Discovery Institute

One thing about this job is that every time you start to think that you have seen every argument imaginable about why letting gays get married with destroy America, you come across something that proves you wrong.  And via Amanda Marcotte, who got it via Dan Savage, we found just one of those things in this new and novel argument from David Klinghoffer, a Senior Fellow at the creationist Discovery Institute. 

Writing on Beliefnet, Klinghoffer offers up the thoughts of Joshua Berman, author of "Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought" on "How Women Will Be Hurt by Gay Marriage." The gist of the argument is that "on the issue of same-sex marriage, we have much to learn from the writers of ancient Rome" where "homoeroticism [was] fully accepted" and, as such, women just simply couldn't compete.

Seriously: 

Men, we learn from ancient Rome, will enjoy sex with other men, if there is no social censure. Now, all of this should be fine for us as well -- after all, we should let free choice and tolerance reign.

The real problems begin, however, when we read what these writers had to say about marriage. Consider this piece from the first century BCE poet Catullus (Carmen 61:134-141), in which the poet addresses himself to a bridegroom on the eve of his nuptials:

"You are said to find it hard, Perfumed bridegroom, to give up Smooth-skinned boys, but give them up... We realize you've only known Permitted pleasures: husbands, though, Have no right to the same pleasures."

The social history behind this piece is clear: once they've experienced sex with other men, Catullus tells us, men are unsatisfied with what their new wives provide them. Notice that the poet is unconcerned about the husband's dallying with other women -- it's the other men around that threaten the marital union.

If Catullus addressed the bridegroom on the eve of his wedding, the satirist Martial (Book 11, Epigram 43) depicts the reality of married life itself. As satire, the section is too bawdy to be reprinted here, but the sanitized version goes like this: A woman chastises her husband for continuing to dally with male acquaintances. He counters that many other married men are doing it as well. Desperate, she offers to service him in the same way that his male suitor does. He rebuffs, concluding, that she just can't satisfy him the way his suitor can.

And so now we come back to the idyllic day of free choice and tolerance envisioned by the gay and lesbian movement. It turns out that that day has winners and losers. The winners -- big time -- are homosexual men, because the historical record shows that they can expect their potential pool of partners to expand exponentially. Of note here is that this expanded pool of partners accrues to gay men, but not to homosexual women. At the risk of getting too explicit, I leave it the reader's basic grasp of anatomy to figure out why in ancient Rome a man who found pleasure in a woman, could also find pleasure in a man, while the record shows that a heterosexual woman rarely found sexual satisfaction in the company of another woman.

The losers from all this will be the vast majority of women. With full social sanction given to homoerotic activity, the historical precedent suggests that tomorrow's women will have a harder time finding and holding on to suitable men. As women will suffer, so will the vitality and stability of the nuclear family.

After a month, “Expelled”—the anti-evolution film starring Ben Stein—is fading from the scene with disappointing sales (although associate producer Mark Mathis says he’s pleased). The movie’s efforts to portray Intelligent Design creationism as a valid scientific field being persecuted by the authorities probably never had a chance with academics familiar with these dubious creationist arguments, but then again, it probably wasn’t the movie’s intention to convince scientists that ID was a legitimate scientific theory. Instead, “Expelled” took its battle against evolution to the political arena.

This was apparent in the film’s marketing strategy of reaching out to right-wing media outlets and activists, who embraced the half-baked Darwin-Hitler connection at the center of “Expelled.”

And—regarding the strange subplot of Yoko Ono suing over the film’s use of John Lennon’s song “Imagine” without getting the rights—a lawyer for the movie recently argued that the film’s message is pegged toward influencing this year’s presidential election, according to the AP:

A lawyer for the movie's distributors has warned that the litigation could wreck the movie's political message by preventing it from impacting viewers in the lead-up to the U.S. presidential campaign.

While it’s too early to say how creationism will figure into the presidential race, the political impact of “Expelled” can be seen more directly in state legislatures, with a rash of new legislation challenging science education in public high schools. “I think Expelled definitely has played a role,” said ID-advocate Casey Luskin of Discovery Institute.

According to the National Center for Science Education, anti-evolution bills were recently introduced in Florida, Missouri, and Alabama, but the legislative sessions in those states ended before the bills could pass. Versions in South Carolina and Michigan also appear to be stalled for now. But a bill in Louisiana to undermine classroom teaching on the topics of “evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning” was passed unanimously in the state Senate and has already passed through a committee in the House.

The major claim of “Expelled” is that scientists working to provide some—any—legitimacy to Intelligent Design are facing persecution. The stories told in the movie don’t seem to pan out, but as Stein and company are surely aware, the debate over creationism is not taking place at research universities but at school boards, state legislatures, and public high school science classes. A newly published survey of high school teachers found that 25 percent address creationism or Intelligent Design in the classroom, and 12 percent call creationism a “valid scientific alternative” to evolution. Ben Stein’s rants about Nazis seem unlikely to chance the basic course of scientific inquiry into the natural world, but the legacy of “Expelled” may be bills, like Louisiana’s, to put the supernatural world into the science classroom.

“[T]he cultural battle has gone international," declared Allan Carlson, president of the Illinois-based Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society. "The American religious right, instead of being isolationist, has in fact gone global." Indeed, representatives from leading far-right groups – including American Family Association, Concerned Women For America, the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, the Heritage Foundation and the Discovery Institute (advocate of “Intelligent Design” creationism) – are taking a field trip to Poland this weekend for the Howard Center’s fourth World Congress of Families.

The conference is centered around a “manifesto” co-authored by Carlson outlining his model of “the natural family,” described by Salon.com as a combination of encouraging mothers to stay at home and have many children and fervent opposition to gays and abortion:

"It is not enough to stop public recognition of 'gay marriage,' nor to oppose 'safe sex education' in the public schools, nor to ban partial birth abortion, nor to create optional 'covenant' marriages," it reads. "Victory for the natural family will come only as we change the terms of debate."

Joining the jet-setting religious-right activists is Assistant Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey, and as we noted, members of the European parliament are not happy with this apparent “official U.S. government stamp of approval [on the] extremist and intolerant views” likely to come together in the conference as it battles “the secularists” (in the Howard Center’s words) and a conspiracy of world governments (as a papal representative warned at a previous Congress of Families) that are pushing the continent to a “demographic winter.” "If Europe succumbs to the modern, post-family, secular worldview completely, it's like losing a great ally in a global contest," warned Carlson.

The Right has also found a new hero in the conservative Polish government, which recently proposed firing teachers accused of promoting “homosexual culture” in schools. The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute is circulating a petition in advance of the conference commending Poland’s fight against the “radical homosexual movement.” Poland’s president will be speaking at the World Congress of Families.

The pro-choice website RH Reality Check will be covering the conference from Poland; you can find their posts here.

Creationist “scholar” also points to abortion.