But We Knew That (Update)

At least, those of us who have been paying attention over the past few years, as the discourse on gay rights has focused more and more on marriage. From Tierney Sneed at TPM:

The leading opponents of same-sex marriage have been attempting to re-write recent American history, where decades of sneering public attacks on gays and lesbians, condemnations of their "lifestyle," and blaming them for a decline of America's moral virtue are quietly forgotten.

Their argument, made in front of the Supreme Court, no less, is that gay marriage bans are not motivated by prejudice toward gays and lesbians, but by a more noble if newfound purpose.

If one was paying attention, the fact that marriage bans were prompted by anti-gay animus comes as no surprise. Sneed outlines a number of examples. But that was going to sink them in the courts, so they came up with a brand shiny new argument:

The "problem" that bans on same-sex marriage were solving, in Bursh's view, was keeping biological parents attached to their children. How allowing gay couples to marry threatened that attachment puzzled even some of the justices -- Justice Elena Kagan called the reasoning "inexplicable." But even more bewildering, to longtime observers of the issue, is how divorced such logic was from the original motivation for the bans.

"The states’ arguments don’t pass the straight face test, no pun intended," Judith Schaeffer, vice president of Constitutional Accountability Center, a D.C.-based legal organization, said in an interview with TPM. "These are ridiculous arguments that are being made to cover up the fact that these discriminatory laws are motivated by a desire to keep gay people out of this important legal relationship."

It's rather more far-reaching than that, as witness the spate of "religious freedom" laws in state legislatures now that a Supreme Court decision supporting the right of same-sex couples to marry seems inevitable: the point of those laws is not to uphold "traditional marriage," but to create a special right of discrimination on religious beliefs. One example is the adoption law recently passed in Michigan, which gives religious-based adoption agencies the right to turn away prospective parents they don't approve of. Timothy Kincaid outlines the problem:

But these bills change the ground rules. These specifically say that contractors CAN discriminate, using taxpayer funds, so long as it’s based on a religious reason. And that is an unjustifiable position for a state. If a state contractor cannot provide services to all citizens on an equal and fair basis, then it’s time to go be a charity again.

I think that the legislators and Governor in Michigan will regret this decision. While it is intended to protect religious adoption agencies from placing children with gay couples, laws tend to never stay in the box for which they were intended. Unable to just come out and say “you can refuse gay people”, the legislature used the vaguer concept of ‘religious objection’ and that is a notion that is very broad.

Other laws cover small businesses, with even broader implications: you might as well kiss non-discrimination laws good-bye. And of course, no matter the language in the bills themselves, they are directed against gay people.

I'd like to say that the courts are going to throw these bills out, but we're now dealing with a legal landscape that includes Hobby Lobby, which, as you'll remember, not only assumes that corporations have the rights of natural persons, but they got religion, and the corporation's beliefs supercede the rights of its employees.

Update: And we know that Rick Santorum (google it!) is more than happy to reinforce whatever anti-gay bullshit he can:

Santorum was asked why the government “allows people that hurt children by way of child molestation” to impose their views upon the nation.

My own response would likely have had something to do with restricting access of heterosexual men to minors, especially evangelical preachers and Boy Scout leaders, but since it's Santorum, you can guess the response:

“Depending on what they rule, we would certainly make sure that we are protecting children and that we are creating an optimal atmosphere for every child, as I said, that have their birthright, which is to be raised by their mother and father.”

Have you noticed, by the way, that these proponents of the "traditional nuclear family" (as set forth by the Saints Nelson -- that would be Ozzie and Harriet) never espouse any programs to support families, or help teenagers avoid pregnancy, or anything like that? They're more likely to cut SNAP benefits.