Another Bigot Plays Pretend

February 24, 2014 by Ed Brayton

I’ve been quite amused by the opponents of marriage equality trying so hard to pretend that they’re not losing that fight. Tony Perkins, who likes to play pretend on this issue (how else to keep the money flowing in?) interviewed Jonathan Saenz of Texas Values on his radio show as Saenz feigned ignorance of the obvious:

There is this notion that things have changed so much, there’s all this momentum from the media suggesting that people’s views have changed on homosexual marriage. But we’re not seeing that at the polls. All of these victories so to speak that have happened for their side, some short-lived, have been a federal judge who is unelected or the Obama administration or some of the AGs refusing to enforce their own laws and constitution. I haven’t really seen evidence of a major change.

Really? You didn’t see the fact that you lost in all four of the states that had the issue on their ballots in 2012? You haven’t seen the polls that show a majority of Americans now support marriage equality by about a 55-40% margin? Or the polls showing that those under 30 years old support marriage equality by a better than 4-1 margin? You’re losing. You’ve already lost. It’s all just mopping up now. The bigots lost, like they’ve lost every other battle over the last couple hundred years.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/135876391″ params=”color=ff5500″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

February 24, 2014

Edwin Edwards Running for Congress

February 24, 2014 TBogg on Ted Nugent as a Campaign Prop

Recent Comments

18 Comments | Leave a Comment

"There's a catch. From the rather classic youtube series "Bible Verses Never Read in Church" ..."

Mohler: Being Human Requires Being a ..."

"A 'e don't own U!"

McDonald: Christians Who Don’t Support Trump ..."

"So much money spent on so little a job..."

Trump Admits Tariffs Are Hurting Stock ..."

"You have told him that Nixon's not running*, right?-----* hell - he's not even breathing"

Trump: This Is Gonna Hurt China ..."

Browse Our Archives

get the latest from

Dispatches From the Culture Wars

Sign up for our newsletter

Related posts from Dispatches From the Culture Wars

TRENDING AT PATHEOS Nonreligious

view all Nonreligious blogs

What Are Your Thoughts?leave a comment

steve84

He’s like Baghdad Bob
Larry

He’s like Baghdad Bob

Or the Black Knight from The Holy Grail.
eric

Reminds me a bit of global warming denialism. In both you get folk who look at a sawtooth chart with a clear upwards trend over a long time, and they focus on the right-hand side of one of the teeth instead. “Oh look, between January 14th and March 3rd there was a downslope!”

In 2000 there were 0 States with legal same sex marriage. In 2014 there are 17-18. Regardless of dips or counter-legislation, the slope is positive (both figuratively and literally).
dugglebogey

Yet whenever he asks around at church, everyone seems to be against it!
D. C. Sessions

They haven’t lost where it counts: the Republican Party controls the House of Representatives, will soon control the Senate, and has an overwhelming majority of the Statehouses and Legislatures in the States.

And they’re going to ride that for as far as it will take them:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlSQAZEp3PA?feature=player_detailpage&w=640&h=360%5D
Modusoperandi

Easy fix. Have Obama advocate Traditional Marriage™.

In any event, it would be interesting seeing the gears burn as the Right tries to figure out who they hate more.
abb3w

It’s easy to avoid seeing evidence of a major change if you keep your eyes closed, or have an arbitrary threshold of “major”.
Nemo

I’ve actually been worrying a bit about a possible anti-gay backlash lately, what with the Duck Dynasty douchebag getting his job back, the Russian Olympics going forward with nary a boycott and minimal protest, and now these insane conscience exemption laws.
whheydt

Slate recently ran an article pointing out that in 18 cases involving gay rights (12 of them concerning SSM) since the DOMA decision came done, all cases and all Judges (32 of them!) came down on the side of equality.
wscott

The bigots lost, like they’ve lost every other battle over the last couple hundred years.

Not to be negative, but it seems like there ought to be an “eventually” in that sentence somewhere.
Friendly

The bigots lost, like they’ve lost every other battle over the last couple hundred years.

I would hesitate to make a statement like that, Ed. Bigots and reactionaries mostly crushed the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. Bigots had the upper hand in the American South for 80 to 90 years after Reconstruction and in South Africa from 1948 to 1990; the religio-political leadership of Saudi Arabia has been dominated by bigots practically since the founding of the country in 1932. Bigotry is currently on the rise in Russia, India, the Middle East, Africa, and other parts of the world. We need to continue vigilantly opposing it wherever it rears its ugly head.
Ichthyic

not surprising delusional bigots remain… delusional.
Ichthyic

Bigotry is currently on the rise in Russia, India, the Middle East, Africa, and other parts of the world.

or at least is becoming more noticeable.

I think the place it is really on the rise again is in Europe. Places like Italy have really gone far right in the last 10 years.

Then there’s “Golden Dawn”.

shades of pre WWII.
StevoR : Free West Papua, free Tibet, let the Chagossians return!

@ ^ Ichthyic : Right wing bigotry rising as economic times as tough and the rich get richer at the expense of the rest of us? Yes, that does sound familiar.

@ 8. Nemo : You forgot to add the situation with the homophobic criminal laws in Uganda too. Plus thanks to the bigoted “christian”evangelists from the America a lot of other African and other cultures are shifting – or being shifted – back the wrong way too.

@ 3. eric :

Reminds me a bit of global warming denialism. In both you get folk who look at a sawtooth chart with a clear upwards trend over a long time, and they focus on the right-hand side of one of the teeth instead. “Oh look, between January 14th and March 3rd there was a downslope!”

Yes – definitely a resemblence there. A lot of the same people such as Inhofe spewing the same shithouse views too even.

In 2000 there were 0 States with legal same sex marriage. In 2014 there are 17-18. Regardless of dips or counter-legislation, the slope is positive (both figuratively and literally).

Yes. A lot of positive news in the USA, here in Oz and elsewhere but, but still there’s also, well the points and evidence raised by the first two comments I addressed here by Nemo & Ichthyic.
eric

StevoR – its two steps forward and one step back, to be sure. But I’m in the middle of Pinker’s Better Angels of our Nature, and I have to say that he makes a pretty compelling case for a global, long-term improvement in tolerance, human rights, reduction in violence against groups like gays, etc… Yes, Uganda’s legal rights changes suck. They suck because their system looks like what all of Europe looked like five hundred years ago. We recoil in horror at the barbarity we see in one of the worst countries on the planet…because it resembles the barbarity that used to be endemic and global. I don’t want to mimimize or hand wave away the plight of Ugandan gays, but we should also recognize that what used to be the global rule has now become the a-couple-countries-out-of-hundreds exception, and that is a win.
uncephalized

@eric — Better Angels was a great read. It really helps force some perspective on these long-range issues.

I think it’s important to remember that these changes happened because people were fighting for them. No universal rule against local backsliding.
eric

@16: agreed.
scienceavenger

I haven’t really seen evidence of a major change.

I’ll bet he hasn’t seen any transitional fossils either.