Thursday, October 09, 2008

a monologue about gay marriage

As you might have learned from the comments on my previous post, the Sutherland Institute is hosting an event to scare the crap out of social conservatives and guilt them into phone banking, donating, or door knocking in California on behalf of their ill-fated Prop 8 to ban now-existing gay marriages in the Golden State. This proposition has nothing to do with Utah as we already passed our anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment four years ago, unless you hate gays so much that you are a-feared that them gays will have their California marriages recognized in Utah. Which somehow will lead Utah's divorce rate even higher.

The speakers are all those in favor of Prop 8, although they are sure than a few anti-Prop 8 audience members will try to shout rhetorical questions at them. Kind of like how Sean Hanity shows are really informative and provide equal platform to those who disagree with Mr. Hanity.

Back when I first started law school, my student group hosted a debate about Utah's gay marriage ban, which was I believe at the time on the ballot. We managed to get the guy who argued in favor of the scoutmaster in the Supreme Court case of gay scoutmaster versus the Boy Scouts of America. On the other side, we got some clown from the Sutherland Institute. I say clown because he was not even in the same league as the gay scoutmaster attorney. To be fair, he was taking up the reins for some BYU professor that chickened out at the last minute. Nevertheless, I started to feel sorry for the guy, even though I totally disagreed with his "arguments." As hosts of the event, we felt bad that we couldn't get a fair debate going because the pro-gay marriage side was apparently intimidated by this super lawyer.

It seems the Sutherland Institute learned the wrong lesson from our event and is content to present their same case but in a completely one-sided fashion. But if you want to hear what you believe or shout at the Sutherland Institute folks and get some Avenues hippies to clap with you, feel free to attend.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting the event. Perhaps you should attend to disabuse yourself of certain misperceptions.

However, every attendee needs to RSVP because we have limited seating.

I wouldn't want "skeptical" folks to show up, not RSVP'd, and feel as if we were not willing to really have the event open to the public.

Best, PTM

Misty Fowler said...

In case anyone else wants to RSVP, the information I found on the Sutherland Institute's site is:

The event will be held on Tuesday, October 14, from 7:00 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. at the Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City. Those interested in attending are asked to RSVP by calling the Institute at 801-355-1272.