of cries of "bigot."
Hat tip to Truth Wins Out.
3 comments:
I watched some of this. It's the usual..."It's a choice, there are thousands of people who changed." Of course, they are never able to site more than one or two. (Never mind those people didn't change their orientation, they just decided to become actors.)
Then to the question of how our marriages affect theres, it's the usual, "Let me tell you about all the people (part of the big homosexual agenda) who are going to go to jail for standing on their bigoted principles, and not backing gay wedding cakes."
I get so sick of the blather. My friends would tell you that I love nothing better than a good debate. I'm the guy that will take a position I don't believe in, just to have the debate with you. But I'm only interested if we're going to be intellectually honest real issues.
I see three progressively more honest levels to opposition to marriage equality:
1) Appeals to empirical data and the scientific method. These "studies" are either total junk science or deliberate misinterpretations of legitimate studies. The public is too scientifically ignorant to tell the difference. E.g., the climate change and the tobacco pseudo-debates of the '80s. Likewise, people like Kern lie about history, particularly the nature of families and marriage before the 1800's. It's very telling that these "Christians" are so insecure about their theology that they feel the need to "justify" their morality with appeals to "science" and "history".
2) So the "science" and "history" arguments are just fake covers for anti-gay "theology". But here's the catch about this "scriptural" theology: an honest reading of the Bible would motivate these people to criminalize re-marriage after divorce, economic exploitation, worship of "false" deities, atheism, etc. -- and would motivate them to legalize scripturally-sanctioned practices like slavery and a man's ownership of his wife. Obviously, Christian theology isn't the motivating factor here -- again, it's just a cover for the real motivation.
3) The real motivation is fear of change. Every 50 to 100 years, there's a significant change in social norms: the Reformation, the Enlightenment, Democracy, ending of coverture, abolition of slavery, women's right to vote, racial integration, the end of anti-miscegenation laws...in every single case, the Christian church was *predominantly* opposed to these changes, always citing scripture for their opposition. Only a minority of Christian leaders (eg., Quakers) advocated any of these reforms until way after society had changed.
So marriage equality is just another one of these social reforms that provokes fear, then bad theology, and then junk science. Fifty years from now there will be something else. I'm infuriated by people like Kern, but that's just how history rolls. And it's rolling over people like her.
Early on, the man on the right kept asking Mr. Hamilton (paraphrase) "What do you have that supports your position." You know he was just waiting for the moment to say he has the Bible!!! I wish Mr. Hamilton had replied that he has the US Constitution on his side.
It is not easy to think on your feet or understand the leading question someone may throw at you in a debate. Overall, I was very impressed with Mr. Hamilton's presentation, and I appreciate the program's format to allow each speaker an uninterrupted recap.
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