We need to take a moment to unpack one of the religious right’s favorite talking points about marriage equality, or, more specifically, the same-sex marriage ban currently in the Texas Constitution that has been challenged in federal court.
The ban was approved by voters in 2005, which was — if our math is correct — one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight — nine! That’s almost 10! The ban was approved by voters almost an entire 10 years ago.
A lot can and has happened in nine years.
Since 2005 we’ve lived through two presidential elections, three Winter Olympics and two Summer Olympics, one great recession and, more relevant to this blog post, a big change in attitudes toward the LGBT community and about equality. A majority of Americans now favors same sex-marriage. And in this state, a plurality of Texans now feel the same way, and the percentage is rising.
But over at the far-right group Texas Values, which opposes equality for the LGBT community, it’s as if 2005 was just yesterday. Look at this screen capture taken from the group’s website.
You’ll notice Texas Values uses the present tense. You can often find the group’s president peddling the same stat.
And it’s true, when Texans went to the polls in 2005, the same-sex marriage ban received 76 percent of the vote. But to claim that 76 percent of Texans supported the marriage ban either back then or continue to do so today is, at best, disingenuous.
Here is what Texas Observer reporter Forrest Wilder pointed out earlier today via his Twitter account.
It is simply false to say “76% of Texans support” a same-sex marriage ban when only 13% of *voters* voted for the ban almost 10 years ago.
— Forrest Wilder (@Forrest4Trees) August 6, 2014
If the same vote were held today, would the ban still pass? Maybe, maybe not. One thing we would be willing to put money on is that if it did pass, it wouldn’t receive anywhere near the 76 percent of the vote it did in 2005.
The point is, we’re not infallible. All of us make mistakes. A growing number of Texans are recognizing that the ban might have been a mistake. What might have seemed like a good idea a long time ago, might not be such a hot idea now. What was popular nine years ago, could seem a little embarrassing now.
For instance, in October 2005, just a month before the ban passed, the No. 1 album in America was by … Nickelback. We all make mistakes.
The wording of the “Traditional Marriage Amendment” actually abolishes all marriages in Texas, or maybe only abolishes marriages consisting of one man and one woman each, depending on how you interpret it:
“(a) Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.
“(b) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.”
Please tell me what’s so “traditional” about saying the state can’t recognize the legal status of marriage?
I feel kinda sorry for those people. They must be terribly insecure in their own marriages if they feel so threatened by what ‘others’ do in the privacy of their own bedrooms. Do they, in their self-righteous “minds”(?) think that the sinful ‘others’ somehow are thinking about their goody-goody prudishness as the seek sexual gratification behind their closed doors?
No Ariel.
Opposition to same sex marriage is based primarily on the male homosexuality model. They believe male homosexuality makes God go absolutely haywire nuts with anger. In the Bible, God destroyed Sodom and Gommorah with some sort of nuclear weapon because the men were butt-screwing each other. Christian fundamentalists firmly believe that approval of same-sex marriage in all 50 states will cause God to get so angry at the United States that he will either nuke the whole country or we will wake up one morning with the Chinese Red Army in total control of the United States as our punishment for stamping a seal of approval on an abominable sin.
The thing you have to understand is that it poses no threat to heterosexual marriage. They know that. They know that too. This is just a BS talking point they have on their list—one that is not very effective actually. Read my paragraph above again. That is the main and real reason they are so afraid of same-sex marriage and want to get it stopped. However, they know that no federal judge anywhere in the United States would rule in their favor if they brought that paragraph into a courtroom. It clearly violates the First Amendment to end it for a religious reason. Therefore, they have to find secular arguments to get their religious work done.
You have to remember that the Christian fundamentalist/conservative evangelical God is not the Jesus of the New Testament. Rather, He is the insane, brutal, genocidal maniac God of the Old Testament. A God who would just as soon vaporize a person as look at them. When you clearly understand that their view of God is couched there, it is easy to see why they are so against same-sex marriage. They are—quite literally—frightened out of their wits at what may happen the day that 50th state approves same-sex marriage.
Does that help?