Proposition Hate
I just saw a special-interest election ad on television:
After Massachusetts legalized [interracial] marriage, our son came home and told us the school taught him that [white people] can marry [black people]. He’s in second grade! We tried to stop public schools from teaching children about [interracial] marriage, but the courts said we had no right to object or pull him out of class.
Do note that these warm-hearted followers of Jesus consider it a mortal sin to detach a bundle of 32 cells from a uterine wall but apparently have no qualms about denying rights to Real Actual Adults.
Fine print on the bottom of these pesky California election ads is insufficient. It needs to have a pathetic, hateful, and ideally terminally ill old man come on and say “I’m James Dobson, and I approve — and funded — this message.” I am willing to negotiate about whether he should be forced to wear an SS uniform while reciting the sentence.
It’s rather a good thing that I didn’t get to write the No on Prop 8 tagline, because “Don’t be a fucking Nazi, asshole” is probably not the most even-handed approach to this issue.
Subscribe by email
October 22nd, 2008 at 8:04 am
I don’t much like James Dobson. In fact, I strongly dislike him, since he’s made it clear that he thinks that just about everything that I find enjoyable in life is the root of all evil (my mother listened to a lot of Focus on the Family when I was a kid, which means that I listened to a lot of Focus on the Family when I was a kid).
Having said that, I hope that he’s not terminally ill. I hope that he lives long enough to see that he was wrong. I want him to see the day when it becomes undeniably apparent that eliminating discrimination from our law books strengthens our society rather than weakens it. If he lives long enough, maybe he’ll see that gay people aren’t out to undermine families, but that they want families of their own.
I’d like for him to see these things, and become a better person. At the same time, if he sees these things and it crushes him, that’s almost as good.
October 22nd, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Man, and I thought I like playing devil’s advocate.
“The human body is mostly H2O.” Mike, go!
October 23rd, 2008 at 8:17 am
I hardly think that it’s devil’s advocate to say that a party is totally wrong, but that I hope that he or she lives long enough to see that they were incorrect. Also, I said that I strongly disliked him and that him being “crushed” was nearly as good, which isn’t exactly cheerleading for him. The fact of the matter is that he wouldn’t be the first person to come around on the gay rights issue, and he’s in a position to be a powerful force for good if he did.
Maybe I was just feeling generous to the old man because I recently rewatched In the Eyes of Tammy Faye, and it left me hopeful for the potential of people with whom I disagree to move past hateful dogma, rather than just die. Or maybe I was just selfishly hoping that he’d live long enough to see the world move past hate because it would mean that I’d likely live long enough to see it, too.
October 23rd, 2008 at 8:21 am
I was just selfishly hoping that he’d live long enough to see the world move past hate because it would mean that I’d likely live long enough to see it, too
To increase the likelihood of that, you should probably decrease the amount of time you spend wallowing in tar pits.
Oh wait, was that you or dinosaurs? One of you thought that “Maybe, just maybe, it’s chocolate pudding.”
(Can’t find that wonderful comic online — discussing the real reason the dinosaurs went extinct. C’est dommage.)
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:26 am
As evidenced in Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream that someday everyone who disagrees with me will be dead” speech.
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:30 pm
As evidenced in Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream that someday everyone who disagrees with me will be dead” speech.
How did that work out for him, Mike? Did most Klan members sit down to meals with children of color, or did most of them die?