Like many a homo, I am anxiously awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling on whether or not my marriage is allowed by law or a Satan-spawn union of evil. Obviously, I am hoping for the former so I can do things like be on my wife’s health insurance and be a legal parent to my own son. Or what right-wingers call “destroying America.”
And if one were to take a quick survey of right-wing punditry, it’s pretty clear that they’re very worried that the Supreme Court will rule that gays and lesbians across the land can put a ring on it, Beyoncé-style.
Liberty Council’s Mat Staver, for example, is encouraging widespread “civil disobedience” if he doesn’t get his antigay way.
“Civil disobedience has a long and noble history in Western culture, and we will need a primer on it if, as seems likely, the Supreme Court rules against natural marriage in June,” Staver writes in a March 20 column on BarbWire, a virtual town hall for terrible people and ideas.
He then invokes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. because, you know, the fight against racial injustice and the fight against two ladies in wedding dresses is the same thing.
“Merely because a legislature or a judge passes a law or issues an opinion does not make a law just,” Staver writes. “To cite an extreme example, if you lived under the Nazi regime and the law required you to not hide or aid a Jew in any way, would you comply with Hitler or obey God?”
I totally agree with Staver that some laws are unjust. But then he goes and equates the Supreme Court with Hitler. And while he admits it’s an extreme example, it really cannot be overstated that he is comparing the mass extermination of Jews with allowing same-sex couples to marry. It’s not an analogy someone with a rational argument makes.
But I get it, he’s trying to say that God wants same-sex couples to, like, uncouple or something and go forth and be straight. God hates fags and all that. Got it. But God doesn’t make the laws because of that whole separation of church and state thing we’ve got going in the United States. Which Staver no doubt rejects.
And it’s true that the Supreme Court sometimes makes terrible rulings. Staver uses the Dred Scott case as an example where he writes, “The definition of ‘human’ was at issue. Now the definition of ‘marriage’ is at issue.”
Uh, no. The Dred Scott case, where the court ruled that “blacks are inferior human beings,” is not comparable to the marriage-equality case. Such a claim minimizes the ugly history of racism in this country. Letting two men get legally married is not the same as legally oppressing an entire race of people.
If marriage equality becomes the law of the land, Staver writes, “the temptation for many will be to cave or compromise. The temptation even for the faithful will be to retreat into our churches and cloisters.”
Presumably with plenty of canned goods, jugs of fresh water, plastic sheeting and duct tape.
“But what would happen if, instead of quiet retreat, many thousands of individuals, agencies, charities, churches and schools all came together, prepared, prayed and peacefully refused to countenance a Supreme Court decision that violates not only our highest legal document, but the laws of nature and nature’s God?” Staver asks.
Nothing much, probably. I mean, for one thing, there are millions of people in this country. And “many thousands” break all kinds of laws, just and unjust, every day.
“Whatever the outcome, the hour is late. It’s past time for us to get ready,” Staver writes.
Staver and his ilk have had years to pray for the end of homosexuality. They’re welcome to keep praying, but he’s right. The time has passed.