Marriage equality will soon be the law of the land in New York, and Bill Donohue of the “Catholic League” ("league" is a bit of an overstatement) is not happy. Not one little bit.
I wrote a diary last night about the fierce backlash against LGBT progress. This is related to that, though I’m not sure how many people take Bill Donohue seriously. What I do know is that he appears to realize he’s about to be rolled over by history. And he’s scared. So he’s getting (more) desperate, throwing out every absurd, nonsensical, disproven argument ever made against marriage equality, hoping one sticks. In an appearance on New York’s WPIX-11, he goes from procreation to incest to polygamy to child welfare to…the basics of electricity…in less than ten minutes. The best part is that (unlike what usually happens with these kinds of TV appearances) the host doesn’t let him get away with a bit of it.
And, of course, I can't embed the video for some reason. Click the link above to watch it.
A display of pure desperation (definitely worth watching until the end). Here are some of the best examples of just how asinine Donohue is willing to get to try to stop the inevitable tide of social progress.
We just had Father’s Day – what are we gonna do!? What are we gonna say to these kids when you have two mothers!?
In order to keep the human species alive, it has to be between a man and a woman.
I think my personal favorite, though, is this:
I mean, let’s face it, if you want electricity, if you want juice, you can’t have two sockets touch each other, or two prongs. The prong has to penetrate the socket! Doesn’t it, now? I mean, don’t people get the point here?
No, I didn’t get the point. I decided to try it myself.
Hmmm…this doesn’t appear to be working…wait a minute...
OH MY GOD, Bill Donohue is right! I’m against marriage equality now.
Seriously, though, this is when you know people are really desperate – when they trot out inanimate objects completely unrelated to anything and try to use them to prove a point. They always say something like, “Well, you know, in plumbing…there are male fittings and female fittings. The male fittings go with the female fittings.” There are lots and lots of electricians and plumbers on the anti-equality side, apparently. They say these things as if they’ve discovered some hidden secret weapon to use against pro-equality arguments, something nobody can refute. “You see, it’s like a TV dinner. You put a TV dinner in a microwave, you don’t put a TV dinner in another TV dinner…how’s it going to heat that way? So obviously two men or two women shouldn’t get married. Duh.” Well, they’re right, I can’t refute these arguments. Too bad they have nothing to do with human relationships. Because I can happily report that, in human beings, male parts go together quite nicely, thank you very much.
Here are some more gems from the genius of Bill Donohue:
You go to Latin America, or Africa, or to the Middle East, or to Russia or Asia, and ask those people about two guys getting married, and they’ll look at you like you’re nuts. This is the white man’s burden.
We have special benefits for people who are senior citizens, right? Okay, if you give those same benefits to people who are not senior citizens, what have you done to their benefits? Haven’t you devalued them?
You know, if somebody had said this when I was a kid growing up, they would say, “Let’s call 911 and take you to Bellevue.” That’s how crazy this idea of two men getting married is.
[in response to the comparison between same-sex marriage and interracial marriage] No. Because blacks were always anatomically equipped correctly to have children…Blacks and whites, man and woman, are ordained by nature with the right anatomical equipment to generate a family.
Doesn’t a boy deserve a father?...Well if he has two Rosie O’Donnell’s sitting in the hall, what’s he going to say?...She calls herself the husband and the other one’s the wife. Nobody believes it. It’s a fiction. It’s make-believe.
Well [New Yorkers have] been indoctrinated since kindergarten to believe that [marriage equality] is good.
[in response to the religious exemptions in the New York marriage equality bill] Quite frankly, the Catholic Church is not an insular institution. We’re not like the Amish, you know. We’re not cloistered. We do have an interest in the good of the whole society. And we’re not here to impose anything, but to propose.
“Propose” indeed.
If this is what the other side has, I think we’re in a pretty solid position. Good Lord. But kudos to the host for not letting Donohue get away with any of his bullshit. I’m never happy to see bigoted views get a legitimate platform for spewing, but I’m always happy to see a bigot destroyed on TV.
That the bigots’ arguments are so random and all over the place is a sign that they’ve already lost. I hope you enjoy your stay on the wrong side of history, Bill Donohue.