Yesterday, as The New Civil Rights Movement reported, Maggie Gallagher — in her typical victim-playing fashion — targeted Ed Kennedy, the After Elton editor and creator of the “Morning Meme,” for comments he wrote calling her recent attack on same-sex marriage “monstrous.” Today, Kennedy, a friend of the blog, responded with “An Open Letter To Maggie Gallagher.”
READ: Maggie Gallagher meant this as a question: ‘It’s ‘monstrous’ to oppose gay marriage.’
Reiterating his comments that the two activists “agree on nearly nothing,” Kennedy says of their recent meeting, “I took from that evening that you were a human being, and deserved to be treated as such. I still believe that.” Kennedy adds:
But the things you say are monstrous. Particularly because they put a polite and kindly gloss on something that at its heart is very ugly and does damage to a lot of people. “Not this, not now?” Sorry, but marriage equality is NOT an affront to civilized society, and when you hold it out as such, you make it harder for gay youth who through no fault of their own are stuck in communities and families that say they and their relationships are “less than” their friends who are straight.
When organizations that you have been key in guiding like the National Organization for Marriage plan to encourage children of gay parents to speak out against them, you hurt real families. When NOM planned to divide this country based on race, you hurt an even wider audience, opening wounds that are yet to heal and go back hundreds of years. Your words, however civil on their face, create fear, division, and distrust. When the affiliated Ruth Institute publishes snippets of essays by anti-gay folks like Michael Brown, and then link to stories hinting at gay men being pedophiles, you knowingly foment the prejudices of others far less “civil” than you. This is uncivil. This is monstrous.
Gallagher, yesterday, wrote, “It’s ‘monstrous’ to oppose gay marriage. And the uncivil dialogue is my fault, in his view. That’s where we are.”
And yes, that is where we are. Because lives are literally at stake — a concept Gallagher flatly rejects. But studies prove otherwise. Science proves that children and teens who are raised in conservative environments, including those that oppose same-sex marriage, and even gay-straight alliances, are more likely to attempt suicide than children and teens raised in more progressive environments. This is a fact. And, naysayers and anti-gay people should also know that this study’s results are applicable to all children and teens — gay, straight, or questioning.
When President Obama spoke out in support of the right of same-sex couples to marry, he literally helped save lives. The opposite, what Maggie Gallagher, her fellow NOM co-founder Robert P. George, and their ilk do on a regular basis — what they have dedicated their professional lives to accomplishing — is contributing to environments of hate. Do the math.