Question Six: At Least the Maryland Marriage Alliance Recognizes Their Own Hatred

Oh the joys of living next to a state about to go to the polls over marriage equality. Last night the Maryland Marriage Alliance (MMA) started airing a television ad in a battle for supremacy in beltway ignorance, waging hatred against bigotry with the American Freedom Defense Initiative. I’ve tried my hardest to come up with a joke about the benefits of moving to Uganda to avoid intolerance excused by religion, but Scott Lively isn’t a fan of humor, so I digress.

The good news is that early indicators show that Maryland voters will approve Question Six, a full eight months after it was signed into legislation. The bad news is that my mother is huge Nationals follower, and the MMA seems to have chosen baseball fans as the best demographics to pander to. Their advertisement was aired numerous times throughout the game last night, and each time I saw it I came to the same conclusion: At least they have accepted how flawed and hateful their position is.

After come cliché shots of a man and woman going through the matrimony motions and the tired “bedrock of society” angle, we get our first overarching assumption on the human condition: “Marriage is more than what adults want for themselves”. I can only assume the MMA knows more about what I want than I do, and can make that judgment for half of the adult population in this country. At least I know better now, and I’m contemplating my Christian Mingle profile picture as I type.  

The advertisement goes on to inform us that marriage isn’t just what adults want for themselves, it also provides children the “best chance to be raised by a mother and father”. I imagine this isn't referring to pre-existing orphan children, but rather the assumed children married couples will have. I also suppose that MMA doesn't believe that should gay marriage be legal, LGBT couples would begin to magically procreate. Considering single LGBT adoption is legal in Maryland and there is no specification on couple-based LGBT adoption, I have no clue what to make of MMA’s statement. 

At this point, unfortunately, the ad is only halfway finished. Unconsciously (or consciously, who knows), MMA recognizes that the “sanctity of marriage” angle is worthless, as they begin an argument with, “While death and divorce too often prevent it…”. I can only hope that during the writing of this ad somebody in Annapolis threw up their drafts in disgust when they realized there is no sanctity in marriage and just decided to continue with a flawed argument.

What death and divorce too often prevent, of course, are children doing their best when “raised by their married mother and father.” As I understand it now, two people who cannot procreate should not be able to get married because their impossibly-conceived children wouldn't be raised in the best possible environment. Take that, marriage equality!

Mercifully we are almost finished, but it only takes 5 seconds for MMA to fully realize their ignorance. When somebody begins a statement with, “I’m not a racist, but…” they accept that the next thing out of their mouth is going to be racist. So when MMA states, “Everyone is entitled to love and respect, but…” they are fully cognizant of the fact that they don’t think homosexuals are entitled to love and respect. They understand there is no logical argument to be made against gay marriage other than their own fear of the LGBT community, and so their defense is that nobody can redefine marriage. Perhaps a similar argument was made in 1787 during the Three-Fifths Compromise and a delegate argued, “Every human being is worthy of being counted as a human being, but nobody is entitled to consider an African-American more than 60% of a person.”

At this point in the gay marriage debate, it’s simply a matter of being on the right or wrong side of history. As the generation gap swings and progressive thought and legislation carries on, it’s a matter of time for marriage equality to become as normal as a woman voting or a black man drinking out of the same water fountain as a white man. And that’s the thing: It is normal, because there is nothing complicated about equal human rights. 

If there is one positive thing to take from this advertisement, it’s that it seems like the denial stage is gone, and MMA and hopefully others understand there is no logic in their position, just a long-held hatred of something they’re not comfortable with .Hopefully, sooner rather than later, that hatred can be turned around into understanding, and eventually acceptance and equality.