The economy is bad, time to persecute the gays

Via Blog of Rights

Right now, our country is in the midst of the worst recession in recent history. The global financial system is facing a crisis of historic proportions. Government entities, from small school districts to the State of California, are facing budget nightmares and even financial insolvency. And in this environment, what have two members of the Tennessee legislature decided is a top priority? Preventing kids from getting adopted.

State Senator Paul Stanley (R-Memphis) and State Representative John DeBerry (D-Memphis) have introduced a bill that would prohibit cohabiting, unmarried couples from adopting in Tennessee. From among the dozens of reasons this law is a bad idea, let me mention just two. First, and most importantly, it would deny thousands of children the chance to be adopted into stable, loving homes simply because their potential parents are not — or cannot get — married in Tennessee. Second, it would interfere with parents’ right to determine who they want their children to be raised by in the event of their own death. You might think your lesbian sister and her partner would be the best people to raise your child if something happened to you, but under this law, the state of Tennessee wouldn’t allow it.

And via Think Progress

Last night, Utah’s local ABC station received leaked portions of an interview with state senator Chris Buttars (R), which will be highlighted in an upcoming documentary on Proposition 8. Buttars is an outspoken opponent of gay rights; in the latest interview, he compares gays to alcoholics and Muslim terrorists, and warns that gay people are “probably the greatest threat to America.” Some excerpts from the interview:

– To me, homosexuality will always be a sexual perversion. And you say that around here now and everybody goes nuts! But I don’t care.

– They say, I’m born that way. There’s some truth to that, in that some people are born with an attraction to alcohol.

– They’re mean! They want to talk about being nice — they’re the meanest buggers I ever seen. It’s just like the Moslems. Moslems are good people and their religion is anti-war. But it’s been taken over by the radical side. And the gays are totally taken over by the radical side.

– I believe that you will destroy the foundation of American society, because I believe the cornerstone of it is a man and a woman, the family. … And I believe that they’re, internally, they’re probably the greatest threat to America going down I know of. Yep, the radical gay movement.

This would seem an appropriate time to requote A.C. Grayling.

The great moral questions - the most moral and urgent ones - are not about sex, drugs and unmarried mothers. They are, instead, about human rights, war and genocide, the arms trade, poverty in the Third World, the continuance of slavery under many guises and names, interreligious antipathies and conflicts, and inequality and injustice everywhere. These areas of concern involve truly staggering horrors and human suffering. In comparison to them, the parochial and largely misguided anxieties over sex, drugs, gay marriage and the other matters that fill newspapers and agitate the ‘Moral Majority’ in America and Britain, pale into triviality. It is itself a moral scandal that these questions preoccupy debate in comfortable corners of the world, while real atrocity and oppression exist elsewhere.