Monday, February 18, 2008

13 Snappy Comebacks (This Morning with my Students)

"But everything does fit. Of course, it does. Why would so many people find such maddening pleasure in it, if, as you say, the parts don't fit together?"

"The hell if I know. Like it worked such wonders for women and blacks to be born that way. So we prove it's all genetic, it really really can't be helped, and suddenly we're going to be allowed human rights? In, what, another two hundred years?"

"OK, what if it is a choice. So what? Choices are bad?"

"So the worse you and Dr. Dobson can say, slippery slope-wise, is if we let homosexuals get married, the way will be paved for polygamy? Polygamy? What kind of bible thumper makes this argument? Weren't Abraham, Jacob, and Solomon polygamists? Sodomites were stoned to death in the Old Testament, but today they're a gateway to the sort of marriage enjoyed by the patriarchs of old?"

"Do you really believe procreation is the sole purpose of sex? So, like, once we get this whole fertility thing down to an exact science, you would vote for having sex only three or four times total in your entire life?"

"How many of you (and I'm not asking for a hand count here) honestly believe that you could command your body to adjust its sexual desires? Let's say you wanted to eradicate the desire for tall blondes. Sure, you could marry a short brunette, even have some short brown-haired kids, but you believe you would never think about tall blondes again?"

"Maybe in the sense that men serving time in prison or on submarines are gay for life, I could perhaps believe that the so-called ex-gays are now straight."

"Do you realize that, when I was a kid, teachers and parents were still forcing left-handed kids to write with their right hands? Why? Because they thought to write with the left hand was not the correct way to do it. Does this position make sense to anybody today?"

"OK, so Dad spends more time with Junior, who is a little sissy. Junior learns baseball, keeps his hands off his hips, talks in a lower register, and throws away his paper dolls. Making Junior more masculine does not make him less likely to be homosexual when he grows up. Making Junior more masculine only makes it easier for him eventually to attract men."

"For the ancient Greeks and the Restoration English, effeminacy was a heterosexual perversion. The Theban Band, the so-called 'army of lovers,' those guys were the real he-men--they fought the hardest because their lovers were standing right beside them."

"Might it not be the opposite? Might it be that a mother becomes over-protective of her son when she realizes he is different than the other little boys? That he might (just might) enjoy going with her to the beauty shop? That, because deep down in some part of herself that she perhaps doesn't know how to understand, he may need her protection more?"

"Homosexuals have been getting married for centuries, but only to people they weren't physically attracted to."

"Why does the government have a vested interest in policing marriage? Marriage and baptism are both sacraments, but would any church want the government telling it who could be baptized? Why not? OK, marriage and baptism are two different things. But why do we let the government legislate the one and not the other? And why does the government link tax benefits and health care to being married anyway? A driver's license or a fishing license can be argued for, but a marriage license? Sure, we would want to stop forced marriages, wouldn't we? But on what grounds does the U.S. government stop two consenting adults from being as 'officially' married as any other two consenting adults?"

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