I saw Milk in class the other week. My immediate reaction was, “So that's Milk.”
Unfortunately, that sort of thing makes for terrible, droll reading, so I got to thinking about it more. My next thought was about some of the things the Christian Conservatives® said for why they were anti-gay and why gays shouldn't be allowed to do, well, anything. One of the most wonderful reasons in my view was given by a man who I don't remember much about, apart from what he said. What he said was this.
“You can argue with me, but you can't argue with God.”
That's got to be one of my favourite reasons for a political position. I hope someone uses that in my favour someday. But the thing is, it absolutely is true for me. Seeing as I don't believe in any gods, I couldn't argue with such a thing. I mean, I can't argue with something that I don't believe exists, the very idea of doing so falls over as soon as I try. He was right on that point at the very least: I cannot by any means argue with his god.
There's another bit with a woman who is actually featured a bit more heavily (read: not very heavily but she talks a lot on telly in what I think is stock footage), saying many of the same things, “Christian heritage”, “upstanding morals”, “gays are bad”, and other stupid crap. It's always based on her religion, and the funny thing is, never anyone else's. It's not like Christianity is the only religion in the world that has a problem with homosexuality. One might think these people could all get together and hate on gays as one. Perhaps luckily, they're too busy hating each other as well as gays. But that's another topic.
Anyway, The problem with these religious arguments is, they're Constitutionally untenable, or as I prefer to think of them, “complete and utter crap.” There is the whole “establishment clause” in the First Amendment that sort of prevents such reasoning behind laws. Or so I thought, then I met the Christian Conservatives® (it really is like a brand name, isn't it?).
The reason I hit on those particular moments, or rather they stuck so soundly in my brain, is that I've been hearing this sort of thing since I can remember. It doesn't help of course that I spent thirteen years at Catholic schools, which only meant I heard even more of it. I heard these asinine arguments so much that I could refute them in my sleep – not that it helped, being, I say again, a Catholic school. But what I learnt from Milk is that the Christian Conservatives® have made absolutely no new arguments in the past 30-40 years.
I learnt if I'm going to be opposing them on this issue (and I shall), I'm going to have to settle in for a lot of repetition.
