To defend her stance against same-sex marriage, Bristol Palin wrote in a recent blog post that "in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home." I am gay, and I have no children, so this is illogical to me. Bristol Palin, an unwed single mother, is more concerned about my fictitious children than she is about her own living, breathing child, Tripp. She has just signed up her boy and herself to star in a reality show, Life's a Tripp. Her child lives in a single-parent home, and she is about to exploit him for her own financial gain. Nevertheless, she is telling me that I cannot legalize my 16-year relationship with my partner because kids are better off with two parents.
Newt Gingrich, in an ad designed to urge North Carolinians to vote for the anti-gay Amendment 1, stated, "Marriage between a man and a woman is at the heart of our civilization. It's a belief that is now under attack, yet it's at the very core of defining who we are." This opinion is proffered by a man who is a thrice-married adulterer.
This past week presumptive Republican presidential nominee Willard Mitt Romney declared, "Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman." He also said that we should not discard 3,000 years of history of one-man/one-woman marriages. This comes from a man whose Mormon ancestors were polygamists. This comes from a man who was the governor of Massachusetts when that state became the first in the U.S. to legalize same-sex marriages.
Rush Limbaugh, a man who has been married four times, believes that President Obama is waging a "war on traditional marriage" to distract Americans from real issues. He states, "You and I are in the midst of one of the most incredibly coordinated media swarms that we've been in in a while. ... The distraction going on here, the effort to distract, the effort to mislead, to misinform, it's in full-swing." House Speaker John Boehner, agreeing that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, also believes that the Democrats are using this issue to distract American voters: "The president and the Democrats can talk about this all they want, but the fact, is, the American people are focused on the economy and they're asking the question, 'Where are the jobs?'" Have Limbaugh and Boehner forgotten that, in numerous past elections, the GOP has used gay rights as a wedge issue? "Hallelujah," says Barney Frank. "The fact that we've now evolved to the point where the Republicans are complaining about the fact that we introduced this bill because it causes them political problems is a great sign of progress. It used to be the other way around."
Progress? Maybe. Hypocrisy? Definitely.
What is next? Will John Edwards make a statement about how gays are ruining traditional marriage? Maybe Larry King will tell us about the virtues of one man being devoted to one woman?