Shots Incoming: Southern Baptists planning assault on same-sex marriage
Obergefell will fall, and I expect that shortly thereafter both Lawrence and Griswald will be consigned to the ashen of history. So much winning (/s)
All through the 2024 election cycle, I was watching trends in the messaging, and particularly the highly effective anti-Trans messaging by Trump and Republicans.
That was predictable, and it was super effective. Reports were that the Dems and Harris campaign chose to not address it head-on, because they felt that it would just add credence to the “ridiculous” scare-mongering by the R’s.
As an aside: If the Republicans are spending over $200M on a spoke of a campaign like Trans athletes, you need to realize that it is working.
And it did work. Devastatingly well. And the Dems acted like deer in the headlights.
But this isn’t about that campaign tactic. It is about what I heard, over and over, in the Never Trump circles that I listen to and read.
They correctly caught that the Dems were foolish for not combatting this. But they also then said that this didn’t have wider salience. That all the other culture war chaff wasn’t at risk, because it is “settled” law. They argued that because Transgender individuals are so rare, and the vast majority of Americans will never meet one, that defending this less than 1% of the population was folly.
In their very next breath, they said that the Trans issue doesn’t connect with Americans like the evolution on same sex relationships/marriage had.
With something like 8-9% of the population being gay or in a grey area sexually, that is enough that virtually every person in the country has enough contact with a gay person to normalize and thus that drove acceptance.
In specific, I heard this rhetoric from two notable gay former Republicans, Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark1.
And every fucking time I heard this brush off, I screamed at the podcast feed that they were deluding themselves, and that the anti-Trans sentiment was the chink in the armor.
And here is the opening salvo: “Southern Baptists to Vote on Effort to Overturn Same-Sex Marriage” (gifted link NY times)
This is the least surprising development, and the most predictable next step of the Republican march to turn back the clock to the era of supremacy of straight, white men over all other demographics.
Southern Baptists plan to vote this week on acting to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage 10 years ago this month.
The step is part of a growing effort by evangelicals nationwide to reverse Obergefell, and coincides with a renewed campaign in state legislatures to challenge the widely accepted view that same-sex marriage has become an established civil right.
It is like what I have been yelling into the fucking void for years now. Once they were able to reverse Roe v. Wade, this was inevitable.
And obvious:
Conservative Christian activists hope to build on their movement’s success in overturning Roe v. Wade, the now-defunct Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion, in 2022, and to apply the legal and political strategies that proved effective for that victory. Public support for legal gay marriage remains high, with more than two-thirds of American adults supporting it. As with abortion, activists hope to gain political power despite their minority viewpoints.
This is the least surprising thing ever, and it is chilling.
This isn’t merely a reaction to an overreach by progressives, it is a rewiring of American ideals to return to an era where America was definitely not exceptional unless you were in the dominant caste.
This is why I was so fucking furious about the cack-handed yet irresistible reversal of Roe, because it was the start of a rollback, not a one-and-done that many of my peers were arguing.
Activists are aware that their mission may take years. But the resolution calling for this concrete action shows “a deepening of Southern Baptist thinking on this issue,” and a recognition of the need for a long-term strategy similar to the one that ended a constitutional right to abortion, said R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
He said “there’s a great deal of engagement” on this issue between Southern Baptist leaders and lawyers with the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian legal advocacy group that worked to overturn Roe. (emphasis mine)
If you are a viewer of John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” the ADF or Alliance Defending Freedom [sic], will ring a bell, a few weeks ago he did a segment on it, and guess who was a lawyer for ADF in the ‘aughts… Smarmy Mike Johnson. He is a weasel of maximal proportions not only now, but then. I needed a shower after watching his smug face in that segment.
What are they voting for?
The resolution calls for overturning not just Obergefell, but also any laws and policies “that defy God’s design for marriage and family,” potentially including the Respect for Marriage Act, a law that former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signed in 2022 mandating federal recognition for same-sex marriages. The resolution also specifically calls for the restriction of commercial surrogacy.
Does that sound like they will pull back the icky gay butt-stuff but then be happy?
No, to me that is the next shoe to fall before going to Lawrence v. Texas, and ultimately to Griswald v Connecticut to both make it okay to ban Sodomy, and to make contraceptives illegal.
So, my question to the gay former Republicans who are happily married with families, how will you respond to this Bataan death march back into the closet?
Are you happy with your sneering at the more progressive Dems who were painting the picture that you need to stand with our Trans brethren and Sisters?
Will you be shocked when the SCOTUS reverses Obergefell 6-3?
When the Government declares you unfit parents and removes your children?
When the MAGA mobs mobilize to tar and feather you?
Are you ready for that? I am not, but no, all this Trans stuff was toxic.
Sorry, I am just pissed that the people who told me I was hyperventilating are now going to get theirs. It is not schadenfreude, but it is sad.
“All men are created equal (Gays, Trans, Blacks, Arabs, Mexican not included)”
I will leave you with this nugget:
Of the nine Supreme Court justices, only Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have suggested that the court should reconsider Obergefell, which was decided by a 5-4 majority. Chief Justice John Roberts, now a swing vote, issued a strong dissent in the Obergefell ruling.
In his concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson, the case that overturned Roe, Justice Thomas directly argued that the rationale the court used to negate a right to abortion should be used to overturn cases that established rights to same-sex marriage, consensual same-sex relations and contraception.
Yeah, Chief Justice Roberts knows how the wind is blowing, and he is itchin’ to get the first of these cases run up to the docket like a sweaty t’ween boy who found a Penthouse magazine in his older brother’s room.
Final thought. Andrew Breitbart posited that Politics was downstream from culture. And that was clearly true in the early 2010’s. But that has flipped, and culture is now downstream from politics, and the Republicans/MAGA is holding a royal flush.
The phenomenon and existence of the Log Cabin Republicans always has been a dichotomy that I struggled to understand. So much of the ethos of these Republicans are tied to their iconic belief that Saint Ronnie Reagan was the apotheosis of cultural, fiscal, and political strength. Truth is that he was a racist, crass bigot who essentially ignored the AIDS epidemic because it only affected “those” people.
It amused me at the time that Thomas didn’t include “Loving v Virginia” in his concurrence overturning Roe even though it was decided on the same standard as the rest of the rights they now want to strip away were. Because, reasons. Personal ones, obviously.
Idk how far they’ll be able to push their latest agenda because as you said, public opinion. Also there’s the problem that that there are like a million+ same-sex married couples already. Quite a conundrum. Overturning Roe and fucking with laws that won’t impact everything from the tax code to actual living children might prove to be a far more difficult battle.
If you were to think about it, the religious right has worked for more than one generation . 50 years.) to overturn Roe versus wade. What possessed the Democratic party leadership to think that the religious right would not then turn their attention to gay rights. In a previous podcast, Michael Steele was trying to point out that the Democrats were being complacent about gay rights and specifically trans. He stated that the religious rights had swallowed their bile to accept the ruling, but still had an immense amount of rage about gay rights. I will admit, I did not expect the effort to include contraception and sodomy.(which apparently many of us have forgotten used to be a criminal offense.). But then again forgotten, homosexuality was considered a psychiatric disorder in that time. Regarding the polls, supporting gay rights, you could raise the question of selection by us in that people who hate gay rights may not participate in such a study, can’t tell if that’s true, but you need to think about when estimating the acceptance of Obergefall. Last, I think the rest of us need to worry about “ Christian Sharia” (afraid first heard from Adam Kinzinger), there have been radical Christian nationalist stating a desire for a theocracy with America being ruled by their interpretation of the Bible. I imagine Mike Johnson would love that.