I love the First Amendment. Even when it allows pond filth like the Westboro Baptist and Code Pink crowds to spew their vitriol. Even when it poisons childrens' minds with music that defines women as recepticles for bodily liquids and men as glorified penises. I love it because it gives me the right to dance my fingers across the keyboard and express my own opinions.
And I love it even more when those opinions evoke responses, even the anonymous ones that originate from basements or the recesses of troubled minds (not that there's anything wrong with that....)
It simply means I'm not shouting into the wind. So I was very happy to receive the following email from a reader in response to last Friday's oped about the Justice Department's decision not to defend DOMA. I think he is fairly representative of many on the left:
Dear Ms. Flowers:
As a white christian woman, you would have done well in the KKK. Fifty years ago, it was fine for blacks to use black only facilities. Thank God everything changed. You don't like change? Step aside.
Apparently, the fellow (it was a guy, I think) disagreed with my view that the Defense of Marriage Act is not unconstitutional. He's free to believe whatever he wants, unlike President Obama who is not free to just turn his back on a federal law by refusing to defend it in court.
But I find it interesting that this is essentially the reasoning process of the liberal, and particularly those who buy the theory that opposing what some would define as LGBT 'rights' (or criticizing the president) makes you a member of the KKK. That, unfortunately, is the posture taken by those who lobby for so-called marriage equality.
Well, I have a question for those marriage egalitarians. Why should we limit marriage rights to romantic couples? Since they no longer think there is a legitimate distinction to be made between heterosexual unions (the ones that are best equipped to raise children and create a traditional nuclear unit, as a very savvy letter writer reminded us yesterday) and same sex couples, why should there be a ban, then, on brothers and sisters marrying (especially if they agree not to reproduce, thereby eliminating the medical concerns)? Or parents and siblings? Or multiple groups of people who have a deep and abiding platonic love for each other?
You can laugh, if you will. And you can ask me where I get my white sheets dry-cleaned (which will probably get you a swift kick, given that my father was stopped at a KKK roadblock in 1967 Mississippi so the facile use of the slur is beyond offensive.) But every time, whether during a televised debate or at Starbucks, that I've asked a marriage egalitarian to explain what stops us from letting everyone just define marriage the way they want, they tend to fall back on the 'you're a bigot, Christine' default.
Which is their right. Under the First Amendment. Just like the folks at Westboro Baptist.