"No Faggots, Dykes or Trannies"?

As I've noted previously, the gay marriage debate, following oral arguments before the California Supreme Court this week, is kicking into a new stage of advocacy and grievance.

The Los Angeles Times reports today that the 18,000 same-sex married couples in the state will constitute a "minority within a minority." Gays will be "part of an exclusive club whose doors have been closed to others."

The gist of the article is that it's only a matter of time, and the couples who were able to marry before the window closed will be civil rights pioneers, "living examples" of the kind of "discrimination" this new subject class is likely to face.

Notice how the piece is totally divorced from the reality on the ground, where a solid majority of voters in the state passed Proposition 8, and only 31 percent of Americans nationally said they support "FULL marriage rights for same-sex couples." Yet, the left sees the legalization of same-sex marriage as inevitable, and the liberal media's more than happy to spread along the meme. Indeed, the picture above of Vanessa Godson, her wife Julie Halverson-Godson, and their 2 year-old son Graham, was featured on the front-page of today's paper. It's a great photograph and they look like a happy family, but they are not subject to discrimination, as civil unions and gay adoption are both allowed in California.

Today's Times also features an essay by Robin Rauzi, a former editor at the paper, " entitled, "I'll Be a Marriage Outlaw." Rauzi, suggests that she'll still face discrimination even if the Supreme Court allows the pre-Prop 8 marriages to stand: "... rather than dread my potential future of semi-suspended matrimony, I've decided to embrace it. On this roller-coaster trip toward full civil rights for gays, this could be the fun part of the ride."

In any case, that brings me to the title of this post. It turns out that the Connecticut Catholic Conference is seeking religious exemptions from the state's new same-sex marriage law. The proposal is broad. Even "a florist opposed to gay marriage on religious grounds not be forced to sell flowers to a same-sex couple."

I think the intent here is more toward protecting health providers from having to perform abortions against their conscience, so the Catholic Conference may be pushing it. But of course, sooner than you can say "Stonewall," the radical GLBT activists have come out of the fever swamps to scream "bigotry" and "intolerance":

I'm just waiting for the first "no faggots, dykes or trannies" sign to go up in a business's window. that's what they're calling for here - a revisitation of jim crow.

Now think about this: A proposal to allow people of religious belief to withhold certain services is not going to take the country back to "Jim Crow." And to make this argument is to do grave injustice to the harrowing treatment of black Ameircans through three centuries of slavery and the brutality of violent white supremacy that followed even after three constitutional amendments. The rights afforded to gay Americans today are the envy of truly oppressed groups worldwide. The types of arguments made by gay radicals today are false analogies that minimize the violence of chattel bondage and they mock the struggles of America's black freedoms fighters through history.

People will say, "Wait, what about those right wing exremists who argue gays are going to marry their pets or robots"?

I'd respond by saying that there is no need to demonize gays for bestiality," although logically if society defines marriage so that any oppressed group can make successful claims to equal protection under the matrimonial umbrella, the right to marry an animal can be seen as an extension of the agenda. In any case, for gay activists to demand a right to marry is to propose a goal that is fundamentally ILLIBERAL in nature, that is to say, authoritarian. As Susan Shell has observed:

Gays cannot be guaranteed all of the experiences open to heterosexuals any more than tall people can be guaranteed all of the experiences open to short people. Least of all can gays be guaranteed all of the experiences that stem from the facts of human sexual reproduction and its accompanying penumbra of pleasures and cares. To insist otherwise is not only psychologically and culturally implausible; it imposes a sectarian moral view on fellow citizens who disagree and who may hold moral beliefs that are diametrically opposed to it.

Because of this logic, the left will continue to demonize those of traditional values, and especially religious conservatives. In turn, conservative groups will feel increasingly on the defense, and the left's socio-cultural alliance between postmodern interest groups and the liberal press will continue to spin wild scenarios of discrimination and oppression where very little in fact exists.

In my post last night on Vantha Sao and Jay Mendes, folks in the comments reacted as though the expressions of traditionalism toward gender roles was something extreme. While my position is not extreme (a visit to the toy section of any Target store will tell you that), the reaction to it illustrates just how far political correctness will go to excoriate and ridicule those who refuse to bend to the anything-goes licentiousness of the gay rights movement.

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times.