Every once in a while I try to re-examine my views by reading conflicting ones. And I try to find articulate conservative or religious writers who put forth the best argument they’ve got in a comprehensible way. It’s all well and good to laugh at the Chuck Norrises of the world, but there have to be serious and thoughtful arguments against something like gay marriage out there somewhere. Right?
So I was excited to see something from the National Organization for Marriage pop up on my Twitter machine excerpting a column by conservative attorney Riley Balling called “Why Same-Sex Marriage Affects My Marriage.” If nothing else, I thought, this guy knows how to write a headline. It looks like it’s going to address one of the more compelling arguments for gay marriage, i.e. that it would give rights to a traditionally oppressed minority without taking anything away from the majority. And with this guy being a lawyer, he might even know how to make a good case for his weird beliefs.
Shockingly enough, that turns out to not be the case. The column is full of fuzzy platitudes and half-baked, evidence-free assertions. Here’s a taste:
For many of us who favor traditional marriage, marriage is about raising children in a healthy environment. Thus, any change to the definition of marriage affects our marriage.
Got that? Changing the definition of marriage affects the marriage of bigots because they want to raise children in a healthy environment, unlike everyone else, who would rather have children grow up in a toxic wasteland of equal rights and social justice. If that sounds like a crazy non sequitur to you, it’s because it is. This guy throws the word “thus” around because he heard it in an episode of Law & Order, not because he knows what it means for one assertion to follow logically from another. He’s not quite Clarence Darrow; more like Charlie on It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia when he’s playing lawyer. Balling continues:
Our “traditional” marriages and the children they produce are our greatest source of happiness, and we desire that our children will live in a world that will promote their ability to make the same choices that brought us happiness.
That’s so great that he wants his children to have the same choices he had. Unless they’re gay, I guess. Then he doesn’t want them to live in a world that will promote their ability to make the same choices that brought him happiness. He’s specifically arguing against allowing them to make that kind of choice. That basic fact seems to have eluded him completely in the middle of this vacuous nonsense.
The worst part of all is that the column doesn’t deliver what’s promised in the headlines. There’s nothing in there that tells us what real, concrete effect marriage equality has on Balling’s marriage. “If the gays can get married, I’m going to have to _______.” Balling should be able to fill in that blank. Instead, he just waxes on moronically about “influences” and “motivations.” If the opposition to marriage equality can’t get any more specific than that, I’m going to just have to assume they’re being intentionally vague because guys like Balling are too ashamed to admit those influences are motivating him to bone other dudes and, I don’t know, marry them or something.
Maybe there are better arguments than this garbage out there somewhere, but if there is, the conservatives are doing a damn good job of hiding them.
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Atheist Hobos 