Tannishblog

I like it when Dr. Demento Dobson gets refuted. That man wraps more hatred in jesus-speak than almost anyone. I know, the list of likely candidates is long, but his Focus on the Family group takes anti-gay hatred too far.

I’m not a strong proponent of Gay rights. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m rather ambivilent on the issue, but any group who has to take as much abuse as the alternate lifestyle crowd deserves some respect, I think. Conversely any group that spews as much poisonous bias as Focus on the Family is fair game.

In today’s NY Times, Stephanie Coontz writes:

Traditional marriage, with its 5,000-year history, has already been upended. Gays and lesbians, however, didn’t spearhead that revolution: heterosexuals did.

Heterosexuals were the upstarts who turned marriage into a voluntary love relationship rather than a mandatory economic and political institution. Heterosexuals were the ones who made procreation voluntary, so that some couples could choose childlessness, and who adopted assisted reproduction so that even couples who could not conceive could become parents. And heterosexuals subverted the long-standing rule that every marriage had to have a husband who played one role in the family and a wife who played a completely different one. Gays and lesbians simply looked at the revolution heterosexuals had wrought and noticed that with its new norms, marriage could work for them, too.

The rest of the article provides a much needed historical refresher on the institute of marriage. We need more of this historical refutation of modern malfeasence, to undermine the spread of hatred.

But for me the snubbing of the Bad Doctor is the best part. His kind needs to be de-fanged. I’ll go meditate now on my intolerance of the intolerant.