The Bigots' Last Hurrah
By FRANK RICH
Published: April 18, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/opinion/19Rich.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/opinion/19Rich.html)
WHAT would happen if you crossed that creepy 1960s horror classic "The Village of the Damned" with the Broadway staple "A Chorus Line"? You don't need to use your imagination. It's there waiting for you on YouTube under the title "Gathering Storm": a 60-second ad presenting homosexuality as a national threat second only to terrorism.
The actors are supposedly Not Gay. They stand in choral formation before a backdrop of menacing clouds and cheesy lightning effects. "The winds are strong," says a white man to the accompaniment of ominous music. "And I am afraid," a young black woman chimes in. "Those advocates want to change the way I live," says a white woman. But just when all seems lost, the sun breaks through and a smiling black man announces that "a rainbow coalition" is "coming together in love" to save America from the apocalypse of same-sex marriage. It's the swiftest rescue of Western civilization since the heyday of the ambiguously gay duo Batman and Robin.
Watched the ad...
Don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Happy I live in a country that's over a decade ahead of the curve on this.
Watch the Colbert version, that'll take the nasty taste out of your mouth.The Gathering Storm is Comming( (and it's GAY!) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqDyrVha7oI#lq-lq2-hq)
Hahaha. Colbert is amazing.
What's worse than that ad, though, is this:
Confused Children TV Ad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpjPzhSjPqQ#lq-lq2-hq)
That's right. If the US legalizes gay marriage, they'll have to stop teach children how to be bigots! And God knows we can't have that!
That Colbert one is a riot.
It amazes me how this si such a huge issue, despite the fact that we have so many other more pressing issues in the world.
I love all the "omg! If we allow gay marriage then.... " posts in general cause I live in a country that was the second country in the world to legalize same sex marriage.
It's been over a decade since the laws passed.
God hasn't smote us.
Our children aren't all growing up to be "less than stable" people.
Heterosexual marriages are no less common nor stable than before.
And so on and so forth.
Same is true for all other European countries that have legalized it.
In the end, as this has, come, gone, come back, went away again (and is waiting in the wings for a big encore soon enough) and the one thing I know is that when SF started to marry gay people, and then stopped, and then started again, and then stopped again - nothing happened.
Zip. Zero. Zilch.
Nothing.
It is a lot harder to pass social legislation in a pluralist society though. For sure on that.