In case you missed it last week, GOP Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler launched a twisted, confused rant about same-sex marriage at the at the Eagle Forum Collegians Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C. It’s worth noting at the beginning that Hartzler ran a campaign against Ike Skelton claiming he was pro-gay. Hartzler and Skelton (an architect and staunch defender of DADT) battled it out for the bigot crown, and Hartzler won. If you make Ike freaking Skelton look pro-gay, we’re talking some pretty serious anti-gay shit. This woman isn’t just opposed to gay equality. She was an architect of the Missouri anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment. She introduced legislation requiring President Obama to enforce DOMA (because that’s totally not being enforced anymore, right?). She called for gay soldiers to live in separate quarters than straight soldiers. Vicky Hartzler lives to fight the gays.
But as public opinion is steadily moving further and further away from Hartzler’s extreme views, she’s getting a little desperate.
Last week at the Eagle Forum, she gave the familiar arguments the good ol’ college try. She busted out polygamy.
For instance, if you just care about somebody having a committed relationship, why not allow one man and two women or three women to marry? There are a lot of people in this country that support polygamy. Why not? They’re committed to each other. Why should you care? Why not allow group marriage?
While still on a roll, she reached into another pocket of her anti-gay tool belt and pulled out incest.
Why not allow an uncle to marry his niece?
Of course, it wouldn’t be an proper anti-gay tirade without pedophilia.
Why not allow a 50-year-old man to marry a 12-year-old girl if they love each other and they’re committed?
Maybe the sharpness of these anti-gay tools have dulled a bit. Maybe she just got carried away. Whatever the reason, Hartzler decided to make a new argument – something I bet nobody has given any thought to. What about 3-year-olds driving? Hell, if two men or two women can get married, why not? And if that happens, what’s to stop polar bears from getting pilot’s licenses and giraffes from hooking up with microwaves? Anarchy!
So pretty soon, if you don’t set parameters, you won’t have any parameters at all…[same-sex marriage] is not a right in the Constitution as far as that goes, either. It’s not the right of a 3-year-old to be able to drive a car. You know, the government has set some parameters that they think are correct.
Of course, if the anti-equality side wants to make a real case (even though none exists) to ban gay people from getting married, you might think they’d want to back away from this wingnut and her outrageous slippery-slope theories. Not so. Now, the National Organization for Marriage has gotten hold of this video and posted it on their blog as an example of a principled conservative standing up for the traditional institution of marriage.
If they’re looking to persuade the 53% of Americans (and 70% of Americans aged 18-34) to oppose gay people’s civil rights, I’m thinking the 3-year-old-driving argument isn’t going to get them very far. Just imagine that anti-gay marriage ad. If incest, polygamy, and pedophilia can’t stop the tide of social progress, I doubt a 3-year-old behind the wheel is going to do the job. But there’s something satisfying about watching these hatemongers grasp at every last branch as they flow down the bigot’s proverbial shit creek toward the waterfall known as the wrong side of history.
P.S. Hartzler later clarified that she meant "13-year-old," not "3-year-old." So the argument makes so much more sense now...
