The Offense of the Defense of Marriage

In a recent episode of Futu­rama, the pro­fes­sor is faced with a group protest­ing the teach­ing of evo­lu­tion in school. The protest is lead by an orang­utan, Dr. Banjo, who claims that if evo­lu­tion (which is just a the­ory “like grav­ity or the shape of the Earth”) were fact, there would be no ‘miss­ing link’ between ape and human, where­upon Dr. Farnsworth lists every con­nec­tion between ape and human save one.

After los­ing the argu­ment because it’s very dif­fi­cult to argue facts against igno­rance and stu­pid­ity, Dr. Farnsworth declares “I don’t want to live on this planet any­more,” and he takes his toys and leaves.

With the on-going anti-gay rants being used in an increas­ingly thinly-veiled attempt to “save mar­riage” from the rav­ages of peo­ple who want to get mar­ried to each other because they’re in love, all we can say to Dr. Farnsworth is “we know the feeling.”

It isn’t that we don’t want to argue the finer points of equal rights and why ‘sep­a­rate but equal’ is still ‘sep­a­rate’ and there­fore makes one group of peo­ple legally and demon­stra­bly infe­rior to another (usu­ally larger and more vocal) group. The big­ger pic­ture that’s now being painted across the face of the United States, the pic­ture painted with broad and col­or­ful strokes of reli­gious intol­er­ance and racist jar­gon and threats of vio­lence, is grow­ing increas­ingly sad and depress­ing. That pic­ture, which depicts the strug­gle for con­trol and power in this coun­try, illus­trates that the pop­u­la­tion, or at least the part of the pop­u­la­tion who likes to yell, whine, cry, scream and rant about the fake prob­lems they think are caus­ing their hard lives to be so much harder — which we would argue, if we could and if any­one would lis­ten, stem from a lack of edu­ca­tion, the con­tin­u­ing prob­lem of poverty and the grow­ing dis­par­ity between the haves and the have-nots, mostly due to the fact that the haves are using their money to dis­tract the have-nots from real prob­lems and make them think their lives would be much bet­ter if immi­grants or gays or some other group of peo­ple were elim­i­nated or impris­oned or some­thing like that — that the pop­u­la­tion isn’t inter­ested at all in mak­ing things bet­ter for every­one. That pop­u­la­tion is only inter­ested in them­selves and what they believe is best for them.

This is where Amer­ica is headed, and the tracks are slick and fast. Amer­ica is headed into a kind of head-in-the-sand defeatism with closed doors and raised fences and par­ti­tions con­structed to enforce an us ver­sus them men­tal­ity that pushes peo­ple out of the boat rather than help­ing them into it to save them from drown­ing. That Amer­ica, which is sup­ported by the Tea Party and Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and Fox News and a grow­ing insur­gence of loud-mouthed idiots who couldn’t con­struct a cogent sen­tence if their lives depended on it (at least with­out writ­ing a few crib notes on their palms first) is, we feel, win­ning the war.

How are they doing it? There’s an easy answer. They’re doing it by posi­tion­ing them­selves as on the defense against the other side, rather than as the peo­ple with the guns push­ing non-white, non-straight, non-Americans out of the boat because they need to pro­tect the boat, rather than pro­tect the peo­ple. They’re doing by pro­claim­ing them­selves vic­tims, and they’re doing by using lan­guage that inflames human weak­nesses, mostly fear, and depict­ing them­selves and those who fol­low them as down­trod­den pro­tec­tors of the his­tor­i­cal path of the country.

Where does that leave those of us on the other side of those closed doors, high fences and pro­tec­tive par­ti­tions? We are being vil­i­fied as mon­sters, but using words like ‘social­ist’ and ‘elit­ist’ that, we would argue, most of those using don’t even under­stand. We are being built up as destroy­ers and mon­sters. We are being placed in posi­tions that are inde­fen­si­ble because they are lies, and there is almost noth­ing to be said in our own defense — not that any of the other side is will­ing to lis­ten, any­way. Mostly because they’re too busy yelling over us.

It is a frus­trat­ing time to be an Amer­i­can. We believe that being an Amer­i­can means that we should be defend­ing the rights of all, and sup­port­ing free­dom of ideas and the right to wor­ship, love and live in the way that makes us happy with­out hurt­ing any­one else. It means life, lib­erty and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness. It means the Bill of Rights. It means open debates and free edu­ca­tion and bor­ders that aren’t armed encamp­ments. It means win­ning the minds and spir­its of peo­ple by demon­strat­ing that we honor and sup­port the rights of the indi­vid­ual to love who they want to love, to achieve what they want to achieve, and to cre­ate a place on the planet where every­one has the right to be the best and the most that they can to the ben­e­fit of all.

We feel that the other side, the Palin-Beck-Fox News side, is not for those things. They are for them­selves, alone, and do not actu­ally care about any­one who fol­lows their narrow-minded, fear-mongering stu­pid­ity. They are inside their own walled gar­dens and would cringe with fear and shake with embar­rass­ment if an actual Amer­i­can ever knocked on their door and wanted some tea (not that any mem­ber of the Tea Party would ever actu­ally drink tea — ha! see? we can be narrow-minded too! equal­ity! rah!). We don’t actu­ally think they’re even against any­thing. What they are for is money and power, but only for themselves.

The sad­dest part of the whole sit­u­a­tion is not that it exists, for it has always existed. The sad­dest part is that they seem to be win­ning, bas­ing their posi­tion and words on fear, and that their fol­low­ers don’t go out and inves­ti­gate on their own. The sad­dest part is that many if not most of those fol­low­ers are being hurt by their lead­ers, who say one thing and do another, and think that wear­ing an enam­eled Amer­i­can flag on a lapel proves patri­o­tism and sup­port for Amer­ica when, increas­ingly, it means noth­ing at all.

Yelling back at them doesn’t improve the debate or clar­ify its terms or edu­cate one side or the other about any­thing that any­one stands for. The idea that they stand for any­thing is ludi­crous. They stand for themselves.

So we’re start­ing to think like Dr. Farnsworth. If this is actu­ally the way this coun­try is sup­posed to be, if the cit­i­zens of this coun­try pre­fer to live in a place that is lead by intol­er­ant, nar­row– or closed-minded, poorly-educated, scared, angry bul­lies, then we’re out of here.

Of course, noth­ing would make those peo­ple hap­pier, would it? If there is no debate, no dis­sen­sion, no stat­ing the facts and stu­pid­ity wins, we all lose. Amer­ica was once a great place. We are now in a period of stag­na­tion and backwards-thinking. We are no longer pro­gress­ing toward the goal of free­dom for all, and want to take away the 14^th Amend­ment, strip human rights, imprison peo­ple who cross our bor­ders look­ing for a bet­ter life and afraid of “dif­fer­ent,” “new” and “ideas.”

Frankly, we’re pissed off. This hap­pened because we didn’t care and we had more faith in the Amer­i­can pub­lic than the Amer­i­can pub­lic was worth. It appears, now, that the Amer­i­can pub­lic wants a coun­try that is intol­er­ant and igno­rant, as if those things are to be cel­e­brated and strived for. Sure, it’s a scary world, but is the answer really to roll up the side­walks and shut down the har­bors and cringe inside our homes? Is the answer to shut our ears and pre­tend that “the olden days” were really bet­ter? And do we want an iso­lated coun­try that is only one reli­gion, and only one race, and only one way of thinking?

We sin­cerely hope not. But if that is where the coun­try is going, count us out.