Pat Robertson is worried. In other news, the sky is blue.
But seriously, Pat Robertson is concerned about same-sex marriage. Again.
After a Washington state judge found on Wednesday that a Christian florist had violated the state’s anti-discrimination law by refusing to sell flower arrangements for a same-sex couple’s wedding, Robertson asserted that an “intelligent judge” would have ruled against the gay men.
“To say that some procedural anomaly in the statute overrides the fundamental religious freedoms of the people, it’s just crazy,” he insisted. “And I hope that the lawyers for this florist will appeal this thing to get into the federal courts.”
“But this is outrageous!” the conservative preacher continued. “To tell a florist that she’s got to provide flowers for a particular kind of wedding. What if somebody wanted to marry his dog? She’s got to have flowers for that? What if there’s a polygamous situation where a guy has five wives and he wants to have five ceremonies, and she’s going to be forced by the law to provide them flowers. I mean, this is crazy.”
[Emphasis added.] (h/t Alice)
My favorite part of this whole “marrying-your-dog” trope is that it gets the question backwards. If you really value liberty and freedom, the question should always be “why should this be illegal?”, not “Why should we as a society allow this?” (Yes, I’m paraphrasing Donna from “The West Wing.”)
Via Christians for Michele Bachmann / Facebook
So, with regard to human/canine (or feline, or equine, or, uh, porcine, etc.) marriage, the question isn’t “If we allow two men or two women to get married, will we be forced to let a woman marry a horse?” (I think that’s the real concern—that American women want to go all apocryphal-Catherine-the-Great.)
The question should be: “If a woman actually applies for a marriage license for herself and a horse, are there rational, defensible reasons to deny that application?” I can think of multiple reasons, but I guaran-damn-tee you that if Pat Robertson were here, he’d have dozed off by now.
