The Storm Is Coming

Marriage is about LOVE, not FEAR. Doesn’t matter who you areEpic. Fail.

NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS POST BUT FUCKING HILARIOUS!!!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F26vC_1_8xw

Lee, would I be correct to assume that you believe the people who produced this commercial are not homophobes?

Lee, you’re absolutely correct. We cannot afford to scoff at these slick productions and lose control of the message. We do need a better-produced ad. Preferably one that is a reasonable, clear-eyed argument, with real people, and not something like this “end of days” poison.Now if we could only find a willing producer / director / writer ….

Teh Stupid has arrived. But they are hopeless.BTW, I posted a link to the “See the actors …” at YouTube around 3:00 am on the “Weird Commercial Placement” thread well before Eric.

This is not a well produced anything. In fact, it’s pretty easy to do nowadays. All you need is a decent HD camera, a green screen, a copy of After Effects and some royalty-free scare music. It’s by no means a feat of filmographic excellence. We could do the same thing in an afternoon, maybe two if we wanted to polish the acting a bit more.Where this ad is different is they are trying to answer the charge that we have made that gay marriage will not affect their lives significantly. Their answers are absurd and childish, at best, and actually reflect how they are continuing their agenda of infecting every level of society with their ideology. As Christians, they don’t favor abortion so they shouldn’t be forced to dispense the Day After Pill. They shouldn’t have to be forced to have their children learn that gay marriage is ok, but they should be able to force ours to hear their creation myth alongside the Theory of Evolution. The say the government shouldn’t be able to tell them how to spend the grants their churches receive because that violates the separation of church and state even as they argue that government should declare sodomy a crime because God said it is.Take it seriously? No, Lee. They are ridiculous, whiny and petulant. They should have their hypocrisy shoved mockingly right back in their face. If that’s the best argument they can muster, they deserve it.

“It frames the issue on a national level in way that’s personal and shows the ‘threat’ of same sex marriage in a way that seems actually inclusive.”Same sex marriage is not a threat to anyone, and there is no way a non-existant threat can be inclusive of anyone.Your Troll-Foo is novice Stranahan. I know you’re here to be the opposing viewpoint, but atleast make sense man. OF COURSE the best method to combat this isnt laughter, but legitimizing such ads doesn’t do any good either.

From http://www.hrc.org/12470.htm

Background Ad Rebuttal

“The Real Truth Behind the Fake Ad”

The general argument of the ad is that the push for marriage equality isn’t just about rights for same-sex couples, it’s about imposing contrary values on people of faith. The examples they cite in the ad are:

1. A California doctor who must choose between her faith and her job
2. A member of New Jersey church group which is punished by the state because they can’t support same-sex marriage
3. A Massachusetts parent who stands by helpless while the state teaches her son that gay marriage is okay

The facts indicate that (1) refers to the Benitez decision in California, determining that a doctor cannot violate California anti-discrimination law by refusing to treat a lesbian based on religious belief, (2) refers to the Ocean Grove, New Jersey Methodist pavilion that was open to the general public for events but refused access for civil union ceremonies (and was fined by the state for doing so) and (3) refers to the Parker decision in Massachusetts, where parents unsuccessfully sought to end public school discussions of family diversity, including of same-sex couples.

All three examples involve religious people who enter the public sphere, but don’t want to abide by the general non-discriminatory rules everyone else does. Both (1) and (2) are really about state laws against sexual orientation discrimination, rather than specifically about marriage. And (3) is about two pairs of religious parents trying to impose their beliefs on all children in public schools.

The real facts of each case are:

• The California doctor entered a profession that promises to “first, do no harm” and the law requires her to treat a patient in need – gay or straight, Christian or Muslim – regardless of her religious beliefs. The law does not, and cannot, dictate her faith – it can only insist that she follow her oath as a medical professional.
• The New Jersey church group runs, and profits from, a beachside pavilion that it rents out to the general public for all manner of occasions –concerts, debates and even Civil War reenactments— but balks at permitting couples to hold civil union ceremonies there. The law does not challenge the church organization’s beliefs about homosexuality – it merely requires that a pavilion that had been open to all for years comply with laws protecting everyone from discrimination, including gays and lesbians.
• The Massachusetts parent disagrees with an aspect of her son’s public education, a discussion of the many different kinds of families he lesbian couples. The law does not stop her from disagreeing, from teaching him consistently with her differing beliefs at home, or even educating her child in a setting that is more in line with her faith traditions. But it does not allow any one parent to dictate the curriculum for all students based on her family’s religious traditions.

So we have a group who’s scriptures say (paraphrased):

1. Homosexuality is an abomination.
2. Eating pork is an abomination.
3. Eating shellfish is an abomination.

So we can see that they treat their own scripture in an a la carte fashion as to what they will actually obey and so now they demand that we allow them to treat our anti-discrimination laws in the same fashion. They demand that we allow them to discriminate in ways that no one else may simply because they think that their religion requires discrimination in violation of law.This is the real nature of their demand. They want a pass to be able to ignore laws.Nanotyrannus did a nice list of their blatant hypocrisy.

Git – sorry. Props to you, man..Nano – great strategy. Pretend the ad is a big piece of dumb produced by stupids. Worked really well in California, didn’t it?I want to win. What the hell do YOU want?

