More exploding heads

It was nice of the Supreme Court to come up with something so quickly to distract conservatives from their freakout over the Affordable Care Act decision. The level of crazy on the right rose to record levels in an astonishingly short time after the ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges was announced. It doesn't matter that gay people have been marrying each other in various states for a number of years without the sky falling in. Apparently now that it's a nation-wide right, every horrible thing you could possibly imagine is about to happen to us. Lizards will start raining from the sky, streams will flow backwards, and, worst of all, bigots and homophobes might suffer the fate of being called out publicly for their bigotry and homophobia.

Seriously. I was listening to On Point on NPR yesterday morning and the fears the anti-gay marriage crowd were offering up came down to "People are going to call us names." Well, duh. If you insist on living in the 19th century (or earlier), don't expect people to be polite when you advocate for treating some people as less equal than others.

Oh, there were some other talking points. There's the ridiculous claim the anti-gay crowd has been trotting out for years: ministers and rabbis will be forced to officiate at gay marriages when they don't want to. It floors me that anyone ever believes that one. Just about every straight person I know can cite an example of a pastor or priest refusing to marry someone. Catholic priests routinely refuse to allow people who have been divorced multiple times to get married in the church. Fundamentalists of various stripes refuse to marry persons of different faiths -- no Catholics marrying Jews, no Methodists marrying Muslims, you name it. It may not be as common as it used to be, but when it does happen no one freaks out. Besides, let's get real: if you're gay, you already know which denominations are fine with gay marriage and which aren't. What are the odds that someone who's a member of a United Church of Christ congregation is suddenly going to decide to try to get married in a Pentecostal Holiness church? The only "churches" that might have to worry about someone gay showing up unexpectedly asking to get married are the drive-through chapels in Las Vegas and something tells me they don't ever turn anyone away.

As for some of the other talking points, like businesses being forced to serve gay persons, my reaction has always been, in essence, what the hell is wrong with you people? You open a business that serves the public and then want to be able to pick and choose who you serve? Well, then, don't be surprised when your business fails once word gets around that you're an asshole and a bigot. You know, if you announce that your bakery isn't interested in selling cakes to gay people, gays are not going to be the only ones who stop shopping there. You may call it bullying or intimidation; I call it market forces at work.

The other bizarre thing that struck me yesterday was the way all the homophobes kept nattering on an on about religious liberty and freedom. As far as I could tell, what they meant was the liberty to get away with being asshats and the freedom to be jerks, all the while talking about religion. No one is preventing anyone from attending the church of their choice, praying however they want, dressing in funny clothes as a sign of their religious faith, or doing anything else associated with their personal religious practices so where their persecution complex is coming from is beyond me.