Struggling to find a way to stay relevant as the nation celebrates the passage of marriage equality in New York, the Heritage Foundation Foundry blog offers five “impacts” of the vote. Unsurprisingly, Heritage’s anti-equality talking points lack any originality and definitely do not measure up as “impacts”:
“IMPACT” 1: The vote continues an adverse trend for marriage law in New York.
REALITY: Heritage points out New York was the last state to allow no-fault divorce and that people are now more likely to cohabitate and have children out of wedlock. Two questions: 1) If less people want to be married, is that a reflection on the people’s commitment or on the desirability of the institution of marriage? 2) What does less people wanting to get married have to do with more people (same-sex couples) wanting to get married?
“IMPACT” 2: The policy change emanates from a legislature and is reversible by the legislature.
REALITY: Opponents of marriage equality can “vow to take the New York law to referendum” all they want. New York doesn’t have a referendum process, so they won’t get very far.
“IMPACT” 3: Religious liberty is suffering a death of a thousand cuts, and the collision of religious/moral conscience and nondiscrimination laws still looms.
REALITY: “Nondiscrimination statutes…hurt religious and moral freedoms.” How nice to see it stated so obviously — the supposed freedom being infringed upon is the “freedom” to discriminate against the LGBT community.
“IMPACT” 4: Redefinition of the family is the clear goal of same-sex marriage activists.
REALITY: It’s unclear what definition of “family” Heritage is referring to. Same-sex families were just as much families on Thursday as they were on Saturday. Now, though, those 14,000 children already being raised by same-sex couples in New York can be legally protected.
“IMPACT” 5: Marriage is a mega-issue and merits a full-scale national debate in 2012.
REALITY: Heritage stops short of admitting that a majority of Americans now consistently support marriage equality. If marriage is a so-called “mega-issue” that will dominate the 2012 elections, groups on the anti-equality side of that debate should prepare for the worst.
Here is one real impact of Friday night’s vote: The more than 42,000 same-sex couples living in New York can now obtain legal protections for their relationships and simultaneously boost New York’s economy. How did that not make Heritage’s list?
Previous in TP LGBT
By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the ThinkProgress Privacy Policy and agree to the ThinkProgress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policies as applicable, which can be found here.