Is it just me, or is the sexual frustration palpable through the screen?

How can she look at her video and not be embarrassed at her own words?

I like her best when she has tape over her mouth.

If she made a new video of herself just plugging and unplugging an electrical plug into a socket, I'd watch that. Then touching the tips of two plugs together. "See?" It would be almost as good as that video of Kirk Cameron talking about the banana.

Whatever happened to the "everything BUT marriage" law I voted for? Did we let the camel's nose under the tent or what?

Here's what I just don't get--everything she cites as a problem is 100% due to STRAIGHT people.

That gays wanting to marry is responsible for anything on her list is so much cognitive dissonance it makes my head hurt.

Has she looked at the "regular" marriage divorce stats? She's entitled to feel as she does but please, don't make it sound like heterosexuals have some magic key to great marriages. They clearly don't. And, so there are lots of kids with single parents (which I think, in her world, would upset her).

I do agree with one thing; people do seem to spend more time thinking about their wedding than the actual marriage they are undertaking.

I am not racist, I just support white people.

So angry that hateful bigots have started to say it's hate when you oppose them.

It's like the Christians who are upset and say atheists are shoving atheism down their throats when we say enough of your religion dictating what I can do with my body, you trying to get your creationist religious BS into my tax-supported school science textbooks, you denying some of my tax money going to fund piss-Christ at publicly supported art museums.

Or people like this woman, who complain they're being bullied when people like Dan tell them to stop bullying the rest of us.

SOOO ANGRY.

Hello! It is neither hate nor H8, to tell you to keep your religion to yourself and stop forcing YOUR religion down MY throat, and when you insist on working for groups that sponsor legislation to MAKE make me follow your religion, it's not H8 for me to LOUDLY TELL YOU TO STFU.

Her argument makes no sense. Everything she is talking about relates to heterosexual marriage (1 in 2 marriages ending in divorce, etc.). How is banning same-sex marriage going to result in fewer divorces among straight couples? How is it going to result in fewer children born out of wedlock (which last I checked still mostly required a man and a woman)?

Also, her tone is whiny and superior all at once. It bothers me.

And what was up with that weird little song at the beginning?

Clearly, she was not taught critical thinking in school. Her "reasoning" could be refuted by an 8 year old on the debate team.

Oh, and why should my atheist federal tax dollars support kids to study at religious indoctrination camps? Either home school credits for K-12 or through student loans that go to religious colleges like Liberty University?

Enough. Time for us secular types to TAKE BACK THE DAY. (a reference to feminism taking back the night, combined with the enlightenment -- taking back the light of knowledge, taking back the DAY from religious nuts dictating what we do in our daily lives)

blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah

This woman is a classic example of somebody needing to be remind of the eternal axiom:
The common denominator in all your shitty relationships is you.

Bun is too tight.

@15: I thought the eternal axiom you were going to refer to was: Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it.

Too many marriages end in divorce, and too many people are cohabitating without marriage, and too many children don't have two parents, and the solution she proposes is to prevent people who want to get married from getting married.

Listen, Mary, or whatever your name is: I support marriage, too. That's why I want my legal marriage to my husband recognized by both my state and my federal government.

@8 I have a "friend" who thinks this way. Sigh++

I guess you really have to be that much of an idiot to intern at FRC...

Her little edge of (laughably inappropriate) superiority is hard to watch, as is her weird mouth, twisted and tight with righteous sexual confusion that, left unchecked, will soon flower into undisguised cruelty.

I just watched her video directed at Sandra Fluke, and it's spoken almost entirely in you-go-girl patois. Also, she sings the titles of all her videos. So awkward.

That font is hateful.

as long as we demonize logic, reason, compassion, empathy and critical thinking, we will have to deal with fucking idiots like this. It just makes me sad that Dan posts so much of this shit, I realize that we're pretty much fucked. we can never have a real discussion with these bigoted assholes because they can't be grown ups abput it. I agree with 11, my ten year old would fucking own her in a debate. But it wouldn't matter, she's to sense to get it anyway.

I meant "too dense to get it anyway" :)

The transition from your typical, jump cut heavy conservative "clever" video to ponderous list of sincere concerns is really jarring here. Choose one.

