Holy shit. If you read the comments sections of any article dealing with the recent gay marriage decision by the SCOTUS you would think they had just passed a law legalizing rape or something. That is how virulent some people are when taking to the message boards on major media sites. And I’m talking left leaning sites like MSNBC. And it’s not just news sites. It’s all over facebook too.

When I started this blog I originally intended to write about ‘controversial’ things and hot topics like gay marriage, weed, or firearm ownership and it sorta turned into a blog about movie reviews. I kept at it because honestly talking about Guardians of the Galaxy is way more fun than arguing with people about bullshit, but enough is enough already.

I’ll admit that I don’t usually give racism a full shake because nowadays hating on people based on their race is so socially shunned that people have simply become closet racists. But I gotta tell you, I am pretty fucking shocked at how anti-gay people still are, especially here in the U.S. Granted, I did not think the entire country was one giant San Francisco, but it’s not exactly a Disney movie out there either.

Here are some broad categories of reasons I’ve found people use to justify being anti-gay. I’ll show why they are wrong, but even better, I’ll do it using their own reasoning against them.

Religion

Some religious people are anti-gay because they claim it’s against God’s will. God looks down on homosexuality and we know because they bible tells us so. Arguing with Christians about this is pointless because they believe this in their soul of souls. So don’t argue with them.

To simplify things, let us play along and say there is for fact a God, that this God looks down on homosexuality as a sin, and that homosexuals are condemned to hell. Let’s say this is 100% fact, written in the stars. God came down from heaven last week and told everyone live on CNN.

All that being said and known, why would religious people worry themselves about gays, or if gays were getting married?

Joe fucks Steve, Joe marries Steve, Joe and Steve go to hell. How does this concern Billy Bible?

If Joe and Steve go to hell, it’s not like Billy Bible gets dragged along for the ride, so what does he care what gays do or who they do it with, so long as everyone is a consenting adult?

I can understand being against things like murder, or rape, or theft, because these things have victims; the person who was murdered, raped, or robbed. But who exactly are the non-homosexual victims of homosexuality?

Homophobes

It’s hard to discern who is antigay and who is full blown homophobe but I am very perplexed specifically by people, especially men, who are always vehemently against gay dudes.

Gay dudes are a straight bachelors best friend, his guardian angel.

I mean fellas, come on. Every gay dude in existence is one less competitor in the world of heterosexual dating for men.

When I was 21 and single, it would have been nothing short of a miracle if half the male population decided they liked pole instead of hole. After all, less straight men means more straight women for the rest of us guys!

My thought here is that guys who are always complaining about gay guys are just jealous that others had the courage to come out of the closet before they did.

Mental Disease

Then there is a whole crowd of people who think, or at least claim to think that homosexuality is a mental disease or illness. Honestly, who the fuck knows. I’m not a doctor. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but either way I don’t see how it matters.

Again, let’s just play along with this crowd for the sake of argument. Let’s say we establish without a doubt that homosexuality is a mental illness. Okay, now what?

Do we now hate on people because they have a mental illness?

Do we now prohibit people from getting married because they have a mental illness?

The people who think it’s perfectly acceptable to hate on gays or prohibit them from getting married, would they feel the same way about people with other, currently established mental illnesses?

Do they share this same hatred for people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia? Would they be okay with prohibiting people with Tourette’s from getting married?

These people are another case of homophobes in denial, and they try to cover it up by playing doctor.

It’s a Choice

When the mental disease card gets overplayed, some people regress to sexuality being a choice.

Usually when this card gets thrown down on facebook or on the internet, the entire discussion becomes some stupid drawn out debate about whether or not people choose to be gay or straight, or if it’s innate.

But those arguments are fucking stupid. Because again, what difference does it make?

Whether you choose to be, or are born a Republican, an introvert, a homosexual, or left handed, what difference does it make?

People choose their religion and we don’t use that as a basis for discrimination.

