Bill Donohue goes on the anti-gay offensive

If there’s one good thing to be said about Bill Donohue (and god knows there aren’t many), it’s that he doesn’t shy away from speaking his mind as openly and bluntly as his disregard for basic decency allows him to. While most homophobes try and pretend that they don’t want to discriminate against gays (and instead just really wish they’d sit down and stay quiet all on their own), the Catholic League’s doughy face of hate goes on CNN to make his virulent bigotry exceedingly clear:

Transcript: (click the [+/-] to open/close →)

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Transcript via CNN (slightly edited):

PIERS MORGAN: Bill Donohue, you don’t agree with this. What was your reaction to what the President did today?

BILL DONOHUE: Well, it all started when our friend, Mr. Joseph Biden from Delaware, on Meet the Press, didn’t it? He brought the guy out and asked to come clean. As you probably said, Obama’s always liked the idea of two men getting married. He had to change because he wanted to become president and he said he invoked his Christian moorings, right? He said he was a Christian, and Christians don’t believe in two men getting married.

Now, today, he had to wiggle with that, didn’t he? So he said, “Well, I'm going to invoke the golden rule.” The problem with the golden rule idea is that it covers the marriage of Patricia and Allen Muth. Patricia and Allen Muth are brothers and sisters. They went into the courts and argued that they have a right to get married.

Now I want to ask this gentleman here, does he have a problem with that?

MORGAN: OK. Well, do you have a problem with that?

CHAD GRIFFIN: Look, I – the gentleman brings up the golden rule. And the golden rule really is something that most all of us were taught. I know my mom taught me the golden rule.

DONOHUE: What about the Muths? What about the Muths? (crosstalk) The brother and sister who want to get married? Do you have a problem with that, sir?

GRIFFIN: I find – I find –

MORGAN: Answer his point.

GRIFFIN: Sure. I find what he’s saying to be ridiculous, and I don’t support that –

DONOHUE: It’s in the courts!

GRIFFIN: – and I don’t think any Americans would support that. This is about two loving couples –

DONOHUE: You discriminate then, don’t you?

GRIFFIN: – wanting to make the lifetime commitment of – wanting to make the lifetime –

MORGAN: Well, let me ask you, Bill Donohue, what essentially is your problem, personally –

DONOHUE: Oh, it’s very simple.

MORGAN: – with two loving Americans getting married?

DONOHUE: It’s absolutely very simple. I have a doctorate in sociology from NYU and I know what the literature says. The literature is definitive. There’s one gold standard. One gold standard for children. That is, there’s no substitute for a marriage between a man and a woman.

I want the law to discriminate against straight people who live together – I used to call it shacking up, now it’s called cohabitation. I want the law to discriminate against all alternative lifestyles, against gays and unions. I want to promote, and to put in a privileged position, that institution of marriage between a man and a woman which has been shown over and over and over again to be the gold standard, the blue chip standard.

The key bit:

I want the law to discriminate against straight people who live together – I used to call it shacking up, now it’s called cohabitation. I want the law to discriminate against all alternative lifestyles, against gays and unions. I want to promote, and to put in a privileged position, that institution of marriage between a man and a woman which has been shown over and over and over again to be the gold standard, the blue chip standard.

One has to wonder what sort of quality that “gold” standard is, given that absolutely nothing in the long history of researching has ever turned up any results remotely similar to his claims. In fact, every credible study published in recent memory unequivocally declares the exact opposite: children raised by same-sex parents are every bit as well-adjusted as their heterosexually raised counterparts, with some studies even suggesting they display less behavioral problems on average, including intolerance. I guess that makes LGBT parenting the platinum standard, then.

But Donohue’s not done. From a whiny little “news release” (the Catholic League’s term of choice for “Donohue rant”) about how President Obama’s tepid endorsement of LGBT marriage equality proves how society is turning into a gay-infested liberal utopia of sin and sexual debauchery:

The new normal is yesterday’s abnormal: what was seen as bizarre, if not literally crazy, is now seen as normal. The converse is also true: those who still value the judiciously exercised role of shame, guilt and modesty are now seen as representative of the new abnormal.

