Gallagher campaigning for Rick Santorum in 2012. (Credit: Lathan Goumas, MLive.com)

Earlier this week, Maggie Gallagher tried to assert that championing heterosexuality does not denigrate gay people, even though her specific goal in doing so is to deny them the same legal protections of marriage. In a follow-up post at the National Review also excerpted by the National Organization for Marriage, Gallagher doubled down on this claim, even unflinchingly quoting ThinkProgress’s response. The guise of her post was an explanation of why infertile straight couples should still be allowed to marry — they are “part of the natural lifecycle of marriage” — but she then directly responded to ThinkProgress’s argument:

Marriage equality is going to be used primarily to enforce the new moral norm: no differences between straight and gay can matter.  Or as Think Progress put it recently “At a basic level, it’s logically impossible to say that heterosexuality is better — or should be the norm — compared to homosexuality without simultaneously stating that homosexuality is worse — or abnormal. Either all people are equal in society or they are not; she cannot have her straights-only wedding cake and eat it stigma-free.”

It is possible to affirm an ideal without stigmatizing the alternatives — to affirm in the positive without pushing the negative.  But gay marriage advocates insist that any affirmation of the ideal represents a denigration of them, no matter how expressed.

The problem with Gallagher’s argument is that she does push the negative. There would be no need to highlight her attempts to justify heterosexism if she were not also justifying the idea that the gay community should be denied access to the securities and benefits of marriage.

Conservatives have exerted an incredible amount of effort to find talking points that oppose same-sex marriage without sounding anti-gay. In fact, they have found ways to talk about their position on marriage without even mentioning gay people. As a consequence, they’ve painted themselves into some amusing rhetorical corners, arguing that even straight adoption is inferior (though they don’t oppose it) and marriage somehow keeps older men from cheating on their post-menopausal wives. But despite their best claims to not be bigots, their motives continue to focus on relegating the gay community to second-class status.

Gallagher, NOM, and other conservatives regularly mention other values they have regarding marriage besides not allowing gay people access, such as opposition to divorce. But they don’t campaign against divorce — only marriage equality. If Gallagher truly does not want to perpetuate stigma against gay people, then she should discourage any attempt to codify her “ideal” into exclusive laws that discriminate.

Today the Nevada Assembly voted 27-14 to approve a constitutional amendment that would repeal the 2002 amendment banning same-sex marriage. Combined with the Senate approval from April, this completes the amendment’s first phase of approval. Both chambers must approve the measure a second time during 2015 legislative session, following which it will be advanced to the ballot in November, 2016.

Unless a constitutional amendment is repealed in the interim in another state, Nevada would be the first state to repeal its own constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

As Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld supported the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” recognizing that the time for open service in the military “had arrived.” In an interview with Larry King, however, Rumsfeld explained that he doesn’t support marriage equality, because he’s concerned it will lead to polygamy. He also doesn’t believe marriage is a civil right:

KING: Do you support same-sex marriage?

RUMSFELD: You know, I’m, I guess, of a generation that I don’t — I wonder — I listened to some of the Supreme Court justices and one of them said, ‘Well what’s next after that? Is it two people, three people?‘

KING: But you were a strong supporter of civil rights in Congress — I remember that.

RUMSFELD: You bet I was, throughout the 60s. I was proud of the work that the Congress did in the 1964 legislation and 1965 legislation. I guess I just don’t equate the two, and it’s not a subject I’m knowledgeable about. I guess the Rumsfeld here is: I don’t know.

Watch it:

A new poll from Vanderbilt University shows that support for legally recognizing same-sex couples continues to grow in Tennessee, but at rates slower than the rest of the country. A 49 percent plurality now support civil unions or marriage equality, while 46 percent remain opposed to both. Still, 62 percent believe that gays and lesbians should receive health insurance and other employee benefits for their partners, while only 31 percent oppose that idea.

A number of anti-gay bills related to education died in the Tennessee legislature this year, but lawmakers did designate August 31 as “ido4life Traditional Marriage Day,” a day committed to condemning same-sex marriage.

Andrew Walker and Ryan Anderson

The Heritage Foundation’s Ryan Anderson, a disciple of National Organization for Marriage former chairman Robert George, has become a national spokesperson for opposition to marriage equality. In a new piece for Focus on the Family co-written with Heritage’s Andrew Walker, they make “a Millennial case for marriage,” citing a litany of arguments about the importance of not “redefining marriage.” Strikingly, not one of their arguments actually addresses the lives of gay people, and in turn, not one of their points would actually be compromised by same-sex couples marrying.

