Evolve already
The American Family Association is publicly declaring their head-in-the-sand view that public opinion on marriage equality is experiencing a sea change. In a piece in the Detroit Free Press about the potential for a statewide vote on repealing Michigan’s same-sex marriage ban in 2016, Gary Glenn of the AFA makes their position very clear: “We simply don’t believe it.”
The piece quotes Emily Dievendorf who echoes the message I heard from her in my interview with her recently:
Gay rights activists plan a 2016 ballot drive to overturn the 2004 constitutional ban approved by voters. Democratic senators last week introduced legislation to put the gay marriage question to voters in 2014, but odds of it passing a Republican-controlled Legislature are slim.
“We want to go to the ballot, win and make it a sustainable win that is an indication of a climate change in Michigan,” said Emily Dievendorf, managing director of Equality Michigan, a statewide gay rights organization.
Recent polling shows that there has been an incredible shift in the opinions of Michiganders on marriage equality, exceeding even Nate Silver’s prediction that it would be 2016 or beyond before a plurality in this state supported same-sex marriage. That time is already at hand and it has the homophobic bigots at the American Family Association sputtering:
Gary Glenn, co-author of the state’s 2004 ban and president of the American Family Association of Michigan, said he is convinced voters would retain the law limiting marriage to one man and one woman. He promised to defend the measure.“You can count us among those who simply do not believe that everybody everywhere all of a sudden has changed their mind on this issue,” Glenn said. “We think these polls are simply a reflection of an echo chamber, a Hollywood and mainstream media culture that tells everybody that everybody everywhere suddenly overnight now supports so-called homosexual marriage. We simply don’t believe it.”
Believe it pal. As I said yesterday the LGBT rights ship is sailing and people like Glenn “need to decide if they’ll be on it or left on the dock to stew in their own bigotry and political irrelevancy.”
Your bigotry and denialism doesn’t change a thing.
[Dievendorf photo by Anne C. Savage. Legalize gay photo by Chris Savage | Eclectablog]
