The Homophobic Mind

^{Related: Obama vs. McCain on LGBT Rights | Understanding the Religious Right}

One of the best ways to understand an issue is to dissect the arguments of someone who doesn't understand the issue but thinks he does, and believes the world needs to hear about his views at great length.

In this case, the ludicrously right-wing Matt Barber of the ludicrously right-wing Liberty Counsel will do the trick. In an article titled "Obama's Agenda is So 'Gay'" (yes, that's actually the title), Barber speculates about life under an Obama administration--and reveals much more about his personal biases and obsessions than Obama's actual gay rights platform or the actual goals of the mainstream gay rights movement.

Ordinarily I don't link to hate speech; I don't like to reward writers for using words like "homofascist," describing gay adoption as a scenario where "Chad and Thad dress up and play house," or fantasizing about "a bathhouse in the Rose Garden." But Barber is writing for a very specific demographic--namely, the sort of people who actually talk like that--and it's useful to see what the other side is saying about gay rights. Especially since these arguments tend to be repeated over and over again by obsessively homophobic talk show hosts and the people who listen to them.

THE CLAIM: "The only thing keeping [same-sex marriage] from spreading state-to-state is the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Due to the U.S. Constitution's Full Faith and Credit Clause – which requires that states respect the "public acts, records, and judicial rulings" of other states ... [the Defense of Marriage Act] inoculates states from being forced to recognize [same-sex] marriages from other states like California, Massachusetts or Connecticut."

THE REALITY: In a scenario where the U.S. Supreme Court enforced Article IV's Full Faith and Credit Clause, the Defense of Marriage Act would be just as likely to be struck down as any state law restricting access to marriage. The real relevance of the DOMA to the same-sex marriage debate is that it prevents married same-sex couples from being able to participate in federal programs as married couples. A married same-sex couple in Connecticut, for example, still can't file joint tax returns or share retirement benefits--and this is because of the Defense of Marriage Act.

THE CLAIM: "Obama has promised to sign radical thought-crimes legislation into law, effectively criminalizing respect for biblical morality."

THE REALITY: The hate crime bill Obama supports--the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007, also known as the Matthew Shepard Act--does not criminalize hate speech or any other action that is not already illegal. What it does do is invest federal resources into investigations of existing criminal acts if they are believed to be bias-motivated. There has been no legislation proposed before Congress to ban anti-gay hate speech, and no mainstream gay rights organization has called for such legislation.

THE CLAIM: "[The Employment Non-Discrimination Act] will unconstitutionally compel Christians and other people with traditional values to abandon those beliefs and adopt - under penalty of law - the postmodern 'anything goes' view of human sexuality."

THE REALITY: The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) adds sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected categories under civil rights laws that ban employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. That's all it does.

THE CLAIM: "[Obama would] disregard the vast majority of our military leaders and allow open homosexuals ... to infiltrate the ranks of the armed forces - during a time of war - thereby disrupting military readiness and unit cohesion."

THE REALITY: The vast majority of military leaders have not been polled on whether or not they support the current "don't ask, don't tell" policy restricting the service of non-closeted lesbians and gay men in the armed forces, but there is no evidence that ending this policy would undermine unit cohesion and a great deal of evidence that it would not. The British and Israeli armies, for example, have allowed openly lesbian and gay members to serve for years with no discernible effect on unit cohesion.

THE CLAIM: "As if common sense weren't enough [to justify restricting gay adoptions], studies have firmly established that children are best served with both a mother and a father."

THE REALITY: These "studies," representing the views of a Nebraska anti-gay activist named Paul Cameron, have never actually appeared in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. They have also been thoroughly discredited.

Remove these claims from Barber's article, and you're left with a series of inarticulate anti-gay smears and epithets. But that's all he really needs to reach his intended demographic.