Swing and a miss

David Quinn, head of the Iona Institute, has posted an article about the California Prop 8 ruling entitled "The redefinition of marriage". Mr. Quinn, for those of you who don't know, is a prominent god botherer who runs a 'conservative think-tank' aimed at defending marriage and families. In truth, Quinn is a dipshit who thinks that somehow he speaks for Catholics a la Bill Donohue. FYI David, catholics already have someone to speak for them, he lives in Rome and wears big silly hats. Normally Mr. Quinn is content to rehash the latest news stories from a catholic point of view, particularly those with an Irish interest. In recent months he has turned his attention to gay marriage, however, particularly with the passing of the Civil Partnership Bill.
Normally I'd be happy to ignore such people but this homophobic diatribe disguised as defending 'traditional marriage' and children is really starting to annoy me. This new piece was actually more amusing than annoying though. In it, he states that the problem with the California ruling is not that the opinions of the voters is being ignored nor that the realm of marriage is not the federal government's proper area (read the 10th amendment) but that the ruling dangerously redefines marriage (which of course is all part of a gay left-wing plot).

It was bad enough in 1950s America with the idea of a red menace without resorting to a new era of McCarthyism by terrifying dumb people about a pink menace.
Mr. Quinn's fatal mistake, is of course the beatuy of the US constitution (and the Irish one for that matter) which doesn't include a definition of marriage. The lawmakers who draft such documents are careful, intelligent people who treat the wording very seriously. It's not the first time that he has made such an error in his interpretation of the constitution. In an earlier post attacking Dermot Ahern, he comments:

But apart from the fact that the Constitution prevents him pressing on to full gay marriage ...

Clearly David Quinn has not bothered to read the Article 41.3.1 of the Irish constitution which states:

The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded, and to protect it against attack.

You will note that nowhere in this passage, or any other passage, are the terms marriage or family defined. 

After this opening gambit, the post really loses touch with reality and tries to argue that gay marriage is the start of a slippery slope towards the downfall of civilisation. While conveniently ignoring the fact that Holland, Belgium, Spain, Canada, Iceland, Portugal, Norway, South Africa, Sweden and Argentina have all legalised same-sex marriage without coming apart at the seams, he argues that if you legalise gay marriage then there is no legal basis for denying polyamorous marriage or a man who wants to marry his cat. 

This is a good example of the kind of straw man argument that David Quinn and other opponents of gay marriage are so fond of using. Clearly the opponents to same-sex marriage have reached the bottom of the barrel of baseless arguments and have resorted to hiding their suppositions in fearmongering and logical fallacies. Look David, we know that you're against gay marriage and we know why you're against gay marriage. The fact of the matter is that the days of Catholicism ruling the country is gone and using the same old religious bullshit to sideswipe the masses isn't going to work on the well-educated, literate, modern society we have today. So please, come clean about your bigotry, don't try to insult our intelligence with pleas to children's welfare and most of all, fuck off. 

By the way, to all religious people who want to use the polygamy argument in opposition to gay marriage, you might want to go back and read your bibles first:

If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. Exodus 21:10

 If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love, when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love. Deuteronomy 21:15-16