Truth - Al Franken [51]
On February 24, 2004, President George W. Bush announced the most flamboyant flip-flop of his presidency. Suddenly, equal marriage rights weren’t a state issue after all. What was needed was a new amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Something that he could be for, and Kerry against. Perfect. The White House was out in front, leading the charge once again. The charge against bad culture things.
Like Rove, I myself was a little behind the curve on this one. As I said frequently on my radio show, I just didn’t understand how two gay people getting married was a threat to the marriages of people like myself. Was I going to walk down the street, see two men with wedding rings, and tell my wife of twenty-nine years, “Hey, that looks great. Maybe I could marry a guy who likes football, watch the game with him, and then come home and have sex with you”? Every time Franni heard this, she’d call the station and tell me I didn’t understand the whole concept. But I kept insisting I did.
I also said that the biggest threat to marriage was divorce, and that there should be a three-strikes-you’re-out rule. Rush Limbaugh shouldn’t be allowed to marry again. Newt Gingrich? Sorry. You’re stuck with the congressional staffer that you chose as your third and, if I had my way, final wife.
I even crafted a negative ad, based on my woeful misunderstanding of the gay marriage controversy:
George W. Bush wants to amend our Constitution to make it illegal for gays to marry. But evidently, he has no problem with terrorists getting married. Even now, terrorist couples are plotting to sanctify their love for each other in holy matrimony—and then blow up the Holland Tunnel. Call George W. Bush. Tell him that America can’t afford a president who is soft on terrorist marriage. Because unlike gays . . . terrorists can breed.
Paid for by the Committee to Distract You from Real Issues.
The ad did make a good point. And then made sure you got the point with the tagline. But what I didn’t understand was that, for the religious right, gay marriage wasn’t about marriage. It was about gay.
Like everyone in show business, I know gay people. Did you know that there are a lot of gay people in hair and makeup? And in costume design? There are. And in all the other areas of the business as well. Even some of the female impersonators are gay. And every gay person I know feels strongly that they didn’t “choose” their sexual orientation. Rather, they came to realize something about themselves that had been true about them all along.
But how would they know?
As Russell Shorto described in his June 19, 2005, New York Times Magazine cover story, anti–gay marriage activists have a different view. According to Shorto, these activists “deny that homosexuality is inherent. It can’t be, because that would mean God had created some people who are damned from birth, morally blackened. This really is the inescapable root of the whole issue.”
So if you’re not born gay, how do you become gay? Seems like an odd choice to make in a society where sodomy laws were only struck down a few months ago. But the Family Research Council (run by Tony Perkins, one of the sometime participants on the White House Christian-right conference calls) settled the matter in its book, Getting It Straight: What the Research Shows About Homosexuality. Right in Chapter One, “What Causes Homosexuality,” we learn that homosexuality is not natural or genetic, but springs from early experiences in the home, such as child abuse.
Did Lynne and Dick Cheney abuse their gay daughter, Mary? Of course not.
Did conservative matriarch Phyllis Schlafly and her husband abuse