I mean really, what’s the argument here? “Homosexuality would be okay if that’s actually the way you were born, but since you chose to be gay, fuck you. No marriage for you.”

The Misguided Small-Government Advocate

This one is perhaps the most frustrating because their stance on being against gay-marriage is supposedly rooted in some sort of anti-government libertarianism gone awry. It’s particularly frustrating to me because I’m libertarian.

A lot of people misinterpret libertarianism as being anti-government. True, a lot of libertarians are anti-government but that’s more of a symptom of the cause. The root of libertarianism is about keeping the government out of other people business. This means keeping the government out of your pocket, out of your church, and out of your bedroom. It just so happens that the only proven way to accomplish this is to have a small government.

I recently got into a bit of a debate with a friend of mine on facebook about the recent SCOTUS ruling on gay marriage, and he said “Notwithstanding sexual orientation, I still don’t understand what the government is doing sticking its nose in marriage in the first place.”

I was a little confused by this comment because it misunderstands whose nose is in whose business.

The recent ruling wasn’t pushing the government’s nose into marriage.

The ruling was pulling religion’s nose out of marriage.

So while the church and it’s followers cannot prohibit gays from getting a legal marriage, the state cannot compel the church to perform gay marriage ceremonies.

Religious Marriage vs. State Marriage

My friend then went on to say “Marriage should remain a religious ceremony.” To be honest I don’t even know the term to describe why this thinking is incorrect. It’s almost like some form of anterograde amnesia, where the sufferer has the inability to learn new information.

Yes, marriage is a religious ceremony when we’re talking about in the context of religion.

But the same word “marriage” can also mean the merger of any two things, such as “The United States is a shining example of the marriage of capitalism and democracy.”

Marriage has also been adopted by the state for legal use which can mean any two people getting married. Not just a man and another man, but also a secular heterosexual couple who gets married.

For some reason though this seems to result in some sort of mental short circuit for some people. They fail to grasp that religious ‘marriage’ and state ‘marriage’ are homonyms, or “one of a group of words that share the same spelling and pronunciation but have different meanings”.

Disguising Anti-Gay as being Pro-Religion

One of the more well-known claims that has lost some popularity in the past couple years is the whole argument of gay marriage ruining the sanctity of marriage. This can be shot down with my homonym argument above, but let’s take a detour for a second.

The whole premise behind this is religious people thinking that two gay dudes getting married is somehow against god and against the church.

But why then don’t religious folk make the same huss and fuss over two atheists, a man and a woman, going to the local court house to get hitched, when this clearly is an example of a non-religious marriage?

For decades in the US, secular couples have been having non-denominational and non-religious weddings. Why does gay marriage make it on to their radar?

Misinterpreting the Supreme Court’s Ruling

Of course, the whole cause of this recent hoopla is Obergefell v. Hodges which will no doubt be in our kids history books in 15 years, alongside Roe vs. Wade and other landmark decisions.

Up until now legislation and court rulings on gay marriage have been at the state level. You’d think a ruling from the mother fuckin’ Supreme Court would finally lay the issue to rest but it hasn’t.

Many people are now claiming that the SCOTUS overstepped it’s bounds, as this person here posted on MSNBC.com,

What people fail to realize is that the Supreme Court didn’t make a new law. They simply stated that any laws that allow marriage discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation are unconstitutional, based on laws we already have in force, i.e. the law of the land, our constitution.

Conclusion

When you boil it down most of the arguments against gays or against gay marriage are pretty stupid. By that I mean none of them are so complicated that they even merit a Socratic seminar. Half the arguments can be won by using their own belief system against them. The other half can be dismissed with “yeah, and?”

I’m fucking tired. It’s like 11:57pm and I’m pooped.

To the gays of the U.S., congrats. You should celebrate. After a long and grueling battle, 8,000 gay pride parades later, you’ve finally won your right to get a gay divorce!

Gotcha!