Friday, March 4, 2011

Slippery Slopes Made Of Straw and Wet Noodles and... Innuendo.. and Yeah!

It's sloppy posts like this that make me question whether Maggie Gallagher's sincere whenever she says she's just a nice a gal who doesn't hate gay people or anything, she just doesn't think they "have the right to redefine marriage for all of us."

In a post at her National Organization for [Heterosexual] Marriage blog, faster than a disgruntled flight attendant can pop open brewski and slip down the evacuation slide, she asks: "After SSM: What Next? In San Fran, banning circumcision."

Dun dun DUN! This "After SSM" post is part of her asinine series about how all kinds of supposedly scary shit is supposedly related to, or a consequence of, the legalization of same-sex marriage.

Here, the implication is that a movement to ban circumcision is somehow very closely related to the marriage equality movement. She doesn't bother to connect the dots for us, natch, or to explain how exactly marriage equality advocates are pushing for this ban. Instead, she writes, merely:

"The next big idea out of San Francisco: ban circumcision. [PDF]

That's really the next big idea for liberals? No Jews allowed?'

That's it. That's her entire post. In 2004, San Francisco briefly recognized legal same-sex marriages (which were later voided). Now, a man named Lloyd Shofield is pushing to get a law banning infant circumcision on the ballot. Therefore, same-sex marriage leads to bans on circumcision and liberals are anti-Semitic.

Srsly? The conflations astound. As does her tendency to Not Give People Credit For Being Smart Enough to see through that malarkey.

I can't believe I'm actually taking her post seriously, but FWIW male circumcision is less a "liberal" big idea, than it is a big idea around the issue of bodily autonomy for people born with penises. Indeed, those from all political spectrums, libertarianism, conservatism, liberalism, feminism, men's rights activism, and anti-feminism (I know, lots of overlap in these groups), can be seen opposing the circumcision of infants.

Pigeonholing this issue as a liberal one, perhaps just because this particular law is being proposed in the liberal haven of San Francisco, is not only ridiculous, it's inaccurate. Linking it to marriage equality solely on the basis that this ban is being proposed in the same place where same-sex marriage was once legal is absurd.

Maggie Gallagher is a key player in the same-sex marriage debate who has a rather large platform. As such, she has a duty to be informed and to do better than make ignorant, tenuous implications that marriage equality advocates are anti-Jewish bigots.

No comments: