Brian Brown is a Dolt (Separate but Equal Edition)

Hey, Brian! Caught your official National Organization for Marriage (NOM) press release yesterday, which “Criticizes President’s Decision to Divide Nation Over Marriage on Inauguration Day.”  So … can we talk?

Washington, D.C. — Brian Brown, President of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), criticized President Obama’s decision to use his Inauguration Day address to further divide the nation on the question of what is marriage.

Really? You mean he came up with something new to divide us?  Because, you know, the nation is already divided on whether gays should be allowed to marry — though an increasing number, now at least a plurality, think they should.

The President chose to make a veiled reference …

Can you be divisive if you’re making only veiled references?

… to redefine marriage when he said “our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law.”

Well, he might have been talking about labor law, where in many (most?) places, employees can still be fired for being homosexual. Nobody asks about your sexual habits with your wife when you apply for a job, Brian, but apparently it remains something that you can get terminated for … if you’re gay.

But, no, I suppose he was primarily talking about marriage equality.

“Gay and lesbian people are already treated equally under the law,” Brian Brown responded. “They have the same civil rights as anyone else; they have the right to live as they wish and love whom they choose.

Far be it from me to disagree, Brian, but bullshit. We’ve already noted how employment prejudice is legal, something I think we’ll both agree impacts gays much more than straights.

But while the courts have ruled that homosexual acts can’t be made illegal  (Lawrence v. Texas, which I suspect you weren’t thrilled about, either, Brian), the idea that simply legalizing gay sex is the same as giving gays the same right as straights is being obtuse.

Because, of course, “love and marriage … go together like a horse and carriage.”  But according to NOM, gays cannot — or should not — be married.  The legal rights, privileges, advantages, and obligations that come with marriage are off the table.

That is not equal treatment under the law, Brian.

What they don’t have is the right to redefine marriage for all of society.

No … society has that right. It has that right through its own changing mores. It has that right through legislative and executive action by elected representatives. And it has that right through a system of government with a constitution that does things like demand equal protection under the law.

And how does allowing gays to marry redefine it?  When interracial marriage was legalized, did that “redefine” marriage for same-race couples?

In fact, six federal courts have rejected the idea that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court in a summary decision in 1972.

Hmmm. Roe v. Wade was in 1973. Are you suggesting that can’t or shouldn’t be revisited, either?

In point of fact, in more recent years, a variety of federal courts in recent years have upheld gay equality under the law — regarding DOMA, regarding gay marriage (in California), etc.

Furthermore, the vast majority of states have codified the commonsense view held for thousands of years that marriage is the union of a man and a woman.

It is common, but not necessarily sensible.  It is traditional, which is fine enough, but there have been lots of traditional things that we gave up or changed over time.

The President is profoundly wrong to imply that those who have acted to protect marriage have denied anyone’s rights by doing so.”

I’ll note that the UN’s the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 23, notes that marriage is a fundamental human right. Of course, we all know the UN is the font of all evil. So, closer to home, we have fourteen Supreme Court rulings have identified marriage as a fundamental, foundational civil right.

So how is it not depriving gays a right if they can have a loving, caring, intimate, lifelong relationship, alike in every fundamental way to a straight couple, with the exception of the plumbling … but can’t get a civil marriage?

Brown continued: “A presidential inauguration should be a time for the nation to come together; instead President Obama chose to voice his support for a radical agenda advanced by some of his biggest campaign contributors to redefine marriage for everyone.

Note, Brian: not all supporters of gay marriage are, in fact, gay.

Indeed, given that plurality (at least; some polls give it a majority) that favors gay marriage, calling it a “radical agenda” wavers between paranoid, hyperbolic, and just plain silly.

Marriage brings our nation together.

Agreed, Brian, unless you start arbitrarily excluding folks from it.

The concept of gay ‘marriage’ would have been totally alien to our founding fathers, …

Interracial and inter-religious marriage would have been totally outrageous to most of our founding fathers, too, Brian.  Copyright issues regarding for moving pictures and television and Internet video sites would have been inconceivable.  The idea of firearms that could shoot as fast as the finger could pull the trigger — or even faster — would have been sheerest fantasy.  So?

… and the protection and advancement of marriage between one man and one woman will immeasurably serve the common good of this country and further strengthen our Union.

So you say.

Today the President should have thrown his support behind this beautiful vision of men and women coming together in love to raise the next generation.

I think he did. You just didn’t like the combinations he was recognizing.

Nonetheless, we pro-marriage Americans pledge to defend the institution which the President has chosen to undermine once again.”

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, Brian. My marriage doesn’t feel undermined.  A pity that yours is so shaky.

Dolt.