your afternoon assignment

If you want a taste of some truly disturbing right-wing thinking, take a look at this column, via Feministe. (Also, it appears that Ms Lauren has been invaded by a particularly hateful little man with a Dixieland band. Neat.) If you can get through the Card column, I salute you, and will bake you a cake of your choosing (I get to have some, because I sat through it too).

If I were to thoroughly critique this particular piece of shit, it would take me days. Therefore, I am just going to make fun of it.

This quote is fun, because it's so sad:

In the first place, no law in any state in the United States now or ever has forbidden homosexuals to marry. The law has never asked that a man prove his heterosexuality in order to marry a woman, or a woman hers in order to marry a man.

Any homosexual man who can persuade a woman to take him as her husband can avail himself of all the rights of husbandhood under the law. And, in fact, many homosexual men have done precisely that, without any legal prejudice at all.

Yes! Finally, someone who understands that obviously it's not the person you're marrying that's important, but rather the very act of getting married and reaping the tax benefits.

I would like to see some hard evidence for this:

And yet, throughout the history of human society -- even in societies that tolerated relatively open homosexuality at some stages of life -- it was always expected that children would be born into and raised by families consisting of a father and mother.

Somehow I think that can be refuted.

God Forbid!:

We also expect our spouse to behave, as a parent, in the way we have learned to expect from the experiences we had with our opposite-sex parent -- that's why so many men seem to marry women just like their mother, and so many women to marry men just like their father. It takes conscious effort to break away from this pattern.

Were I to marry a man like my father (in fact if I were to marry at all!) I would probably commit suicide. One Ed Husting in my life is plenty, thanks.

Also, Mr Card (and he is a card, ain't he?), while acknowledging that some societal factors go in to our current standard of gender roles, is very keen on biological essentialism to make his point. Behold! The ever useful "Men can't keep their pants on and must spread their seed amongst many nubile females, who choose them for their relative strength and ability to provide meat and fire. Grunt Ugh!":

Civilization requires the suppression of natural impulses that would break down the social order. Civilization thrives only when most members can be persuaded to behave unnaturally, and when those who don't follow the rules are censured in a meaningful way.

Why would men submit to rules that deprive them of the chance to satisfy their natural desire to mate with every attractive female?

Why would women submit to rules that keep them from trying to mate with the strongest (richest, most physically imposing, etc.) male, just because he already has a wife?

And What Will Happen, Prophet Orson, If We Let Our Children Grow Up Without Homophobia?:

Already any child with any kind of sexual attraction to the same sex is told that this is an irresistible destiny, despite the large number of heterosexuals who move through this adolescent phase and never look back.

Already any child with androgynous appearance or mannerisms -- effeminate boys and masculine girls -- are being nurtured and guided (or taunted and abused) into "accepting" what many of them never suspected they had -- a desire to permanently move into homosexual society.

In other words, society will bend all its efforts to seize upon any hint of homosexuality in our young people and encourage it.

Seriously folks. Are we so adjusted to the idea that there always has to be a dominant pressure, a societal push, whether it be male superiority or spread the good gay gospel, that we can't see a world without such oppressive boundaries? It's the same kind of argument that leads people to believe that feminists seeking to change the reality of patriarchy are going for the reverse, a female-dominant society.

More hard evidence, please:

The dark secret of homosexual society -- the one that dares not speak its name -- is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally.

Finally, all this talk about "activist judges." What the crap? Um, yeah, they have the power to decide what is constitutional and fair under the law. They were elected or appointed. So were the men and women in Congress, and our President (although it remains open to debate). When I make a fuss about how Bush is not representing my interests and those of the people around me that share my feelings, I'm unpatriotic and a bleeding heart. I protested the war in Iraq. I seethed when Bush made his "I can't be swayed by a special interest group" comment. So, I guess I can understand why some opponents of same sex marriage feel they've been taken advantage of by the actions of the Massachusetts court. However, they in fact were acting with people in mind, with people's right to the pursuit of happiness and so forth. In my opinion Bush led us into a war we had no business even thinking about, and sent Americans to fight it. Whose interests are really being represented here? I ask you this.

Ready for that cake? I might as well learn to make one in training for my natural role as a wife and mother. After all, I plan to have a traditional, God-fearing, heterosexual marriage just like my parents, because they've been such good role models.

[A Final Note: You can also laugh at Orson, because on top of being silly and misguided, he can't spell, either. Two of the three genuinely mispelled words in my post came from his quotes. Tee hee. I win! ;)]