FRC's Peter Sprigg sets a new low for logical failure

Peter Sprigg

The Family Research Council's Peter Sprigg is a master at cherry-picking legitimate science to demonize the lgbt community. I know this well because I have caught him committing this offense on more than one occasion. I would like to think that it is my constant monitoring of him which led him into the following ridiculous convolution of logic.

 In a post on the FRC webpage, Sprigg was attempting to explain why discrimination against interracial marriage isn't the same as discrimination against marriage equality. To say that Sprigg fails miserably is an insult to all failures in the history of mankind.

I'm serious.

There has to be a new definition of failure invented to describe just how off-base Sprigg went. The following is the gist of his piece:

Laws against interracial marriage served only the purpose of preserving a social system of racial segregation. This was both an unworthy goal and one utterly irrelevant to the fundamental nature of marriage.

Bridging the divide of the sexes by uniting men and women, on the other hand, is both a worthy goal and a part of the fundamental purpose of marriage, common to all human civilizations.

Ironically, this means that in one key respect, it is the supporters of marriage redefinition who resemble the opponents of interracial marriage. Both merely exploited the institution of marriage to advance a social goal that has nothing to do with the purpose of marriage, which is to promote responsible procreation. Virtually everyone now opposes the goal of one (racial segregation), whereas society remains sharply divided on the other (the forced affirmation of homosexual relationships), but this is ultimately irrelevant. Neither of these goals is related to the public purposes of marriage. Allowing a black woman to marry a white man does not change the definition of marriage, which requires one man and one woman.  Allowing two men or two women to marry would change that fundamental definition.

That's some serious Cheech and Chong logic there. Allow me to break down the errors.

1. Just who decided that the purpose of marriage was procreation. To make this point omits children born to unmarried couples as well as married couples who don't have children.

2. Sprigg is implying that marriage equality would upset the social order and pollute marriage. His implication is ironic. Earlier this year, Howard University School of Law submitted a brief to the Supreme Court making the case that those who opposed interracial marriage and those who oppose marriage equality have made similar illogical arguments. Number one on their list was how the opposers of both marriage situations claimed that they (i.e. interracial marriage or marriage equality) would upset the social order.

3. And the largest refutation to Sprigg's argument is simple. He does not say just how allowing gay couple to marry would "redefine marriage." He does not say how allowing gay couples would damage the marriages of heterosexual couples.  That so-called fundamental purpose of uniting heterosexual couples Sprigg mentioned would still take place. No one, Sprigg included, has ever accurately spelled out just how would allowing gay couples to marry damage heterosexual couples. And I don't mean some hypothetical, metaphysical point thought up in a boardroom. I mean concrete evidence. And let's face it. Neither Sprigg nor his bunch have any.

This hot mess of a post by Sprigg reveals something more than a man literally talking out of his ass. It reveals that if one was to take away the religious right's tendency to rely on junk science and cherry-pick legitimate science, this disgrace of a column is all you have left of their arguments against the lgbt community.

It's nothing but hot air propelled by bigotry.