Editor's note - With Trump in office, you can easily bet that on the wish list of the religious right is a return to SCOTUS and an elimination of Obergefell ruling which legalized marriage equality. With that in mind, I am reposting a piece from 2015 reminding everyone of how the religious right's unscrupulous tactics backfired and helped ease the passage for Obergefell, just in case we do have to engage in the future and need a pushback to the "unelected activist judge" narrative:
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| NOM head Brian Brown cried when marriage equality came to NY. Good times! |
Kim Davis. Kim Davis. Kim Davis.
Lord, I am so tired of hearing about that woman; the so-called Joan of
Arc standing in the gap for traditional marriage fighting a battle which
the only outcome will be her loss and thereby the destruction of
America and Western civilization as a whole.
To put it plainly, what a crock.
And to put it even more plainly, no matter how this nonsensical ado
ends, I find myself getting highly annoyed at almost everyone with media
leverage because they are shortchanging the situation instead of
spelling it out to the American people in its entirety. This cause
celebre of the moment is not simply about a hypocritical clerk who
continues to place her religious beliefs over the duties of her $80,000 a
year government job.
I wish it were that simple.
This annoying Kim Davis affair is merely a sideshow to cover up the fact
that the overall case against marriage equality was nothing more than a
pitiful delusion. A sad pursuit run by folks who had more money and
influence than common sense. More gall than love. More ways to get their
message out, but absolutely no way to make it more palpable or more
flavorable than the bland, watery indigestible stew of discrimination
that it was.
In the early days of the fight, marriage equality opponents were on an
incredible streak via their ability to get state after state to pass
anti-marriage equality laws. They, led mostly by the National
Organization for Marriage, were riding high in their glory. It didn't
matter that their talking points about "marriage uniting the two halves
of humanity" was basic balderdash repeated by one spokesperson (NOM
president Brian Brown) who spoke out of the side of his mouth in a
monotone worthy of a character from an Ed Wood movie. It didn't matter
that their other spokesperson (Maggie Gallagher) practically oozed false
sincerity and brazenly lied about her anti-gay animus even when
confronted with evidence of it.
And it certainly didn't matter that while they whined about falsely being labeled as bigots, they simultaneously ran
ads and
commercials implying that gays were attempting to corrupt children, even while entities such as
Politifact and one of their
own supporters called them out on it.
All that mattered were the wins because, as Gallagher once put it,
"winning is fun."
But they were so blinded by their wins, they got just a little too
overconfident and weren't prepared when the argument shifted away from
public votes and into the courtrooms.
I consistently remain amazed about how they were mortified when the
courts stepped in. After all, it was the next step. Isn't that how it's
done in this country? Laws are passed and if some feel that the laws
are unjust, they challenge them in our courts.
It was when gays challenged marriage equality laws via the courts that
the masks of false superiority came off and we began to see the true
faces of marriage equality foes. They made so many crucial errors and
missteps Allow me to address these errors and missteps
(and in
doing so, I want to shift tenses so I can speak directly to Brown,
Gallagher, other leaders of the anti-marriage equality camp, and
possibly anyone else still upset at our victory):
Misstep 1 - During the Prop 8 case which determined marriage equality in California, some of your "expert witnesses"
dropped out
because they had no expertise in what they were claiming, leaving you
with only two. One of those witnesses, David Blankenhorn,
managed to undermine the credibility of your own case. Even your lead counsel, Chuck Cooper
admitted that he couldn't say how marriage equality could harm the institution of marriage as a whole.
Misstep 2 - During the DOMA case, you pushed
evidence so bad that one of the sources complained how you were distorting her work. And even a
blogger - yours truly - spelled out in detail just how poor the evidence you were presenting.
Misstep 3 - But your most embarrassing misstep was when you
helped create a phony study which supposedly shed a negative light on gay parenting without having the style and finesse of doing it in a clandestine manner as those who engage chicanery generally do. You
recruited and overpaid a college professor, Mark Regenerus, to finagle figures and used your hype machine and resources to give the study credibility with the
goal of using it to influence the Supreme Court.
But you are sloppy. I'm talking
very sloppy. You were so bold and brazen that by the time your bogus study came out, the lgbt and
scientific community knew where the money came from, how it was being promoted, who was promoting it, and
every single lie to pinpoint in it. You basically gave us all a huge barrel of fish, several loaded guns, and said "have at it.
All in all, your entire cause was doomed from the time of the first
gavel strike. So now, instead of admitting your own incompetence, you
want to compare your now futile fight against the reality of marriage
equality to the famous Charge of the Light Brigade.
You remind me more of actor Slim Pickens in the movie
Dr. Strangelove
during the scene where he rode that atomic bomb down to the ground. But
even his character had the common sense to know that once the bomb hit,
that would be the end of it all.
You all, on the other hand, think that even after all of your missteps
and transparent lies, that you will actually come out as winners, undo
settled policy, and take something away from the lgbt community that we
fought tooth and nail to win
You don't want to talk about why you actually lost against marriage
equality. You would rather distract everyone with bad anecdotes of
pseudo anti- Christian persecution repeated by people I wouldn't trust
to sell lemonade at a child's stand, such as Fox News' Todd Starnes. You
come with people like Mike Huckabee exploiting the unfortunate
ignorance of so many about how our government works. You come with
conservative activists, pundits, and religious right figures spinning
wonderful speeches of noble sacrifices and declaring that the fight
against marriage equality is "a hill worth dying on." But the last time I
checked, some of those same characters were saying that overturning
Obamacare, defunding Planned Parenthood, or eliminating Common Core were
also the "hills worth dying on."
And that point leaves me very frustrated. If these folks are talking
about "dying on hills," the least they could do is pick one and give all
of us the courtesy of following through.
What I am trying to say is you lost this fight because when you started
it, you didn't think it through. You weren't prepared to go all of the
way. Sure you passed a lot of referendums, but you weren't skilled
enough to form a proper argument that could sway the courts.
THAT, my friends, is the reason why you failed. It wasn't because of
Satan or "black-robed dictators " or "unelected judges." It wasn't because of a long-term plan
between gays and Hollywood. And it certainly had nothing to do with any
fraud, chicanery, or trickery of any type.
You had to prove
one thing to the courts - that the passage of
anti-marriage equality laws did not violate the rights of gay and
lesbians couples and their children. When it was all said and done, you
couldn't do it. In spite of all of your tricks, lies, influence,
speeches, crowds of support, you failed miserably to prove that one
solitary point.
And when you failed, you lost. It's as simple as that.
Those who lose generally lick their wounds, get over their sadness and
carry on the best way they know how. I would suggest that you do the
same because frankly, none of you are special. Your religious beliefs
don't make you better than anyone else. And they certainly don't give
you an excuse to not obey the same rules and laws that the rest of us
have to.
But I do have one question.
Should Kim Davis have to go to jail again, will Mike Huckabee be taking her place? After all, he did volunteer.
