Plenty of seemingly unemployable people manage to make decent livings even though they’re consistently wrong. For example: economists (the recession we didn’t see coming is now over), football experts (the Patriots are a lock to win the Super Bowl) and political pollsters (Libby Mitchell will be Maine’s next governor).
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But there’s one group that makes even those purveyors of clunkheadedness-for-cash seem visionary:
Anti-gay activists.
For two decades, these seers of sexuality have pondered their homophobic horoscopes and discovered impending disasters that never came to pass.
During legislative debate in 1989, state Sen. Dennis Dutremble of Biddeford warned, “Nobody knows what problems [granting civil rights to gay men and lesbians] could cause in the future.”
I do. None.
Jasper Wyman, then executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine, offered up a three spot of erroneous gay-rights predictions in 1991.
“If the bill becomes law, private institutions, including churches, will have fewer legal protections in teaching children under their charge the values those institutions embrace.” (The Record, March, 1991.)
“If this bill should become law, it will open a veritable Pandora’s box of legal complexities and uncertainties.” (legislative testimony, March 14, 1991.)
“Some people will go to jail rather than suspend their religious beliefs.” (Bangor Daily News, March 15, 1991.)
Not true, false and ridiculous.
At least Wyman was polite. The anonymous group “Straight PAC” distributed a flyer in ’91 that claimed outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation would lead to children being exposed to “Gay Bowel Syndrome” and allow convicted child molesters to work in day care centers. The following year, Deane Stevens, a member of the group fighting a Portland rights ordinance, told the Portland Press Herald, “I think the big thing is health, and that’s the big thing they seem to think about. Sex, sex, sex – they’re obsessed with it.”
We need a law denying rights to anyone with a prescription for Viagra.
During a 1992 public hearing on ending bias in the Portland school system, Elizabeth Stevens (Deane’s opposite-sex wife) announced, “[Gays] do not have children. What better place to recruit than the school system.”
That’s why so many school kids today are queer.
According to another anonymous flyer distributed in October 1992, gays want to “repeal all state laws governing the age of sexual consent.”
Must have missed that bill in the Legislature.
In 1993, Jonathan Malamude of Concerned Maine Families held a news conference to proclaim that a civil rights law “means that the authorities will want to know your sexual preference – from childhood if possible.”
When I was 6, I didn’t like girls at all.
Malamude’s pal Carolyn Cosby is quoted in the August 23, 1994 Bangor paper as saying gay rights “means we are protecting sexual fantasies someone claims to have.”
Good thing, too, or else my wife would find out what goes through my mind when I watch Meredith Vieira on “Today.”
In 1995, Cosby told Maine Times, “If you make sexual orientation a special classification in Maine, minority block grants would be extended to gay-owned businesses.” During a debate that year in Lewiston, she warned, “If we don’t stop gay rights, it’s … going to hurt your elderly fathers and mothers and disadvantaged minorities.”
Uh, right.
No anthology of misguided prognostications would be complete without one from Michael Heath, the recently departed director of the Maine Family Policy Council. In 1997, Heath told the Press Herald gay rights would threaten the civil liberties of anyone “that decline[s] to celebrate homosexuality.”
Whoopee, I’m celebrating. Don’t take away my liberties.
All these quotations would amount to nothing more than historical examples of the human capacity for grievous error if much of this rhetoric wasn’t being echoed in the current debate over same-sex marriage. Bob Emrich of Plymouth, one of the leaders of Stand for Marriage Maine, recently told the Press Herald that marital equality would require “explicit homosexual instruction in the classroom.”
Too bad that’s not true. It would liven up health class.
Tim Russell of the Maine Jeremiah Project wrote a Press Herald op-ed in which he claimed allowing same-sex weddings “would mean there is no logical, philosophical or legally rational basis for prohibiting people who want multiple wives, multiple husbands or any combination thereof from marrying.”
Except, maybe, common sense.
Finally, there’s the TV spot in which a Boston College law professor foresees “a flood of lawsuits against individuals, small businesses and religious groups; church organizations could lose their tax-exempt status; homosexual marriage taught in public schools whether parents like it or not.”
Do all law profs have such lousy grammar?
And are they all as bad as economists at predictions?
My crystal ball shows you e-mailing me at aldiamon@herniahill.net. Don’t bother. I’ve already read it.
Fear mongering sells, and to quote Obama’ right hand man “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.” Rahm Emanuel
So when you hear about a “crisis” chances are that its being overblown for the effect of pushing an agenda.
Reminds me of the fear tactics like this (note the dates):
Scientists Ask Why World Climate Is Changing; Major Cooling May Be Ahead; Scientists Ponder Why World’s Climate Is Changing; a Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable
By WALTER SULLIVAN
May 21, 1975, Wednesday
Expert Says Arctic Ocean Will Soon Be an Open Sea; Catastrophic Shifts in Climate Feared if Change Occurs Other Specialists See No Thinning of Polar Ice Cap
By WALTER SULLIVAN
February 20, 1969, Thursday
Col. Bernt Balchen, polar explorer and flier, is circulating a paper among polar specialists proposing that the Arctic pack ice is thinning and that the ocean at the North Pole may become an open sea within a decade or two.
Nation’s Energy Crisis: Is Unbridled Growth Indispensable to the Good Life?
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
July 8, 1971, Thursday
In searching for ways to meet the nation’s soaring energy needs without damaging the environment, some American experts are beginning to question one of this country’s most cherished beliefs: the idea that boundless economic growth is indispensable to the good life.
Scientist Fears Equable Climate Around World Could Be Ending
By BOYCE RENSBERGER
October 31, 1972, Tuesday
The current 12,000-year-old era of comfortable climates around the world may be coming to an end, closing another chapter in what a University of Miami scientist believes has been a history of frequent and relatively short-lived ice ages and warm ages.
Al Diamon must have been saving up quotations for a long time: I don’t find him quoting anything more recent than the 1990s. If this is supposed to be relevant to the current debate over changing the definition of the word “marriage,” I don’t see how. Gays have had all the civil rights they could possibly need, for a long time; they can do what they want to do; but now they want it called “marriage” when they do it, even though that isn’t English. I don’t know whether some calamity will result if they get their way; one doesn’t have to be able to predict all possible results of an action to know whether the action makes sense. The whole idea that some group is being denied their civil rights if we will not change the English language to please them is contrary to common sense. Will there be undesirable results if this is done: yes, but one doesn’t need a crystal ball to know that disregard for honest communication is a social evil.
licia, i’m not sure how this escaped you, but the intent of the article was to demonstrate that these irrational fears have been brought up in the past, e.g. the 1990s, and have proven false. so if history is an indicator, which it often is, al’s argument is very relevant to the current debate. furthermore, if you are basing your argument against gay marriage solely on linguistics, then you are sadly mistaken. languages–all of them–change over time, and so do definitions of words. the etymologically speaking, the historical use of the word marriage has no inherent designation as involving both a male and a female. additionally, we use the word marriage loosely all the time, as in a marriage between cultures, between flavors, et cetera. if this is the basis for your protest, i fear you are barking up the wrong tree. maybe gay marriage just gives you the willies?
Licia–speaking as a gay person living in the state of Maine, we do NOT have all the rights and benefits afforded to Maine citizens.
Heterosexual couples in the state of Maine gain, through marriage, access to 300+ civil rights and benefits from the state. Non-heterosexual couples (gays and lesbians) have access, through domestic partnerships, to only 3.
Al–Thank you. It was so nice to read some common sense for once about this so-called “debate.” ^.^