The following examples are taken exclusively from news stories of May 9 and May 10:

• The president of the U.S. thinks it’s fine for two men to marry ¹
• Homosexual and transgender characters—all positively portrayed—are proliferating on TV (by contrast, positively portrayed Catholic characters are almost nonexistent) ²
• There is a bill in California that would make it illegal for a trained psychologist to convert gays and lesbians ³
• New York’s top court said it is perfectly fine to view unlimited amounts of child pornography online ⁴
• The cover of Time magazine shows a young boy standing on a chair sucking his mother’s bare breast ⁵
• Tupperware parties run by suburban moms have been replaced by sex-toy parties featuring vibrators and lubricants ⁶
• A Nebraska mother has been arrested for charging men to have sex with her daughters, ages 7 and 14 ⁷

Not all of these incidents are of equal moral weight, but put together they convey a powerful message: cultural ordinates are being obliterated. And when boundary lines disappear, the social fallout can be wicked.

Oh boy, I so both love and hate Gish Gallops like this – so much bullshit in so few sentences that it becomes an exercise in endurance to slog through it all. But nonetheless, I don’t boast about having SIWOTI Syndrome for nothing:

• ¹ Yes, and so do reasonable people everywhere, including a clear majority of Catholics, which Donohue continually pretends to represent. Also notice that phrasing, boiling down the LGBT marriage equality debate to “two men”. Because, as has been made abundantly clear, it’s always about the cock with these homophobes. (After all, lesbians are hawt, but gay men? Eww!)

• ² Because portraying LGBT characters positively is wrong. Everyone knows they’re all hell-bound sinners, after all, and any TV show that pretends otherwise is totally just kidding themselves. Also, if Catholics want to be portrayed more positively, maybe they should stop continually placing themselves firmly at the center of so many problems these days in the name of Jesus. Just a thought.

• ³ Oh, you mean that bill to make it illegal for intolerant parents and counselors to force vulnerable LGBT minors into harmful and thoroughly debunked and discredited “ex-gay” therapy? Of course you’d be against any attempt at protecting gay and lesbian youths from psychological torment at the hands agenda-driven quacks.

• ⁴ That’s the first I’ve heard of this case, and Donohue has naturally distorted the saint fuck out of it. In reality, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that a man convicted of viewing child porn isn’t necessarily guilty under state law if it can’t be proven that he procured or possessed it, given the all-too-real phenomenon of malicious Internet scripts and programs secretly downloading illegal content into unsuspecting people’s computers without their knowledge. Donohue’s interpretation of the ruling is no more or less than pure horseshit.

• ⁵ Eeek! Judiciously angled (if somewhat odd) photograph of natural infant nourishment! Turn it off, turn it off!

• ⁶ I have no idea what the hell Donohue’s raving about, here. The closest I could find were some vague (and mostly ancient) reports about so-called “passion parties” where women explore their sexuality together, or something. But then, we all know female sexuality is either a myth or something horrible and filthy that needs to be repressed, depending on the religious mood du jour, so I guess Donohue’s apoplexy is understandable, here.

• ⁷ That case is deplorable and heinous and has nothing to do with anything whatsoever, here.

Not only are these stories (that is, the ones Donohue didn’t completely bullshit about) not “of equal moral weight”, they have nothing remotely to do with each other, other than to serve as evidence of Donohue’s love of non-sequiturs. It’s also curious that he frames all of this as “taken exclusively from news stories of May 9 and May 10”, as if these reports were supposed to show how the whole world has suddenly fallen into chaos mere hours after President Obama’s timid declaration of personal support for same-sex marriage. Those must be very stealthy flaming riots engulfing our society, ’cause I haven’t heard anything.

But, as I always say, every brain dropping that oozes out of Donohue’s mouth is actually quite welcomed. After all, the only thing he’s doing is revealing the intrinsic bigotry of Catholicism, if not Christianity and even religion as a whole. And given that we’re already seeing young people leaving the church in hasty droves as a direct result of the continuing (and mounting) intolerance exhibited by its leaders, the more he and assorted asshats double down on their hatred, the better.

After all, the world is changing, and all we’re hearing is the panicked and dying gasps of intolerance as it drowns in the growing sea of acceptance and secularism.

Tags: Bill Donohue • gay marriage • same-sex marriage • marriage equality • Barack Obama • CNN