Marriage is somehow keeping this man committed to his fun-loving wife so he doesn't get some young girl pregnant.

During Tuesday’s oral arguments about Proposition 8, Justice Elena Kagan challenged attorney Charles Cooper about his claims that procreation is the purpose of marriage. She inquired whether a couple over the age of 55 should be allowed to marry since they could no longer produce a child. Cooper attempted to counter with the absurd argument from his reply brief that men are still fertile and that prevents them from cheating with younger women. Since he didn’t get to fully articulate his point, the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg is happy to help him out:

Perhaps Cooper was wary of appearing sexist to Justice Kagan if he stated the truth more bluntly—55-year-old women are virtually always infertile, but 55-year-old men are not. As frustrating as it may be to some feminists, there are some sex differences which cannot be overcome. (Justice Antonin Scalia tried to save Cooper with a joke about Strom Thurmond, the late U.S. Senator who continued to father children well into his 70’s, but it seemed to go over the audience’s heads.)

Society’s interest in promoting “responsible procreation”—the term most commonly used in defending marriage as the union of a man and a woman—involves not just promoting procreation itself, and promoting it in a responsible context (i.e., where the mother and father who make a child are both committed to the child and to each other through marriage). “Responsible procreation” also implies an effort to discourage irresponsible procreation—a quite plausible example of which might be a 55-year-old man going around impregnating fertile women (presumably younger than himself) who are not his wife.

Sprigg does not share Cooper’s concern about appearing sexist. Apparently, the fertility of the marriage is only defined by whether the man can still produce sperm. It also doesn’t seem to matter if women cheat or if men cheat with older women, because cheating only seems to be a problem if it results in “irresponsible procreation.” It’s unclear what the stakes are if the man is sterile, and presumably a vasectomy would immediately nullify a marriage license.

Obviously this is all nonsense, but this is the corner conservatives have painted themselves into in an attempt to avoid sounding like they’re anti-gay. By turning against heterosexuals instead, they prove that these arguments have nothing to do with same-sex marriage. Whether marriage is about children, monogamy, or simply reinforcing sexist gender norms, none of these points explains why same-sex couples shouldn’t have equal access to it.

Today the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee has been hearing testimony regarding Senate Bill 449, the Fairness for All Marylanders Act, which would finally add gender identity to the state’s nondiscrimination protections. Unfortunately, the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg was on hand to testify his belief that transgender people have a “disconnect with reality” and need counseling, not protection under the law:

SPRIGG: A person who believes they are, or wishes to be, the opposite sex from that which is written in the chromosomes of every cell of his or her body, is suffering from a disconnection with an immutable biological reality. The solution to this problem is not actions – up to and including self-mutilating surgery amputating healthy body parts – which will reinforce this disconnect with reality. The solution is compassionate counseling aimed at helping the individual to uncover the psychological roots of their gender identity problems, and to become comfortable with one’s actual biological sex.

I understand the motivation behind this bill – the sponsors are concerned about the pain in the lives of these individuals, and hope that this intervention will ease that pain.

While I share that motivation, I must oppose this bill because it will not work. This bill would force the state and private actors – employers, landlords, and others who provide public services – to officially and legally affirm the very delusion that puts these suffering individuals at odds with reality. Not only will it not make their lives better, but it will prevent them from getting the very help they do need to make their lives better.

Sprigg is making two very offensive points here; not only is he claiming that trans people are “suffering” from a mental illness, but he’s also saying that they deserve to be discriminated against as a result. Leave aside the fact that the psychology professionals recommend affirming trans people in their gender identity, FRC wants it to be legal to fire, deny housing, and deny basic services to transgender people, who are already quite vulnerable to such discrimination. Sprigg has previously called for criminal sanctions against homosexuality and the exportation of gays and lesbians. It’s such campaigns against basic humanity that warrant FRC’s designation as a “hate group.” (HT: Joe.My.God.)

For reasons that remain unclear, cable news networks continue to provide airtime to the Family Research Council, neglecting to recognize that it has been designated as a hate group for its anti-gay views, let alone the fact that it hardly represents mainstream Christianity. Today was no exception, as FRC’s Peter Sprigg was invited on CNN to join the chorus of conservative objections that Pastor Louie Giglio will no longer be participating in President Obama’s Inauguration because of his anti-gay views. Sprigg attempted to claim that Christians are the victims, but fortunately, Truth Wins Out’s Wayne Besen was there to set the record straight:

SPRIGG: The world we live in, unfortunately, is increasingly marked by the enforcement of intolerance in the name of tolerance, exclusion in the name of inclusion, and forced uniformity in the name of diversity. It’s contradictory, it’s downright Orwellian, and yet people actually make these statements, unbelievably, with a straight face. [...]

BESEN: Peter, I find it ironic that you’re embracing diversity. I mean you called for the imprisonment of gay people and said we should export homosexuals out of the United States and suddenly you’re for tolerance? I’m a little confused here.

SPRIGG: [silent laughter] Well this is about Pastor Giglio and President Obama, it’s not about me.

Watch it:

Jeremy Hooper is right to celebrate this as a victory for GLAAD’s Commentator Accountability Project, which seeks to expose the anti-LGBT records of conservative spokespeople whose positions are typically not given proper context by the news outlets that interview them. Sprigg’s presence on CNN is the quintessential example of this whitewashing, because as Besen pointed out, his positions are seemingly even more anti-LGBT than Pastor Giglio’s. Sprigg has proven time and time again that he does not even have the most basic understanding of sexuality but does have a significant antipathy toward the very existence of gays and lesbians. He has no authority to speak about LGBT issues, and CNN should learn from this interview not to provide a pedestal for his bigoted point of view again.