The p3 awkward questions: Redux

This item is just a tiny bit overdue. My bad. Although, in its own way, it's an evergreen.

As this blog's tens of thousands of loyal readers already know, the p3 Awkward Questions have to do with the mortal certainty in the hearts of Christian fundamentalist homophobes that allowing gay marriage will lead – directly, inevitably, and almost universally – to man-on-dog sex, or its cross-species equivalent.

The p3 Awkward Questions are as follows:

Why is it that this is the first place their minds go?

Can you really be this worried about stopping something that you haven't already been thinking about – a lot?

This concern is generally cited by homophobes as proof that gay marriage will undermine traditional, straight marriage. Not because it involves humans having sex with animals, per se – although, again, this is where their minds go almost immediately – but because it would be a strike against traditional man-on-woman marriage.

So riddle me this: Via Roy Edroso has come word  – very creepy and unsettling word  – of a New York magazine interview with a fellow who loves his horse. A lot. And not in a chaste, Roy-and-Trigger kind of way. And to hear him tell it, it's mutual. And his (human) wife approves, even encourages, their relationship.

Now I get it that not all Christian conservative homophobes are tapped into the same underground networks that this fellow is. They don't, to my knowledge, share the same lingo, and so forth. (Wow, did I innocently learn my lesson the hard way about that one. Go here and see if you can figure out why it was inadvertently one of my highest traffic posts in ten years.) But the thing about this interview is that the fellow and his wife have been married 19 years. She knows about and is okay with his polyspecies polyamory.

So I've been waiting on upstanding folks like this to weigh in on this story. So far, it's only (unmolested) crickets; the comment section seems to be split between the disgusted and the sympathetic. No one really making a plea for the sacred institution (although some have doubts about the situation – and judgment – of the wife.)

The twofer return of the p3 Awkward Questions

So retired neurosurgeon and GOP presidential candidate wannabe Ben Carson let loose with this:

Ben Carson, the incendiary conservative commentator and potential 2016 presidential candidate, isn’t backing down from his claim that allowing same-sex couples to wed will lead to acceptance of pedophilia and bestiality.

After offering the traditional "I'm sorry, although not for what I said and believe, but only if what I said and believe offended anyone" non-apology apology, the man who made his living digging around in other people's thinky bits for serious money explained himself as follows:

“When I mention bestiality or pedophilia in the same sentence with homosexuality, people say ‘Carson says they’re the same.’ Of course they’re not the same. That point was if you change the definition of marriage for one group, you’ll have to change it for the next group and the next group,” Carson said.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Nevertheless, we must ask again the p3 awkward questions:

Why is it that this is the first place their minds go?

Can you really be this worried about stopping something that you haven't already been thinking about – a lot?

We rest our case.

A Mississippi pastor decided to stomp around outside a federal courthouse on Friday with a horse dressed in a wedding gown, to protest legalization of gay marriage in his state.

"I just wanna send a message saying, you know, how far are we gonna take this thing?" Reverend Edward James told local station WJTV.

The bottomless pit of awkwardness

And here we are again (remember this the next time you pick up the phone to order a Domino's pizza):

The Thomas More Law Center just filed an amicus brief with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in the Louisiana same-sex marriage case. The brief is purportedly on behalf of the National Coalition of Black Pastors and Christian Leaders, which the brief curiously claims represents "the interests of over 25,000 Ministries/Churches that include over 3 million laity in the United States," despite seeming to have no separate Internet presence or website. [...]

Among the ridiculous claims the Thomas More Law Center makes are that same-sex marriage is a slippery slope to men marrying animals – the infamous man-dog marriages the religious right always claims will happen without one single instance of it ever having happened.

"If 'marriage' means fulfilling one’s personal choices regarding intimacy," the brief states, "it is difficult to see how States could regulate marriage on any basis. If personal autonomy is the essence of marriage, then not only gender, but also number, familial relationship, and even species are insupportable limits on that principle and they all will fall. This is not just a slippery slope on which the Appellants wish to set us, it is a bottomless pit into which they desire to throw us."

And so, once again, we're forced to ask the p3 awkward questions:

Why is it that this is the first place their minds go?

Can you really be this worried about stopping something that you haven't already been thinking about – a lot?

