“Gays have the same right as anyone else—the right to marry someone of the opposite sex.”
“You know, I hadn’t really thought about that before, but that might actually be a great idea.”
“What?”
“In other words, all the gay men will go out and find a straight wife, and all the lesbians will go out and find a straight husband. Then they’ll all raise families, and all those kids will have one gay parent. The social impact could be enormous!”
“Um, well—”
“Just think about it: gays won’t be faceless strangers any more. They’ll be getting together with families for the holidays, and getting to know the in-laws, and getting into the PTA and Sunday schools and coaching and all the things that parents do. Of course, they probably all have to find Christian spouses.”
“What? Why Christian?”
“Well, think about it from the spouse’s point of view. Would you want to get stuck with someone who was never going to be sexually attracted to you, and only slept with you out of politeness? I mean sure, it would be great knowing your wife was never going to have an affair with another man, or that your husband wasn’t secretly flirting with lady friends at work, but we’re talking about marrying someone who isn’t even hetero. Who else but a Christian would make that kind of sacrifice just to make sure gays had the same opportunities to marry as everyone else?
“Dude, you’re crazy! I wasn’t talking about Christians marrying gays, I was talking about them marrying each other.”
“But that’s what you’re fighting against, isn’t it?”
“You know what I mean, wise guy. I’m talking about gay men marrying lesbian women.”
“Oh, I see. So the kids would grow up having two gay parents.”
“What? No, I—um—”
“An entire generation of kids raised by two gay parents! That would be so awesome. That ought to prove once and for all that gay couples are just as good at parenting as hetero couples. They’d probably be even better, don’t you think?”
“No way, forget it dude. It’ll never happen.”
“Why not?”
“Because, man! Gays aren’t going to marry lesbians. They aren’t even attracted to each other.”
“So you’re saying gays don’t have any opportunity to get married? All this ‘defending marriage’ stuff is just to make sure gays have no choice but to stay single?”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it that way, exactly…”
“But it is the truth, right?”
“Look, I don’t care about gays, all right? I’m not trying to persecute them.”
“Then why not let them have the same opportunities as everyone else? Why go out of your way to interfere in their lives, just to deny them an equal opportunity to marry the ones they love?”
Nicely done, but I have a hard time believing you could find a homophopic asshole religiotard who was so clear in his views. And not a single, “but GOD!” ?
Heh, nice.
Another angle I’ve thought of approaching this is that if one is going to be so literally minded, then prohibitions on same-sex marriage fall apart because it discriminates on the basis of gender. Men can marry women, but women are not afforded the same right? (and vice-versa, of course) Sounds like a straightforward violation of the equal protection clause to me — don’t even have to decide whether the 14th Amendment applies to sexual orientation.
I asked a gay (non-practicing, and extremely homophobic) Christian the other day why he was so anti-gay. He thought about it for a second, and replied:
It’s REALLY frustrating. You defeat every single contrived argument as to why gays are bad for society etc, and it still just comes back to “It doesn’t make sense to me either, but God knows best so I’m going to do my best to support His will.”
Igakusei, at that point, you really need to nail them.
How? By asking them how they know that’s what god wants. Then, when they point to the few lines in Leviticus, or wherever, you need to have handy a lot of the other prohibitions and rules (shellfish, unruly kids being stoned, etc.) and ask why they only think it’s important to follow that one rule so much. More importantly, why it’s so important for other people, who may not even be xian, to follow those rules, and why haven’t they stoned their kids to death yet? =)
And they’ll say “Jesus changed the law, and Romans Chapter 1,” to which you reply “Man changed the Bible, Romans Chapter 1 Verse 33, checkmate.”
Hmm, I can’t find Romans I:33. Romans 1 seems to end at 32.
Those bastards, how dare they cut out verse 33? It used to say, “Just kidding.”
Don’t forget the preface to Genesis.