Cue the Lions.

I've been fascinated by some of the overwrought "revolution!" language that the usual Christian right trolls are using regarding the case against Prop 8 being considered by SCOTUS. It's not that I'm comfortable that the pendulum has swung so far that there's little resistance to marriage equality--it's that I just don't see that many people be invested enough to start a civil war over it. Regular folks just aren't thinking about gay folks getting married all the time. It doesn't really impact them because, well, it just doesn't. Gay people getting married doesn't raise anyone's taxes or take away any right that any has previously enjoyed.

Which is why I find this analogy from NOM's president, Brian Brown, so especially creepy:

I think we’re going to win these cases. But say the worst happens and we lose in a broad way – that means that the Court somehow does a Roe, aRoe v. Wade, on marriage and says that all these state constitutional amendments are overturned, gay marriage is now a constitutional right – well, we’re going to press forward on a Federal Marriage Amendment. We’ve always supported a Federal Marriage Amendment, and there’s a lot of misconceptions about it. Some people try and argue, ‘Well, this is against federalism.’ No, our founders gave us a system where we can amend the Constitution. We shouldn’t have to do this, we shouldn’t have to worry about activist judges, you know, making up out of thin air a constitutional right that obviously none of our founders found there and no one found there until quite recently. But if we do, for us, the Federal Marriage Amendment is a way that people can stand up and say, ‘Enough is enough.’ We need a solution in this country, we cannot be, as Lincoln said, half slave, half free. We can’t have a country on key moral questions where we’re just, where we don’t have a solution. And if the Court forces a solution, the way we’ll amend that is through  the Federal Marriage Amendment.

"Half slave, half free." I can kind of understand wanting to do a Lincoln quote-pull because Lincoln, you know, was kind of a big deal. It's just funny that Brown seems to think that people living in the states where marriage equality is recognized would be morally the people living in the "slave states".  Because those poor beset-upon long-suffering religious people would lack the freedom to...

To...




Well, I don't know what they wouldn't be able to do that they used to be able to do once gay people start getting married, but I do know he's kind of right in one respect: it is an absurd situation if people have rights in some states that they do not have in others. If a couple has an acknowledged right to marry in a given state, what if for reasons of their employment or education they are called to be in another state where that right is not recognized? Would we consider that right taken away? Have they forfeited their marriage by moving? If a couple that resides in a state that does not acknowledge marriage equality travels to a state that does to marry, are they in violation of their home states' laws?

If only there was a Constitutional mechanism regarding equal protections under the law...

Well, I digress. Oh wait. I do think I see one possible thing that might be taken away from some of the anti-marriage equality people--legitimacy. Once they no longer have the state-by-state parade of marriage bills to contend with (and I'm feeling a bit bullish regarding the possibility of a constitutional amendment not actually going the way Brown thinks it would) I wonder how long a market for a full-time professional gay-hater will continue to exist. I think the demand would taper off, don't you? Once people realize it really doesn't effect them at all and civilization is not going to crash because gay couples basically aren't different from straight ones, and mostly do the same stuff?

One supposes the likes of Brown might still do that as a hobby, but...well. Guys like him and Tony Perkins might not find themselves on too many chat shows anymore.

(X-Posted at Rumproast.)