Watch Brian Brown (president of the National Organization "for" Marriage) and Dan Savage debate the Bible, gay parenting and marriage equality. [YOUTUBE]oG804t0WG-c[/YOUTUBE]
Brian's opinion that the definition of marriage is only between a man and a woman can't be argued with him since that's the only way he sees it. I don't think that's the way the courts are seeing it, nor the basic definition that most people actually think of. If you ask people why they wanted to get married, they won't say it's because I needed to marry someone of the opposite gender. Obviously people don't just pair up with random opposite gender people and get married; there is something much deeper than that. They'll give lots of reasons, mostly concerning love, spending life with this person, they care about eachother more than anyone else, etc. From a civil standpoint marriage is meant to foster stable families which leads to stable communities which are good for everyone. Brian says if marriage is just about self-fulfilment and adult desires, why not allow multiple person marriage? As I said above, that's not the reason states have civil marriage laws. It's about social stability, spousal rights, and other things that help people and society. Dan didn't have an answer to that and got sucked into the polygamy conversation. I wish he was prepared with the answer, but I know it's hard in the heat of the moment. Brian says marriage is about bringing "the two halves of humanity together". WTF is that? Where is that in marriage laws? Who do you know who says that's why they want to get married? He has all these grand sounding phrases that he repeats over and over, but they do not stand up in court. He has every right to think what he wants, but no case will win with that argument in court.
I'm not going to watch it, but from the little preview image that YouTube shows, you can just see how aggressive and angry the NOM guy's posture is.
Brown actually cried when New York legalized same-sex marriage. There is no changing his mind, but maybe some of his troglodyte followers learned a thing or two. But I really doubt it.
Mr. Savage was the only one debating in this video. Mr. Brown just talked about his personal philosophy. What's the difference? Mr. Savage backed up what he was saying with sources. Honestly, Mr. Brown appeared to be sweating for most of this video because what little studies he had to fall back on were blown apart by what Dan Savage revealed at the table. It's almost like Brian Brown didn't actually prepare for this debate at all or really didn't take it seriously.
I completely agree. I only watched the first half, because I have better things to do with my life--like fence and arrange hookups. But basically, Savage had arguments with evidence. And Brown just cried about the FRC shooting and how SPLC is "demonizing" them by saying they are a hate group. (Sometimes, I feel like I'm the only one who notices that the problem with tolerance is that it's never a two way street: we say that people are supposed to tolerate us--never happens--but we're supposed to tolerate their intolerance.) Anyway, just from the first half I watched, it is clear that Mr. Brown lost two important arguments. One, there's the argument about how marriage equality advocates communicate. Brown's thesis is that LGBT rights activists demonize as bigoted anyone who disagrees with them. Savage parry-ripostes: the argument misses the point--it's not that you disagree with us, it's that you equate queers to child molesters and drug users. The other argument Brown lost was the one over the study (sorry, forget the author's name) about gay vs. straight parenting. Savage's thesis was that it was unscientific and basically sponsored by NOM and FRC. Brown tries to say that the audit of the author is an attempt to demonize him and get him fired because he reached the politically incorrect conclusion (which is bullshit, but I won't deal with what's so offensive about the term political correctness right now), but he actually concedes it was not scientific. Then he tries to backpedal by saying that the academy doesn't like "his" (that is to say, the study's author's) science. I was not aware that we had different kinds of science. So I guess this is Prêt Allez science: up yours, Mr. Brown. Carry on.
Yeah, Brown didn't answer any questions directly. What a goob. And he had some spittle forming at his mouth. Savage actually put up a good argument. I'm biased, obviously, but it was much more solid and reasonable.
I want to watch the video but we are running out of cap(data limit per month) stupid expensive internet
I thought it was really interesting, until near the end when it became Brian Brown vs. Mark Oppenheimer, while Dan Savage was just watching quietly.
I don't know, I thought Oppenheimer's question to Brian Brown was brilliant, and showed everybody exactly where he is coming from. Brian Brown explicitly said that no amount of evidence could ever change his mind on same sex marriage. His assumption that any logical person should be able to conclude that his religion is truth made my day I think.
I don't know if thinking about the following will help anyone change their opinion on marriage equality, but I think its the point of commercials like Love is Love and It's Time. The idea is to get people to think about what marriage really means to them. Why do people decide to get married? We know it's not random pairing of opposite gender people. So what is it? Why do people get married? Which of those reasons don't equally apply to gay people?
