If you’ve been living under the internet rock, you may not have yet seen that homophobic “Gathering Storm” advertisement that was released in the U.S. last week by an organization that calls itself National Organization for Marriage. I’ve decided not to post the ad here, but if you want to see it, go here. As you can guess, it’s an anti-gay marriage video, and completely homophobic. It’s a horrible piece of flimsy propaganda–the kind that you would swear was written by the people behind the Onion if you didn’t know better, the kind that makes you want to laugh out loud, except you can’t because you’re so pissed.
But it seems to me that this ad is an opportunity for Canadians to share with our American neighbours what it’s REALLY like to live in a country where gay marriage is legal. Um, except, when I was thinking about this, I really didn’t know what to say. You know why? Because HELLFIRE AND BRIMSTONE was not visited upon our nation when same-sex marriage law was ushered in. In fact, almost nothing happened–except a bunch of people who loved each other and wanted to get hitched went and got hitched. Woo! Cue the scary muuuusic!
But I really do want to share with our American readers a few things you need to know about how equal marriage has impacted the life of a heterosexual, married woman (with a baby!) in Canada (that would be me):
1. My marriage is not threatened by same-sex marriage. Here’s a newsflash for you: straight people are doing a fine and dandy job of eroding heterosexual marriages (what with that 50% divorce rate and all). All LGBTQ people want is to have the same rights as straight people, given that they are human beings, citizens and taxpayers. So the whole “My freedom will be taken away” thing–I totally don’t get it.
2. The issue of houses of worship having to choose between following the law and following the law of scripture: um, no. A church that doesn’t want to perform ceremonies between gay or lesbian couples will not be compelled to do so.
3. Then there’s the matter of schools teaching kids that gay marriage is okay. Um, yeah! Yeah, they are! So? (But this was happening before equal marriage was on the books in Canada; lots of schools and school boards across the country have been putting this into curriculum for over a decade now).
4. Frightened homophobe: “I will have no choice.” That’s right, you won’t. As a straight person living in a country where equal marriages are legal, you won’t have a choice. Live with it. I live in a country where I don’t have a choice about my tax dollars being spent on waging war. I don’t like it at all. Not a bit. But I continue to live here anyway.
5. “The storm is coming.” Seriously, I can tell you, no storm ever arrived in Canada once same-sex marriage was okay’ed, except the regular amounts of snow and rain that we usually get. What storm is coming? Which?
6. What’s with “A rainbow coalition of people from every creed and colour are coming together in love to protect marriage”? Listen, homophobes, DO NOT CO-OPT the love. Don’t even try it. Because WE–the LGBTQ community and its allies–have the love.
Now that we’ve gotten that overwith, here is the totally awesome parody (warning: do not drink any liquids whilst watching this vid. You may endanger your computer keyboard with your spit-take).
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{ 2 comments }
Yikes! The NOM ad is so terribly disturbing, frightening and enraging! I’m really glad you posted the parody video. It made me feel mildly better. I have a lot of difficulty understanding the arguments that are made by anti-gay marriage groups, but I guess that’s mostly ’cause their arguments are based in bigotry and don’t make sense to me.
You are right, I have been living under an internet rock (because I had not seen this vidoe) and I was way too pissed to laugh. I don’t get the whole “I will have no choice” part – are people afraid that they will be forced to marry someone of the same sex against their will? Nobody has a “choice” in who other people marry, so that can’t be it. It’s a strange fear. Then again, like Veronica, I have a really hard time understanding this stuff because it’s so far outside what I believe.
And about teaching children gay marriage is ok – well, I’m totally in favour of our schools teaching children not to hate and ridicule each other, but instead to be kind to each other, to respect other people and to welcome diversity – who would ever not be in favour of that? My hope is that soon those lessons take over and we are no longer subjected to these kinds of hate ads.
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