Lee…this is nothing more than a rehash of your argument that Rush Limbaugh is “patriotic” because his opinions are honestly held. He really believes what he says, so we must be willing to engage him as though there were something like logic and reason in his position.One struggles to imagine how paying actors to recite lines in support of arguments that have no basis in reality constitutes an honestly held belief rather than a pathetic attempt to distort the issue and provoke idiots, but I’ll give you that (for the sake of argument).So…now we’re going to assume that Michelle Bachmann’s reeducation camps, Beck’s internment camps, the “Obama’s gon’ take away our guns” gang, the “America is a Christian nation” freaks, “Obama’s a Muslim / not born in America / the Anti-Christ” nuts, the New World Order crowd, the Ruby Ridgers…all of them express honestly held beliefs and we are obligated to deal with their arguments in good faith.Despite the folly of presenting rational evidence to irrational minds, let’s further assume that the time and effort were devoted to doing just that.Would we not then find ourselves in an arms race of whackazoid wingnuttery…where each rational response to idiocy is met with some escalation in the assault on reason?Noam Chomsky said, “There’s a really easy way to eliminate terrorism: Stop participating in it.”My father said, “Never argue with an idiot. If you do, that’s what the idiot is doing, too.”There’s a certain inescapable logic there. Responding rationally to this sort of offensive imbecility only justifies the morons making the argument. The only proper response is derision. Pointing and laughing are also acceptable….shaming those who even consider such arguments as in any way valid.I submit it simply degrades thinking people to spend even a moment countering glossed-up hateful crap with anything more than the contempt it so plainly deserves.The contempt ought to be loud and public…but make no mistake – contempt is not the same thing as debate.

CousinAvi, relax! Lee’s got a good point. We won’t overcome this sort of drivel by laughing at it (though that helps). The answer to quackery and tinfoil hattery is MORE SPEECH. Bob Cesca succeeds at doing both.Avi, I share your impatience. I’ve lost my ability to suffer fools. I keep telling them, “If you want my respect for your opinion, you need to have a respectable opinion.” Yet I still ANSWER their speech with MORE SPEECH.If anything, what I took from Lee’s post was that we can’t ignore these asshats. And if you’ve visited my own blog recently, you know I’ve been saying the same thing.

@ MattEach conspiracy needs debunking and ridicule. Instead of questioning the purveyors’ motives, we must question their sanity.Just so. A fine delineation between debate on the merits and “You people are wasting our time with foolishness.”I hold that Jon Stewart does more to deflate this sort of wingnuttery with three minutes of satire than any sort of debate in which the opposition is given the courtesy of serious consideration.I haven’t time, nor am I inclined, to prove that FEMA internment camps don’t really exist any more than I am inclined to prove that leprechauns don’t exist.Yes…the Pro-Leprechaun crowd is loud and often control the microphone. It only takes one properly delivered rational comment – like that Republican veteran who so efficiently stuck it to Limbaugh…something along the lines of, “You’re a stupid, disingenuous Nazi who never served.”The eventual goal, in my view, is not to load up the terrain with counter-arguments to every Ray Comfort. It’s to have folks barely break stride, point and chuckle every time he hauls out a banana and starts yammering about how well it’s designed.You and Lee believe that end requires some sort of balance in debate; a response in kind (as it were) – reason to fight the crazy…light to slay the darkness.I say reason is no weapon against Teh Crazy. I think psychiatry agrees with me…or, perhaps I just haven’t the patience for the therapeutic process.

About that ad…Okay, I let my curiosity get the better of me a little while ago and started Googling. The result is a blog, posted just a minute ago.The “National Organization for Marriage” turns out to be a front for Opus Dei. Seriously.The president, chairman of the board, and executive director are all proponents of the hostile birth movement and opponents of contraception. No kidding — they’re the people who think condoms are worse than AIDS.And the president of NOM is the other columnist from the Armstrong Williams scandal. You can’t make this shit up!

Thank you for that information MattLee -It is effective propaganda precisely because it presents cherry picked facts in a very nebulous way. It takes at least five times as much time to explain why it’s misleading than the one minute that it lasts.

I don’t think the ad is effective at all. At best, it’s confusing and difficult to understand. NOM tries to cram together three different cases where Christians butt heads with the government, and frame them in the space of 60 seconds.

But the situations are bookended as dealing with gay marriage, and the Christianity versus government link isn’t directly acknowledged at all.

It’s like NOM doesn’t know how to organize its thoughts, or what issue it really cares about.

When I first saw this, I was baffled by the subject matter. I’d never heard of the situations mentioned in the ad, and had no idea what they had to do with marriage equality. I would have been more offended had the ad made more sense.

Further, standing a group of people in a staggered line facing the camera in front of a green screen is not slick production. Any high school audio visual club could pull it off. The production is boring, unemotional and uninspired. It’s only a minute long, but it’s a struggle to keep watching it attentively for even that length of time.

I think the vast majority of viewers won’t understand the ad, or won’t bother to try to understand it. Some neo cons, who know the group behind the ad, will probably love it. The rest of us will talk and write about it, as we’re doing here, but it won’t do anything effective but annoy us into telling everyone else about this noise.