This is what we\u2019ve come to expect from the incredibly shrinking opposition to marriage equality: 1) the assertion that there are \u201clots\u201d of excellent, terribly important arguments in support of a legal ban against same-sex couples getting married, and 2) the failure to mention what all those \u201clots\u201d of excellent, terribly important arguments might actually be.<\/p>\n
Nowhere was this made clearer than in the legal battle over California\u2019s Proposition 8. U.S. district court Judge Vaughn Walker overturned the state\u2019s ban of same-sex marriage and in his decision on the case,\u00a0Perry v. Schwarzenegger,<\/em>\u00a0Walker noted the lack of arguments in support of the ban and its codification of inequality under the law. The judge didn\u2019t criticize the substance of Prop 8 proponents\u2019 arguments, he simply shook his head at the\u00a0absence<\/em> of them.<\/p>\nAttorney David Boies, who successfully argued against Prop 8 in the case, pointed out why this is so:<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to sit around and debate and throw around opinions \u2014 appeal to people\u2019s fear and prejudice, cite studies that either don\u2019t exist or don\u2019t say what you say they do. In a court of law you\u2019ve got to come in and you\u2019ve got to support those opinions. You\u2019ve got to stand up under oath and cross-examination. And what we saw at trial is that it\u2019s very easy for the people who want to deprive gay and lesbian citizens the right to vote, to make all sorts of statements in campaign literature or in debates where they can\u2019t be cross-examined.<\/p>\n
But when they come into court and they have to support those opinions and they have to defend those opinions under oath and cross-examination, those opinions just melt away. And that\u2019s what happened here. There simply wasn\u2019t any evidence. There weren\u2019t any of those studies. There weren\u2019t any empirical studies. That\u2019s just made up. That\u2019s junk science.<\/p>\n
That junk science and gaping lack of evidence is what Whelan refers to as \u201clots of reasonable arguments.\u201d By \u201creasonable\u201d there, he means arguments that can be made to sound reasonable when one is a guest on a cable news shoutfest \u2014 a place where imaginary \u201cstudies\u201d can be cited and actual studies can be distorted with impunity, knowing that the TV host will never challenge you on it and the TV audience won\u2019t easily be able to double-check your claims. But as Boies noted, those insupportable claims don\u2019t cut it in court, where one has to testify under oath. And when called on to testify under oath in court, the proponents of inequality under the law who seemed so animated on cable TV suddenly grew very, very quiet.<\/p>\n
JUDGE: Can you present any evidence that recognizing that same-sex couples have the same legal rights as other couples would harm the institution of marriage, or harm children, or harm the common good, or harm public health?<\/p>\n
SAME-SEX MARRIAGE OPPONENT: [cricket. \u2026 cricket. \u2026 tumbleweed.]<\/p>\n
That silence, I think, partly accounts for the generational chasm that seems to have opened in two of the vanguard groups opposed to equal legal rights for GLBT people: Republicans and evangelical Christians.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Read the whole post here<\/a>.<\/p>\nIt seems that as recently as 11 years ago I was writing \u201cGLBT\u201d rather than \u201cLGBT.\u201d Not sure when, why, or how that changed.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When this blog started, newspapers were still writing, \u201cso-called Web logs, or \u2018blogs\u2019 \u2026\u201d From February 24, 2011, \u201cCricket. Cricket. Tumbleweed\u201c: This is what we\u2019ve come to expect from the incredibly shrinking opposition to marriage equality: 1) the assertion that there are \u201clots\u201d of excellent, terribly important arguments in support of a legal ban against […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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Tumbleweed\": This","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2022\/02\/24\/feb-24-flashback-a-loud-silence\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Feb. 24 Flashback: A loud silence","og_description":"When this blog started, newspapers were still writing, \"so-called Web logs, or 'blogs' ...\" From February 24, 2011, \"Cricket. Cricket. 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