Here are some of their claims, many of which derive from an arbitrary definition of marriage that “men and women are different and complementary”:

Children Need To Have Fathers

Borrowing a tactic from NOM, Anderson and Walker invoke President Obama’s concerns about how growing up without a father has a significant negative impact on children.  They conclude, “fathers matter, and marriage helps to connect fathers to mothers and children.” But abandoned single mothers have nothing to do with same-sex couples, and studies about “fatherlessness” do not even include lesbian families in their samples. Heterosexual men deserting their families is a legitimate societal concern, but it has nothing to do with same-sex families.

Children Do Best With A Mother And Father

Without referencing a single citation — not even Mark Regnerus — Anderson and Walker proclaim, “For decades, social science has shown that children tend to do best when reared by their married mother and father.” It may be true that children do better with both of their parents as opposed to only one, but social science has found that committed same-sex couples are just as capable of effectively raising children.

They later acknowledge that a “relatively small number” of gay or lesbian couples “would be” raising children — avoiding the reality that they already are — but offer no thought as to how those families would actually benefit from the protections of marriage outlined throughout the rest of the post.

Men Will No Longer Stay Committed To Their Wives

This continues to be one of the most absurd arguments against marriage equality: “Redefining marriage would diminish the social pressures and incentives for husbands to remain with their wives and their biological children, and for men and women to marry before having children.” Whether men will cheat on their wives has nothing to do with whether same-sex couples can marry.

Marital Norms Will Dissolve

Anderson and Walker’s slippery slope suggests that if marriages were reduced to just “intense emotional regard,” they would not have to be permanent, limited to two people, sexually exclusive, or oriented to raising families. But all of these points are already true of opposite-sex couples: many divorce, some practice polygamy, plenty cheat or are open, and none have any obligation to raise children. This argument also undercuts the important protections that couples themselves gain from marriage through that “intense emotional regard,” particularly as they age. Because they don’t have access to marriage, older same-sex couples struggle economically and face extra hurdles to care for each other.

Marriage Equality Discriminates Against Christians

Somehow marriage equality “further marginalizes those with traditional views and erodes religious liberty.” Anderson and Walker are concerned that people who are prejudiced against same-sex couples marrying will be perceived as prejudiced, which just isn’t fair. Borrowing another popular talking point, they claim that Catholic Charities in Massachusetts was “forced to discontinue adoption services,” when in fact they voluntarily shut down because of their insistence on discriminating. They’re also afraid elementary school children will learn that same-sex couples exist, ignoring that they’ll already learn that if their classmates’ parents are same-sex couples. The underlying objection here seems to be that marriage equality will make it harder for Christians to discriminate against the gay community — discrimination for discrimination’s sake.

Society Will ‘Self-Correct On Marriage Over Time’

Anderson and Walker conclude their piece by constructing a narrative of momentum for opposition to marriage equality, imagining “Americans committed to marriage coming out of the shadows.” This optimism for their cause ignores that people of all ages are increasingly supporting same-sex marriage, a trend driven most robustly by the young people they claim to represent. Their hope is that when young people marry, they’ll appreciate the “gendered nature of parenting,” but what seems more likely is that they will only further appreciate just how much respect and security is denied to same-sex couples.

Research has previously demonstrated that ballot initiatives to ban same-sex marriage create psychological stress for the gay community, and new analysis from a massive National Institutes of Health study has confirmed the same effect. Around 2004, NIH began conducting interviews for a massive mental health survey, then followed up with the same participants a year later. In the 13 states that approved constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage that year, there was a sharp increase in psychological disorders among people who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual, according to Columbia University psychologist Mark Hatzenbuehler:

“Lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals who lived in the states that banned same sex marriage experienced a significant increase in psychiatric disorders,” Hatzenbuehler says.

“There was a 37 percent increase in mood disorders,” he says, “a 42 percent increase in alcohol-use disorders, and — I think really strikingly — a 248 percent increase in generalized anxiety disorders.”

To put those numbers in perspective, although Hatzenbuehler did find more than a doubling in the rate of anxiety disorders in states that eventually banned gay marriage, in absolute numbers he found that anxiety disorders went from being reported among 2.7 percent to 9.4 percent of gay, lesbian and bisexual people.

