Power outrage.
From today’s USA Today:
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said yesterday that he supports a constitutional amendment that would ban homosexual marriage in this country. He is quoted as saying, “I very much feel that marriage is a sacrament, and that sacrament should extend and can extend to that legal entity of a union between — what is traditionally in our Western values has been defined — as between a man and a woman. So I would support the amendment.”
What does it mean when I can barely summon the will to be absolutely, throwing-things-at-the-wall incensed by this? The sad fact is that I imagine I’d be angrier if this came at all as a surprise; that it turns out a vital component of outrage is shock. The knee-jerk–heh–reaction of the conservative right to last week’s landmark Supreme Court anti-sodomy smackdown is surprising to me only in that Frist is the first person to make these sorts of noises to a national news outlet. I would have expected Rick Santorum, obviously, or Trent Lott. I would have expected Tom DeLay. Perhaps Frist was concerned that he wasn’t lock-stepping enough with the hard right, and did this for the publicity. “See? I can be just as anti-gay as the next guy.”
Oh, I’m sorry. You’re not anti-gay. You’re just defending marriage. My mistake.
Because marriage is special, and if you let gay people have marriage, it somehow dilutes the marriages of heterosexuals everywhere. I can see into the nightmares of these stalwart defenders, on that day that the court deals marriage a deathblow by allowing homosexuals to use the word as a desrciption of their loving and committed partnership. Across America, heterosexuals waking up with an unexplainable sense of loss. Dick turning to Jane and, where love once was, finding only a sense of diminished happiness. Remember when this marriage was just about men and women, he’ll think. Remember when it was special, something only 97% of the population could do? How can I possibly feel anything but disappointment when I know that I might run into a gay man on the street and have him casually mention his “husband”? It’s one thing when clearly heterosexual women with boob jobs perform a casual sex act with each other in soft lighting, but it’s another for me to think that two women might actually love each other like Jane and I used to love each other before gays could get married. Where has the world gone? If only somebody had defended our marriage and marriages everywhere.
Idiots. [1]
[1] I got into an argument with somebody online, a Philadelphia newsman who I’ve known for a few years, about whether conservatives or liberals engage in more rampant name-calling of the other side. While I feel that conservative talking heads (Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh et. al.,) are far and away nastier with their attacks, I can’t deny that many liberals are just as guilty of engaging in this more or less juvenile debate tactic. Thusly, I’d like to keep my own such outbursts to a minimum.
But for now, I’m just going to call it like I see it. Idiots.
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Creative Control 