This in regards to McDonald's offering some benefits to gay and lesbian employees (via Andrew Sullivan):
"And to declare war [as McDonald's has] on the civilization of liberty, independence, creativity, and humanity under God that my Dad fought for in World War II."
Never mind that this sentence is a fragment, I find this to be rather interesting. Supporting gay rights is an assault upon creativity? Gay folks are plenty creative. And humane. And just as supportive of freedom as anyone else.
This is why the right wing needs to stay on message. When they use their well-worn messages about how we shouldn't tamper with the institution of marriage which hasn't changed in thousands of years, it sorta sounds legit. It isn't, of course--marriage as an institution has changed immeasurably in just the past 200 years. In 1808, women were the legal property of their husbands in this country. Divorce was illegal, women owned no property of their own, could pursue no careers, and could only hope to accumulate any power if their husband happened to die off. The institution has changed a lot since then, and generally for the better. Sure, you have to take the good with the bad: divorce rates are way higher, to be sure, although I wonder if this couldn't be stemmed by enacting certain measures like raising the marriage age to 25, which according to the data I've seen seems to be the magic number when it comes to marriages staying together. But I digress.
The point is that the right wing does have some legit-sounding arguments against gay marriage. Some are even compelling unless you look too closely at the logic, which is generally predicated on slippery slope fallacies. However, quotes like this one only serve to underscore that many of Sullivan's Christianists' opposition to gay rights is not (surprise!) rooted in reason and logic but rather in hysteria and utter suspicion of other peoples' motives. There is, by my observation, a culture of paranoia on the right that simply doesn't have an equivalent on the left. Liberals like me generally believe that most Republicans are decent people who happen believe that shredding the social safety net and creating a theocracy in America are what's best for the country. We disagree vigorously, sometimes even vitriolically, and we might even say that the people who advance this agenda are corrupt and want to seize power and fortune for themselves, but most liberals do not tend to believe that Republicans are intentionally trying to starve poor people because they don't vote Republican. Because the Republicans aren't consciously trying to starve poor people: they just don't care about them. Maybe that's not fair, maybe it is, but that's where I stand and where I think most liberals stand. I'm not a fan of George W. Bush, to put it mildly, but I'm willing to say that I think he's doing what he thinks is best for the nation in the long run. I disagree, and that's why I support Barack Obama, but I'll admit that he does have a few principles.
Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to devolve into hysterics that undermine any credibility their argument might otherwise have. It's why they frame the Left's commitment to government assistance for the needy, more often than not, as nothing but political bribery. It's why they accuse Democrats in favor of swift withdrawal of wanting the terrorists to win in Iraq when both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have shown no desire to go easy on terrorism, but rather to fight it in a more intelligent and less costly way. It's why social liberals can't just hold a different principle with respect to gay rights: we necessarily have to be declaring war on the culture as it is presently constituted. This sort of thing is one of the reasons why I left the Republican Party in 2004: for some right-wingers, it is simply inconceivable that a Democrat would hold a single principle. They're all rotten to the core, and any argument they make has to be in bad faith and just has to be malicious. What underlies this worldview? Well, the only explanation that seems to fit with what the Republicans say is an intrinsic belief that Democrats are evil. Then you can just dismiss any uncomfortable truths they say.
So, here's my advice to the right wing: please stop improvising. You're only showing the hollowness of your paranoia masquerading as political philosophy on the issues, and it makes it more difficult for all of us to get a handle on all of you when you go all apeshit on us. Stick with the tried-and-true lines, please. We'd like to argue with your most compelling arguments, and that's not easy when you're confusing everything like this.