Keeping hitting this point, Dan. Eventually, some of it might seep in to those dark, thoughtless holes in unused heads.

Marriage is a license to establish public recognition of a relationship. This recognition conveys certain tax and property treatments, certain mutual support rights and duties and joint custodial rights. These are all civil, secular, governmental functions.

There are many things marriage is not.

1) It does not establish an interpersonal relationship. That's a job for the couple.

2) It is not a license to procreate. That license is administered separately by God, sometimes with the assistance of trained medical staff. Most people are born with half of that license.

3) It is not a mandate to procreate. There is no such mandate in secular life.

4) It is not a license to adopt. Potential adopting parents must meet separate criteria set by adoption agencies and governments.

5) It is not a license to cohabit. That is a voluntary arrangement that does not require a license.

6) It is not a license for having sex. That is an unlicensed activity only requiring desire and consent. Practice and skill help, too.

The more you analyze what marriage is, and what it is not, the more light we can shed on the defects in arguments over denying marriage rights to some couples.

Marriage is losing its place in our society—and that is a bad thing—because cohabitation has become an acceptable alternative to marriage. When gays are allowed to marry, then many couples who had been cohabitating couples become married couples. This doesn't weaken marriage; it strengthens it.

The nuclear family is the foundation of Western society. Why wouldn't we want more people who marry, settle down, and raise kids instead of living in more legally precarious arrangements? Right now, we live in a society that allows one parent, usually but not always the male parent, to abandon responsibility more or less at will. That's the threat to marriage here.

Dear FRC Intern:

I'll just leave this right here. Give it a read when you can. It might explain a few things.

Ken @27: Lack of marriage equality often follows from regressive ideas about gayness being "evil" or "sinful" or "disgusting". When ideas like that permeate the culture so much that they're codified into law, LGBT youths are going to get the hateful message one way or another. Being hated by society and your own family is a good predictor for suicidal behavior. --> causal pathway

You say, if this can be so, is it implausible that same-sex marriage will influence the behavior of straight people? Yes, it is implausible, because it lacks a causal pathway. What possible chain of events would marriage equality cause that would change straight people's behavior? Some straights might change to be less bigoted. But what harmful change would be caused, and how? If you can come up with something defensible in a secular court, the Prop 8 defenders would like to know.

@30 you're still using straight male behavior to argue that gay's actions will hurt straight people. Still lack an actual mechanism. Still wrong.

What is wrong with her mouth? And who told her she could sing?

@30 were the men who impregnated a woman and then left really stigmatized in any meaningful way? Without a doubt unmarried, impregnated woman was stigmatized, and harshly.

Gettin' reeeeeeaaaally tired of all this "How come I can't ACT like a hateful bigot without being CALLED a hateful bigot?" bellyaching from shrill, whiny right-wingers.

She's right! Even though I am a heterosexual male, I am so unsupportive of Marriage(tm). I want to abolish heterosexual marriage and replace it with homosexual Not-Marriage. I hate Traditional Marriage so much!

You should have seen my smiles of rage as I went ring-shopping with my girlfriend!

Also,

heteronormative... golly, that's a big word...
(Not her actual words, but that is how it came across)

I was waiting for her to drop a remark about "elitists".

Love the sinner. Hate the sin. I hate her sinful way of dumbing down the english language with that horrible accent. I have no idea what she was talking about.

@39 Slut shaming does no such thing. It tells women they're dirty little whores for having sex outside of marriage. Men are free, and have always been free, to sow their oats as they see fit.

the logic is right up there with "If black people move into the neighborhood they will devalue the real estate. " Which, of course is a white problem. God protect us from stupid people.

She wouldn't walk away from Omelas.

How old do you think she is? In ten years there is a good chance she will be ashamed of what she has said here. I'd rather have a sex tape that shows my face clearly floating around than something like this.

But for her insufferable smugness, I would totally pre-marital sex her. God help me, girls with Coke-bottle glasses are hot. Seriously!

did sarah palin get a face lift?

@3: What are they countering with, "MOARH8"?

Ms F - I may be wrong, but from what I've seen, the feminist consensus is that adoption is far worse than abortion. There is not yet consensus that children have a right to be raised by their biological parents, but it's trending in that direction.

