Monday, June 15, 2015

Family Research Council's Peter Sprigg - Marriage equality IS segregation

Peter Sprigg
Loving Day is an annual celebration held on June 12 and it commemorates the day the Supreme Court struck down laws against interracial marriage via the Loving vs. Virginia ruling.

The lgbt community has taken this day and the Loving vs. Virginia ruling to heart because it gives us hope that anti-marriage equality laws will be defeated in the same manner.

However, leave it to the Family Research Council, and one of its spokespeople, Peter Sprigg, to attempt to claim that laws against interracial marriage and laws against marriage equality are different.

And Sprigg's attempt at doing so should leave you scratching your head or laughing your proverbial butt off.

In a column, What Loving Means, Sprigg goes through the history of Loving Vs. Virginia and then compares that to what he seems to think marriage equality entails. It's a boring, legalese-filled piece until this hilarious sequence of paragraphs (bold emphasis added by me):

The clear purpose of the bans on interracial marriage was to build walls between two groups of people in society, blacks and whites. Such laws were designed to reinforce a system of racial segregation, keeping the races apart from one another.

In contrast, defining marriage as the union of male and female has exactly the opposite intent and effect. Rather than building walls between two classes of people, it creates a bridge across the most fundamental gap in humanity -- the gap between male and female. Bridging the divide of the sexes by uniting men and women in marriage is common to all human civilizations, and serves the good of society.

Interracial marriage does not change the definition of marriage, and laws against interracial marriage had as their only purpose preserving a social system of racial segregation.

Homosexual "marriage," on the other hand, changes the fundamental definition of the institution, and would form at least three segregated forms of marriage: male-only unions, female-only unions, and opposite-sex unions.

In addition to  me saying "that don't make a lick of sense," allow me to go into short detail as to why. In his first statement, Sprigg is accurate. Bans on interracial marriage were to enforce a system of segregation. But that's the only thing Sprigg gets correct.

The problem lies with his sleight of hand. Defining marriage solely between man and a woman does have the same effect as banning interracial marriage, particularly because gay couples do exist and these couples have children. Keeping the rights and privileges of marriage away from them and their children does in fact reinforce a system of inequality designed by animus to tell gays that they are second class citizens. Neither Sprigg nor anyone else on his side of the argument has been able to prove that such animus does not exist

Furthermore, there is the simple fact that allowing gays to marry does not prevent the "uniting of men and women together." At no time does allowing gays to marry prevent heterosexuals from marrying each other.

Which of course means that Sprigg's claim that marriage equality would create "three segregated forms of marriage" is just plain stupid. More than that, Sprigg comes across as a high school student spinning odd theories in order to fulfill a quota of words in a class writing assignment.

If that were the case and I was Sprigg's high school teacher, I would give him an "F" for that paragraph alone.

Hopefully the Supreme Court will be as strict of a teacher to Sprigg and all of those on his side of the marriage equality spectrum who would try to pass his hokum as any degree of truth.
 

3 comments:

Sean said...

"I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a curt case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about." ~ Mildred Loving

Anonymous said...

"Just plain stupid" seems to be the echoing of 2000 years of legal segregation, legal incarceration, legal sterilization, legal stripping of rights of autonomy, legal torture in mental institutions, and extra-legal harassment, beatings, terrorist acts, and murder from the religious on the LGBT population. I have nothing but contempt for these people and will never forgive them or their kind for it.

Unknown said...

Alvin: Keeping the rights and privileges of marriage away from them and their children does in fact reinforce a system of inequality designed by animus to tell gays that they are second class citizens.

That’s exactly what went through my mind when I was reading Sprigg’s attempt to differentiate racial segregation from our desire to marry, the only difference, like you said, is that it’s segregation of class they’re trying to uphold.

Furthermore, in regard to Sprigg’s contention that: "Homosexual "marriage," on the other hand, changes the fundamental definition of the institution":

If he’d look in his oh-so-precious little Bible, he’d find that marriage has already been redefined to include unrepentant adultery:

Mark 10:11-12 [Jesus:] “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”

Beyond the hypocrisy their not having a problem with that shows, if they truly believe in the Bible, they don’t care about the “eternally hell bound” twice and thrice-plus married adulterers in our midst.