The effect was unique to members of the gay community and unique to those states, not occurring among LGB people in states that didn’t have ballot measures that year. Hatzenbuehler attributes the psychological stress to negative media portrayals, anti-gay graffiti, a general loss of safety, and a feeling of directly targeted for discrimination.

Conservatives regularly claim that there are “health consequences” associated with being gay, but they rarely admit that it’s their rhetoric and tactics that are responsible.

President Obama delivered the commencement speech this weekend at Morehouse College, an historically black all-male liberal arts school in Georgia. His remarks were remarkably gay-inclusive, challenging the graduates to be the best husband they can be even if their partner isn’t female, and to recognize the kind of oppression other groups experience, including gays and lesbians:

OBAMA: And that’s what I’m asking all of you to do:  Keep setting an example for what it means to be a man.  Be the best husband to your wife, or your boyfriend, or your partner.  Be the best father you can be to your children.  Because nothing is more important. [...]

As Morehouse Men, many of you know what it’s like to be an outsider; know what it’s like to be marginalized; know what it’s like to feel the sting of discrimination.  And that’s an experience that a lot of Americans share.  Hispanic Americans know that feeling when somebody asks them where they come from or tell them to go back.  Gay and lesbian Americans feel it when a stranger passes judgment on their parenting skills or the love that they share.  Muslim Americans feel it when they’re stared at with suspicion because of their faith.  Any woman who knows the injustice of earning less pay for doing the same work — she knows what it’s like to be on the outside looking in.

So your experiences give you special insight that today’s leaders need.  If you tap into that experience, it should endow you with empathy — the understanding of what it’s like to walk in somebody else’s shoes, to see through their eyes, to know what it’s like when you’re not born on 3rd base, thinking you hit a triple.  It should give you the ability to connect.  It should give you a sense of compassion and what it means to overcome barriers.

Watch the full address (HT: Towleroad):

In 2009, Morehouse College was the subject of controversy for instituting a dress code that seemed to specifically target gay men who occasionally cross-dressed. More recently, the university established a scholarship in the name of gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin and also began offering its first Black LGBT History course.

As state legislatures around the country move to enact marriage equality and civil unions, an anti-gay Christian legal and policy coalition calling itself the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has become a ubiquitous presence at committee hearings. But their misleading testimony in defense of the right to discriminate has done virtually nothing to advance their cause — and may even undermine it.

As the Delaware Senate debated a marriage equality bill earlier this month, opponents brought ADF senior counsel Jordan Lorence to the floor to offer testimony. Lorence noted a case in New Mexico (a state which don’t even allow same-sex marriage), in which an anti-gay vendor had faced legal action after violating state civil rights laws, and suggested that he believes such public accommodations laws are unconstitutional. “It’s the business owners that deal with weddings. It’s licensed professionals having their licenses threatened because they believe the wrong things about marriage,” he told the Senators.

Delaware state Sen. Dave Sokola (D), lead Senate sponsor of the bill, told ThinkProgress that Lorence’s right-to-discriminate arguments actually helped solidify support for the bill:

We had recently added “sexual orientation” to our non-discrimination statute in 2009, and debated and passed Civil Unions just 2 years ago. Even with a large turn-over in both the House and Senate, this issue was very fresh in many of our minds. Equality Delaware did a tremendous outreach to all, with a special emphasis on our newer legislators, so there was sufficient understanding of the matter, and I do think he just firmed up the positions of all on the prevailing side. We also now have a 4-year track record of how Delaware businesses are doing with respect to this, and the predictions of our opponents have not come true since we enacted either of the previous bills. The facts have significantly diminished their credibility.

Lorence also made this argument to the Delaware House of Representatives. Sokola’s House counterpart, Rep. Melanie Smith (D), told ThinkProgress: “I believe he was mistaken in much of what he said and misrepresented the bill significantly.” She added that as far as she knew, “no votes were swayed by his testimony.” The bill passed both chambers and was signed into law by Gov. Jack Markell (D).

Lorence also offered similar testimony in 2011 before the Maryland House Judiciary Committee, warning that “small businesses that decline to serve or participate in same-sex ceremonies could be sued for discrimination by a public accommodation,” ignoring the fact that Maryland law had prohibited such discrimination since 2001. The committee recommended the bill and voters enacted the law last year. Read more