(Not a comment, just an observation.)

Mr M - Save your aching arches and the wear on your tap shoes; you've already jumped the shark.

@30 It wouldn't be necessary to stigmatize gay sex. Let's assume that the goal is to support the role of marriage in society for the purpose of having a stable society. What are the threats to this? Cohabitation and divorce. If it was to be done through any stigmatization of sex, it would be any sex that undermines marriage. Adultery? Stigmatize the heck out of it. It wouldn't even be necessary to stigmatize all pre-marital sex. Cohabitation and anything that crosses the line into marriage-lite would get stigmatized, though. In this scenario, whether the sex is homosexual or heterosexual makes zero difference. Divorce is sometimes very necessary, so maybe instead of stigmatizing divorce, the act of getting divorced lightly could be stigmatized, as in "of course people change and love doesn't feel the same way at 32 as it did at 26; that doesn't mean anything's wrong."

However, another way to shore up the role of marriage would be to stigmatize abandonment of responsibility instead of sex or divorce. For responsibility to children, we could adopt an attitude of "Have your fun for a while, but when you have a kid, change your expectations and stay with your partner." (In my projection, this would be accompanied by, "Make sure to use mondo birth control while having said fun." Ideally, all kid-having would be deliberate and planned with a carefully selected partner. For gays, this is less of an issue.) For responsibility to society, people would have to be made more aware of the social, economic and political value that being married has for society, of the service that they are performing by investing their years and attention in marriage. There's also responsibility to family. By being married, people secure another relative to help everyone else in their family and social network, like their parents. (And the way social security is going, we might end up having to shift back to the model of children taking care of aged parents at home; having a partner gives people more help and more options.)

As for the video, who on earth told her that the popularity contest ends with high school?

And which "people" exactly will be so much happier and more fulfilled by the culture of marriage she wants to see promoted?

The more I see these "solutions for everybody" proposed in ways that don't even pretend to address the legitimate existing concerns of the groups those solutions propose to harm, the more I think they don't even deserve engagement.

Clearly a product of good Christian homeschooling..... only kids who grew up in the echo chamber of only being exposed to their religion and only the people approved by their parents, and only by people who share the same exact beliefs would put this on the interwebs and think it would sway the rest of us. She will probably have these thoughts her entire life because as an intern at FRC, she'll meet some boy who thinks the same way she does, and they'll have babies, and then THEY'LL homeschool, because after all, it's THE ONLY POSSIBLE RIGHT WAY to raise children.

Testify, sistah!!

Also, the government should stop using my tax dollars to teach poor children to read. It totally undermines my right to read! Why don't people support reading?! Why must they devalue reading by sharing it with poor people?

@50 I agree. It would. History supports that conclusion. However, there are probably other ways to do it that might also work. I think an attitude of "Having unattached sex is fine so long as everyone knows it's unattached sex, but once you make a promise, you must keep it" wouldn't be so hard for our current culture to adopt.

@51: "who on earth told her that the popularity contest ends with high school?"

The same people who told her she needed to vlog to convert others to her ideology, naturally.

What she says is idiotic and selfish but I found myself more offended at her delivery.

That "I'm totally reading this" monotone and creepily-cloying voice.... makes me feel like when someone steps on a scorpion and a hundred tiny baby scorpions riding on it back skitter about. Ick, ick, ick.

@43, thanks for the LeGuin reference!

Her view of marriage sounds like something straight out of the 1950s. Marriage isn't for everyone but should be available to everyone. And even out of those heterosexual marriages that don't end in divorce, how many of those people are happy and providing a loving, stable home to their children? There is not ONE way to do that. Grandparents and other extended family sometimes provide it as well as gay and lesbian couples. If we care so fucking much about the children, give them what they need not how you think it should look.

I would like to hang out with this girl for a little bit, just so I could explain to her how incredibly uncool she is.

If these people are so worried about kids having a mommy and a daddy why haven't they adopted all the children in their local foster program?

@ken 55 Premarital sex is already *heavily* stigmatized in the Christian community, but that doesn't stop individuals in that community from having sex anyway. I'd point you to this post for clarification:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist…

People get married regardless of sex, availability, or whatever. The problem with polls on the matter is that sex is so stigmatized that people will lie about their experiences so as not to lose face.

