Some inconvenient truths

Turns out gay people are actually people and Salon.com has a great article on the federal debate to amend the constitution to ban gay marriage that illustrates just how hard those pushing this amendment have to work to avoid that fact.

There is something queer about this week's Senate crusade to outlaw gay marriage. If you listen closely, the leaders who oppose single-sex unions refuse to talk about gay people. They talk about activist judges, welfare rolls, the rights of voters and the birthrate of single mothers in Scandinavia. But there is not a gay man, a lesbian woman or a bisexual teenager in the mix.

The reason they don't talk about gay people in the debate is because it's harder to point at actual people and blame them for a bunch of problems they didn't commit than to talk about all the problems in society and blame them in a round about way. It's easier to talk more in general about gay people in other countries you don't know and blame them than it is to convince Americans that the gay couple down the road with the two children that go to school with your kids is personally responsible for the fact that some heterosexual couple got a divorce last week.

Just asked Vice President Dick Cheney how hard it is to fire up the hate-based crowd in your base on gay marriage when you have to go home and eat dinner with someone you know hasn't broken up any heterosexual marriages just by being gay.

The hate-based wing of the Republican Party tries so hard not to mention actual gay people that they left the reporters at a press conference completely confused.

But rather than talk about gay marriage, a dozen speakers, including Colorado GOP Sen. Wayne Allard, took turns expounding on the importance of loving, two-parent homes for children. They talked about the damage done by deadbeat dads in the inner city, and the importance of family in minority communities. As the Rev. Eve Nunez, an Arizona pastor put it, "America has been wandering in a wilderness of social problems caused by family disintegration."

The press corps who had gathered for the event appeared universally baffled by the argument being made from behind the microphones. "How would outlawing gay marriage encourage heterosexual fathers to stick around?" asked the first wire service reporter to be called on for questions. "Why not outlaw divorce?" another scribe asked Allard later.

Of course they don't address questions like that because the biggest problem for the hate-based crowd is that the statistics don't actually back up their argument.

Furthermore, the American Psychological Association has concluded that gay and lesbian parents are as likely as straight parents to provide supportive healthy environments for their children. There is no scientific evidence that children of homosexual parents are more likely to suffer abuse, psychological hardship or homosexual tendencies. Gay couples have been found to be just as happy -- and just as unhappy -- as heterosexual couples and similarly committed to long-term relationships. Despite significant social stigma, the APA describes multiple surveys that show between 40 and 60 percent of gay men and 45 and 80 percent of lesbian women are currently involved in romantic relationships.

Time of course will tell if the Republicans continue to pander to the extreme branch of their party or if this is a one-time shot to fire up part of their base. Lucky for us all, the group that wrote the constitution made it difficult to amend it in order to protect us from people like those currently running Congress. Another statistic in the article brings hope that after this, Republicans will abandon this effort before they do any damage.

Young Americans are the most likely age group to support gay marriage and the least likely group to consider it a make-or-break issue, a fact that should make Republican political strategists wary.

And while it would be good if the Republicans would abandon this effort for the right reasons, I'll take it any way we can get it.