Move over, Gallagher: there's a new bigot on the block

If you're sick of hearing Maggie Gallagher's lunatic and frankly insulting tirades about gay marriage and why it would be so damn horrible to society and our values, there's now a second bigoted idiot on the block who seems determined to match, if not exceed, Gallagher's insanity and downright offensiveness: Heather MacDonald over at Secular Right has just posted an entry that seemingly illustrates how enabling gay marriage would – somehow – further the decline in black marriage rates and further the demons in the black community.

For starters, she details how the "breakdown of marriage in the black community" is affecting, or causing, "black social failure":

One overpowering cause of black social failure is the breakdown of marriage in the black community. Nationally, the black illegitimacy rate is 71%; in some inner city areas, it is closer to 90%. When boys grow up without any expectation that they will have to marry the mother of their children, they fail to learn the most basic lesson of personal responsibility. A community without the marriage norm is teetering on the edge of civilizational collapse, if it has not already fallen into the abyss. Fatherless black boys, who themselves experience no pressure to become marriageable mates as they grow up, end up joining gangs, dropping out of school, and embracing a “street” lifestyle in the absence of any male authority in the home.

Rather damning assertions. Even better: not one source, not one shred of credible evidence to support any of it. It's nothing more than arguing with assertions, along with a fair amount of irrational claims that I doubt hold up to reality.

Just in case you weren't disturbed by the creepy racism and the overall ignorant quality of the preceding paragraph already, get a load of the very next one:

If the black illegitimacy rate were not nearly three times the rate of whites’, I would have few qualms about gay marriage. Or if someone can guarantee that widespread gay marriage would not further erode the expectation among blacks that marriage is the proper context for raising children, I would also not worry. But no one can make that guarantee.

Owch. Racism has joined stupid to hurt my brain. Heck of a vile mixture.

She then claims that there are two key reasons as to why gay marriage would further "depress the black marriage rate": a "logical" reason, and a "visceral" reason. But assuming that's going to be her idea of a logical reason, this has got to be depressing.

First, it sends the signal that marriage is simply about numbers: it is an institution that binds two (for the moment) people who are in love. It erases completely the significance that marriage is THE context in which the children of biological parents should be raised. And there are undoubtedly many other subtle meanings and effects of gay marriage that we cannot even imagine at the moment—which institutional shift is something that conservatives should be most attuned to.

… Seriously, I'd totally have some witty quip or comeback right here, possibly an insult or two or the heck of it, and finally a (sorta) detailed explanation as to why it's totally wrong and, if anything, far from logical for an argument that's supposed to be just that. But I can't even understand what the hell she's trying to say.

If I had to take a guess, I would say her point is that children should be raised only by married couples and that, somehow, gay marriage would tarnish or even destroy that. And then, how gay marriage would have several unintended and unpredictable effects. Or something.

Seriously, my mind hurts right now. And that's thanks to her "logical" argument. I dread the "intuitive" one already.

As for the visceral reason: It is no secret that resistance to homosexuality is highest among the black population (though probably other ethnic minorities are close contenders). I fear that it will be harder than usual to persuade black men of the obligation to marry the mother of their children if the inevitable media saturation coverage associates marriage with homosexuals. Is the availability of homosexual marriage a valid reason to shun the institution? No, but that doesn’t make the reaction any less likely.

Sooo … She's saying that black men are such close-minded bigots, that they would actively avoid marriage simply to remove themselves from the image or perception of an institution that's "saturated" with gays? What?

Jesus … Her article may not be over yet, but I certainly am. This is some of the lamest, most retarded and fundamentally dishonest and vile crap I've ever heard (or read) used against same-sex marriage. Most of it doesn't even make any bloody sense. I'll just let you dear readers make sense out of the rest of her tripe from now on, okay?

Now, where are those Tylenol …?

(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)