no.85 - The National Organization for Marriage

Dear National Organization for Marriage,

I get that you are against same sex marriage. On your website and in interviews and in your creepy, badly produced commercial, you keep telling us, over and over, that you are against it and that I should be too.

I'm a man, happily married to a woman and we have a kid. You should be able to agitate and scare me into to seeing your point of view, but all you seem to bring to the table are time-lapsed clouds, bad acting and a whole lot of words that don't go anywhere.

You don't ever explain "why?"

I read through your "FAQ", where I would think the first question you would want to explain is "Why do you oppose gay marriage." But you don't explain. The closest you come is buried four questions down, asking "What’s the harm from SSM?"

Your answer is this:

"Who get's harmed? The people of this state who lose our right to define marriage as the union of husband and wife, that’s who. That is just not right.”

In other words, the people who get harmed are the people who are against gay marriage - because they don't get what they want.

My four year old feels the same way when I tell her she can't have ice cream and cookies for breakfast. In her mind it's clearly unfair that she should be denied her way. She might even say "that's just not right," but as it turns out she has it backwards.

(Also, you start the answer to your question with a completely different question, and then you answer that second question instead, which is kind of drunk of you.)

I do want to understand your point of view, but you are making it really hard by making precious little sense. Reading your slippery logic makes me feel like I've fallen down the rabbit hole. Your "talking points" tell your members to lie and say they don't want to ban gay marriage. To quote you exactly:

"Language to avoid at all costs: "Ban same-sex marriage." Our base loves this wording. So do supporters of SSM. They know it causes us to lose about ten percentage points in polls. Don’t use it. Say we’re against “redefining marriage” or in favor or “marriage as the union of husband and wife” NEVER “banning same-sex marriage.”

So when you explain what you actually want to accomplish, people oppose you? You can keep putting your words in a blender and seeing what kind of logic smoothie you get, but I promise you this is no way to cobble together an argument. It's like the dude who broke my car window with a rock, looking for crack money, telling me he was "redefining the aerodynamics of my vehicle."

You also claim that even though marriage is about providing both a mother and a father for the children of a union, marriage is still okay for heterosexual couples who don't want to have kids, can't have kids, or who realize they are too old to sensibly care for children. Why? Because they are capable of providing both a mom and a dad. Even by circular logic standards, this is nonsense.

What kind of magical nurturing do you think is derived from a man and a woman raising a child that can not occur when a woman marries a woman or a man a man? Do you have any idea how many checked-out uninvolved dads there are sitting in front of "the game" right now? Do you have any idea how many lousy parents raise their kids without the ability to piece together a cogent argument?

And guess what? Couples who are not married can still have children of their own. In fact, in many states gay and straight non-married couples can adopt. You don't need marriage for parenthood.

The real reason you want to ban same-sex marriage is because of God. More specifically, someone interpreted the Bible for you and told you being gay was wrong and that gays would turn America into Sodom and Gomorrah. Of course, while you were focusing your attention gay marriage, we were all getting sodomized by greedy, soulless investors and paper shifters who caused an economic meltdown of biblical proportions.

But, you know that if the debate ends up being about God's word, you've lost. That pesky separation of church and state that is at the core of the founding of our nation invalidates your premise. For a group whose website is smeared exclusively in red, white and blue, you aren't very patriotic.

National Organization for Marriage, you have explained very little about what is really behind your campaign, but at least your website explains why your organization is not called the National Organization Against Marriage — because you won't, or can't admit what you really are.

no.84 - The Time Trap

I saw something the other night that blew my mind. I still don't know what to think. I was watching an episode of the Star Trek animated series, titled "The Time Trap." About halfway through, Captain Kirk has some suspicious Klingons brought to his attention by Lt. Gabler.

Who is Lt. Gabler?

You take a look and tell me, because I know exactly who I think he looks like:

My daughter, who was watching with me, saw him and said "It's the president!"

Barack Obama had a cameo on the bridge of the animated Star Trek Enterprise back in 1973? Barack Obama, who was twelve years old when the animators at filmation drew the eight or ten cels of "animation" that comprise the whole event?

How is this possible?

During his campaign, at a rally in Wyoming he did say "I grew up on Star Trek," but I don't think anyone realized he meant grew up on Star Trek!

Is this some kind of time trap?

Conspiracy theorists I await your explanations...