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Peter Sprigg
The Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg is a master at cherry-picking legitimate science to demonize the lgbt community. I know this well because I have caught him committing this offense on more than one occasion. I would like to think that it is my constant monitoring of him which led him into the following ridiculous convolution of logic.
In a post on the FRC webpage, Sprigg was attempting to explain why discrimination against interracial marriage isn’t the same as discrimination against marriage equality. To say that Sprigg fails miserably is an insult to all failures in the history of mankind.
I’m serious.
There has to be a new definition of failure invented to describe just how off-base Sprigg went. The following is the gist of his piece:
Laws against interracial marriage served only the purpose of preserving a social system of racial segregation. This was both an unworthy goal and one utterly irrelevant to the fundamental nature of marriage.
Bridging the divide of the sexes by uniting men and women, on the other hand, is both a worthy goal and a part of the fundamental purpose of marriage, common to all human civilizations.
Ironically, this means that in one key respect, it is the supporters of marriage redefinition who resemble the opponents of interracial marriage. Both merely exploited the institution of marriage to advance a social goal that has nothing to do with the purpose of marriage, which is to promote responsible procreation. Virtually everyone now opposes the goal of one (racial segregation), whereas society remains sharply divided on the other (the forced affirmation of homosexual relationships), but this is ultimately irrelevant. Neither of these goals is related to the public purposes of marriage. Allowing a black woman to marry a white man does not change the definition of marriage, which requires one man and one woman. Allowing two men or two women to marry would change that fundamental definition.
That’s some serious Cheech and Chong logic there. Allow me to break down the errors.
1. Just who decided that the purpose of marriage was procreation. To make this point omits children born to unmarried couples as well as married couples who don’t have children.
2. Sprigg is implying that marriage equality would upset the social order and pollute marriage. His implication is ironic. Earlier this year, Howard University School of Law submitted a brief to the Supreme Court making the case that those who opposed interracial marriage and those who oppose marriage equality have made similar illogical arguments. Number one on their list was how the opposers of both marriage situations claimed that they (i.e. interracial marriage or marriage equality) would upset the social order.
3. And the largest refutation to Sprigg’s argument is simple. He does not say just how allowing gay couple to marry would “redefine marriage.” He does not say how allowing gay couples would damage the marriages of heterosexual couples. That so-called fundamental purpose of uniting heterosexual couples Sprigg mentioned would still take place. No one, Sprigg included, has ever accurately spelled out just how would allowing gay couples to marry damage heterosexual couples. And I don’t mean some hypothetical, metaphysical point thought up in a boardroom. I mean concrete evidence. And let’s face it. Neither Sprigg nor his bunch have any.
This hot mess of a post by Sprigg reveals something more than a man literally talking out of his ass. It reveals that if one was to take away the religious right’s tendency to rely on junk science and cherry-pick legitimate science, this disgrace of a column is all you have left of their arguments against the lgbt community.
It’s nothing but hot air propelled by bigotry.
13 Comments
Too much of the discussion rests on accepting their definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. That has a built-in failure, as I put it in a comment I left recently where someone had advanced that definition: A *what* between a man and a woman? They never seem to get that far.
My own view, based on a commentary by Joseph W. Campbell (in, if I remember correctly, “The Hero With A Thousand Faces”) is that marriage is the recognition by the community of the establishment of a new household, marking a new status for the couple in the community. It’s a life-stage, right along with birth, adulthood, elderhood, and death, all of which are marked with observances by the community.
Solves a lot of problems, doesn’t it? It’s also, I think, a more broadly applicable description of what marriage actually is. (Take the state as the institutionalized community, and the license as the evidence of the recognition.)
And Sprigg goes right back to “responsible procreation” as *the* purpose of marriage. It’s interesting to note how “procreation” became “responsible procreation” right about the time of Prop 8. It’s also BS.
Once the same sex marriage battle is over where will poor little Petey go to make a buck?
Hey Peter…you are starting to sound desperate!
The telling phrase is: “the forced affirmation of homosexual relationships”
Or to paraphrase, “reality is being mean to me!”
This is how these guys think.
I’m sorry, but Sprigg’s logical laughers still do not reach the level of a Mormon with a polygamist grandfather claiming he wanted marriage to remain between one man and one woman as it had been for thousands of years. These people are simply always wrong about everything. I am surprised they are able to breathe.
This sentence, and the title of this post are the closest you’ll ever see Sprigg get to logical.
I couldn’t believe it once on another forum when I got into a debate with someone (a self described “devout Christian”) about this.
I made the point that IMO they (the religious right) needed to stop all of these measures that try and force other people to accept their view on how we live.
The response was “well, if gay marriage is legal you’re forcing me to accept gay marriage.”
HUH??? No one is forcing anyone to like, or even have anything to do with, gay marriage if you don’t want to. The only area I see where that could even be remotely said (and it would be wrong too) would be if you own a business and are “forced” to give benefits to same sex couples. Even in that case you’re not forced to accept it. You must simply follow current employment laws that prohibit discrimination. You’re free to hate it, speak out about it, and otherwise just refuse to accept the legitimacy of it all you want.
Marriage was originally intended for procreation. Women were sold or traded to men as property, for them to use as baby makers.
This was around the same time homosexuality was not only accepted, but encouraged.
As they used to say in Greece, Men are for loving, Women are for babies.
Or something like that.
Marriage has evolved over the centuries and has never been the sole purview of religion.
My aunt once said that Christians invented marriage and I pointed out that would kind of make Jesus a bastard. She didn’t like that.
One of the smartest Marxist screeds ever written was Engels’ The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State.
Given the sorry state of “marriage” these days, why would anyone want to keep it for themselves?
I have friends (opposite sex couple) who aren’t married but have been together for more than 20 years, raised kids, etc. Responsible procreation was achieved without Sprigg style marriage.
I have a married brother in his 40’s without kids (doesn’t want one). Marriage did not promote responsible procreation.
I think Mr. Sprigg’s marriage-procreation link is broke.
And the most fun part about this is that the bluest states have the lowest divorce rates and many of the red ones have the highest. Like most right-wing crap, it’s just crap.
Remember, these are the people who, not that long ago, called the progeny of unmarried persons “illegitimate” (among other things).
We can go round and round using rational logic to refute what this guy and the rest of his ilk spew and it really won’t change much. We need to take a step back and look beyond him to the news organizations that bring him on and validate his opinion as legitimate. So much is focused on these people and not on the real culprits, which are these news organizations. Perhaps articles like this should have headlines stating something like, “Look what CNN is validating today….” When we start focusing on the validation of this crap instead of the content, maybe things will change…
Opponents of equality began their song about “responsible procreation” at the same time they began bragging how MOST children of mixed-gender couples are both unplanned and unwanted.
Their lawyers have never once been able to explain how denying marriage for same-gender couples would improve marriage for mixed-gender couples.