Maggie Gallagher, the Wicked Witch of Marriage, came out with the usual antics in her syndicated column today.
I usually don’t cover much of what Maggie and her cohorts at National Organization of Marriage (NOM) have to say since bloggers like Jeremy and Joe do a great job of tracking her sausage-fingers as they pluck away at our rights (by the way, this photo of her gives me the heebie-jeebies).
Says Gallagher:
Do I have blood on my hands?
Major gay rights groups are saying so. Each of us who opposes gay marriage, they say, is responsible for the terrible and tragic suicides of gay teens that recently hit the news.
She goes on to say:
Evan Wolfson, one of the leading architects of the gay marriage movement, calls me out personally in a column: “National Organization for Marriage Chairman Maggie Gallagher is among those who, with reckless disregard, attacks LGBT youth.”
Former Bill Clinton adviser Richard Socarides told the AP that these suicides demonstrate why gays should be allowed to marry: “When you speak out for full equality now, as opposed to partial equality, or incremental equality, you send a message to everybody, including the bullies, that everyone is equal.”
Apparently, either we all agree that gay marriage is good or gay children will die.
…
Gay students are also more than twice as likely to report having had sexual intercourse before age 13 — that is, to be sexually abused as children. They are three times as likely to report being the victims of dating violence, and nearly four times as likely to report forced sexual contact. A majority of LGBT teens in Massachusetts reported using illegal drugs in the past month. (Perhaps most oddly, gay teens are also three times as likely as nongay teens to report either becoming pregnant or getting someone else pregnant.)Forced sex, childhood sexual abuse, dating violence, early unwed pregnancy, substance abuse — could these be a more important factor in the increased suicide risk of LGBT teens than anything people like me ever said?
Oh, Maggie. Dear Maggie. Did you ever think for a minute that perhaps why the rates of these dangerous stats are so high is due to bullying and the news constantly showing heteros with signs telling us we are going to hell? Due to the continuous babble of the right making us gays ALL feel like second-class citizens and “sexual deviants?” And while I agree that childhood sexual abuse can lead to a shitload of issues, many gays and lesbians don’t have these experiences as children and we are (and were) still bullied.
I do know that after reading anything you or your organization publishes, I do reach for my cocktail of choice. I do know that your words are reinforcement for those who want to see us bashed (or worse).
The fact you don’t think your hateful and abusive rhetoric doesn’t contribute to bullying and gay bashing is absurd. While not the only reasons for gay suicides, the words you use contribute to a larger culture of making us feel more alone and afraid. It must stop.