Same sex marriage wouldn't affect the way that straight people do or don't have sex (or judge each other over it).

@ken 55 Premarital sex is already *heavily* stigmatized in the Christian community, but that doesn't stop individuals in that community from having sex anyway. I'd point you to this post for clarification:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist…

People get married regardless of sex, availability, or whatever. The problem with polls on the matter is that sex is so stigmatized that people will lie about their experiences so as not to lose face.

Same sex marriage wouldn't affect the way that straight people do or don't have sex (or judge each other over it).

Please forgive the double post. I thought my comment had been eaten. :(

This girl had a twitter meltdown earlier today.. pretty angry. in the midst of this she referred to this article, and did what every bigot does when referring to Dan Savage, and called him a bully.. Ironic they don't see he's an actual gay man who is being oppressed by these people, which of course is why he cares so much.. sheesh. check it out if you can handle the hypocrisy. at AM_Hoffman

Ken Mehlan : you're thinking of traditionnal marriage the wrong way.

Traditionnal marriage is tailored to the exclusive needs of males. Why would they choose not to marry ? Marrying ensures they have a lawful slave that will never leave them (no divorce), with a vagina that they will have access to at any time of their wish (marital rape not being criminalized), and that will bear and raise their children (adulterous women being passible of death), all that without having to let go of all the external pussy they can still get (adulterous males being the norm).

True, maybe males were not eager to marry in their 20s, but come their 40s or 50s and they were getting pretty resolute on marrying any 20-years-old female.

Maybe you're not very educated on what went on in the past centuries. Read old books ! See if the guys were expected to be virgins before marriage, or to be faithful after marriage in the 1900s, and in the 1800s, and before that... 400 years ago, there was more to the world than the views of a small sect of Puritans.

If you want traditionnal marriage to work the way it worked before, you have to reinstate the domination of one sex by the other. But be aware that only leads to decadence. Just like in the Arabic World, once the trailblazer of humanity, and now still stuck for the last 800 years in medieval quarrels over religious issues (sunnites against chiites). That will only change when half of the population will stop being silenced - the half that raises the kids.

Nowadays, the only way one can make marriage "stick" is by educating people on what marriage and sex are really like, so that when they marry, they marry someone thay are likely to stay with for long - because they are sexually compatible and mature enough to understand how relationships work. Maturity can't be achieved when there's too much work for not enough money : populations in poverty have no time to think and plan ahead. Sex is free fun - the only free fun for poor people. Keep people in the dark about how to practice safer sex, and they'll do more unsafe sex, not less sex.

Teenage mothers are the by-product of bad sex-ed, low education, and general poverty. College-educated youth does marry - and liberals stay married more than conservatives.

@63 That's a relative term. Right now, premarital sex is stigmatized in that people will go "tsk tsk" and disapprove. In extreme parts of the U.S., you might have to switch churches. However, it's not going to make a person ineligible for other romantic relationships or ineligible for jobs and a future the way it did in the 1800s and early 1900s.

@68 awesome post. However, KM referred to "stigmatizing premarital sex," which means stigmatizing it for everyone, not just women. I'm not aware that any culture has actually done it, but it could be done.

@61: That actually worked with Fred Phelps' granddaughter.

I stopped listening when she said the popularity contest ended when we left high school...she obviously doesn't know how the world works.

@71: Advantages which we have come to see are far outweighed by the very things you have listed, and which are being adjusted for by new approaches to family structure. Is continuing to bring up the good old days, (for lack of a better short hand term) really of any use at this point? It's akin to going on and on about the advantages of party line telephones. We're not going to go back.

mehlman, you are so full of piping hot crap that the very mention of your name draws flies (to paraphrase tony kushner).

@75: Because it changed the male-female dynamic objectively for the better. Go fuck back off to the 1950s.

I completely get exactly what your saying. I too believe that we should focus on bettering the lives of our Children by working on marriage and encourage 2 parent homes.

I commend your bravery for even trying to get people to get your real meaning and allowing youself to be bashed. Hang in there kiddo!