MADNESS!
The issue of gay marriage was so odious to Mrs. du Toit (once she probably saw it sneeringly derided on Faux News) that she came out of retirement to decry its MADNESS.
(As we all know, important things assert their innate importantness much more when ALL IN UPPERCASE. Like this baffling sentence: ?EQUAL PROTECTION UNDER THE LAW? DOES NOT MEAN ?THE SAME?!!!!)
(Exclamation points can’t hurt, either.)
MDT also wins the Words Mean Things 2003 Slippery Slope Award with this stunner:
“How ’bout animal rights folks: let’s just stop calling cows ‘cows’ and chickens ‘chickens’ and start calling them all “humans,” then we can extend to cows and chickens all the protections given to humans in the Bill of Rights.”
Well, we could do this, but the cows might start getting all uppity, causing an inevitable “anti-cow backlash.”
Ahem.
One thing I think Howard Dean does extremely well is frame the debate not in terms of “gay marriage,” two words that cause conservatives massive conniptions when placed together, but in terms of basic human rights. Look at it this way (and feel free to use this one, Howard): Should the adult loving relationships of Dick Cheney’s two daughters, one gay and one straight, be given different levels of legal protection?
Cows are already uppity. Recall the fateful words of Troy McClure:
“Don’t kid yourself Jimmy. If a cow ever got the chance he’d eat you and everyone you care about.”
And re your final point, didn’t I say that today, albeit in a much less erudite fashion?
Great quote, Lisa. And I’m sure you did say it. I only steal from the best. 🙂
just like she (MDT) didn’t notice that her source in the GLSEN fiasco was full of lies and easily provable misreadings of the GLSEN website, in this case, she didn’t notice all the definitions of marriage.
marriage- an intimate or close union (the marriage of painting and poetry — J. T. Shawcross)… from Merriam Webster Online.
this definition doesn’t include the written in stone phrase of woman and man. besides, the definition of marriage doesn’t include any mention of the *close and intimate* relationship found in a real TV get married show or other shallow heterosexual rights.
i doubt any of her cattle car threatening loyal friends will check it out.
if she can call herself human. i can call myself married.
Divorce seems more harmful to the concept of marriage than whether the couples are the same sex or different. Couple change and certainly spouses sometimes turn into monsters, but isn’t it a lie to to pledge lifelong devotion to someone else when in the back of your mind, you know you can just divorce them if things get unpleasant?
Maybe the real test of the the sanctity of marriage is whether the promise means something. What if marriage was really forever and civil unions could be dissolved through divorce. How many people would get married if they knew they actually had to keep their word? I bet we’d see lots more civil unions.
I was surprised to see her make an excellent point in one of her comments — that marriage would probably be better off if it were a completely religious insititution, with the benefits given without ceremony to whatever couples want them. Michael Kinsley said something very similar recently; maybe it’s just so sensible that both conservatives and liberals are coming to it at the same time.
The rest of it, of course, is a big steaming pile of crap, intentionally insulting and dishonest to boot. Lest we come to expect too much of MDT.
That is an excellent point, Mike, and I was thisclose to agreeing with her about it in her comments. The problem is, in the society today the secular contract is still called a “marriage license,” and I actually think it would be easier to enact gay civil unions, or even gay marriage, than to tease apart the religious and the secular in this situation.
The Church doesn’t have to recognize a gay marriage but the state does.
Separation of Church and state?
Also, to deny homosexuals a civil union is discrimination, and basically is the same case as interracial unions.
But, at least it’s now in the public discourse. It may take folks a bit to get used to the idea but I have a feeling iit will not be far off.
At least Ms. Du Toit is reduced to pathetic absurdisms like “Equal protection does not mean the same.”– some proponents of Texas’ sodomy laws used the slimy argument that homosexuals were not being discriminated against because they were still free to have sex with people of the other gender.
Cows? Chickens? How about penguins? 🙂