Fifth columnists on the farm

Do Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Matt Barber, Alvin Holmes, Phil Berger Jr., Rand Paul, and Louis Gomert, know about this? Because this is exactly the kind of thing they've been worried about for years.

The Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported that [Mississippi Senator and Republican primary candidate for re-election Thad] Cochran was addressing a group of donors and supporters at Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg.

The senator explained his connection to the area, saying that his grandparents lived their whole lives in the area.

“I grew up coming down here for Christmas,” he said. “My father’s family was here. My mother’s family was from rural Hinds County in Utica.”

“It was fun, it was an adventure to be out there in the country and to see what goes on,” he said of his boyhood visits to Hattiesburg. “Picking up pecans, from that to all kinds of indecent things with animals.”

The audience chuckled.

Yes, I bet they chuckled. We've all been there, haven't we?

Well actually, no, Senator, most of us haven't. No. Not really. Still, give the senior senator from Mississippi a chance to revise and extend his remarks:

“And I know some of you know what that is,” Cochran said.

So, perhaps we finally have the answer to p3's most awkward questions.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go take a shower and burn my clothes.  

Return of the p3 awkward questions

In the context of arguing that liberalism violates all ten of the Ten Commandments, this crusading homophobe zeroes in on – go on, guess – Number Seven:

Bestiality, incest, and all,” said Barber. “Liberalism, it seems, embraces all perversions of God’s design for human sexuality, which, again, is only appropriate within the bonds of marriage between a man and a woman.

Once again, we're forced to ask the p3 awkward questions:

Why is it that this is the first place their minds go?

Can you really be this worried about stopping something that you haven't already been thinking about – a lot?

The awkward p3 question has been taken to the nth degree

Because, I suppose, he wants marriages to last:

Less than a week after claiming the majority of Alabamians are against interracial marriage, State Representative Alvin Holmes told a radio audience he's for interracial marriage, and then some.

Speaking on WVAS radio in Montgomery, Rep. Holmes told a radio audience he's not against marriage between a man and a mule, as long as the "man and the mule get along."

So once again, apart from pointing to Rep. Holmes (who's been in the Alabama state legislature for forty years this November) as evidence that the problem isn't just electing more Democrats, it's electing much better ones, we're forced to ask the p3 awkward question:

Why is it that this is the first place their minds go?

Can you really be this worried about stopping something that you haven't already been thinking about -- a lot?

Sixth-grader forced to confront the difficult p3 questions

It's pretty surprising when an AP journalist admits to being sort of freaked out.

But when you manage to shock a sixth-grader, it's clear you've really accomplished something. It's not hard to gross them out, or embarrass them in front of their friends, but this is achievement at a completely different level:

A sixth grader in North Carolina said she was shocked on Wednesday when a candidate for the 6th Congressional Republican nomination told her that same-sex marriage was like “a man marrying a dog.”

Candidates vying to fill a seat that will be vacated by U.S. Rep. Howard Coble (R) met for a forum at Greensboro Montessori School where they were quizzed by students on topics from immigration to gun rights.

Sixth-grader Lana Torres explained that she supported marriage equality, and asked Rockingham County District Attorney Phil Berger Jr. what he would do ensure equal rights for LGBT people.

“Two years ago, the voters of North Carolina overwhelming approved Amendment One, which only recognized traditional marriage, and I was a leader in that effort,” Berger replied, according to the Greensboro News & Record. “I was the spokesperson for traditional marriage in North Carolina, and I am very much in favor of traditional marriage.”

Torres told the paper that she pressed Berger following the conclusion of the forum.

“He talked about a man marrying a dog,” the student recalled. “I found that really offensive, that he would compare gay marriage to something so offensive and outrageous.”

And so sixth-grader Lana Torres was forced, just as we have been forced more than once in the past, to ask the awkward but necessary questions:

Why is it that this is the first place their minds go?

Can you really be this worried about stopping something that you haven't already been thinking about -- a lot?

Gross.

He couldn't even wait a full news cycle before going there

[Updated below.]

“He,” in this case, is Rand Paul (R [Need you ask?] - KY [Surprise!]), who reacted to this morning's SCOTUS news that DOMA is dead as a dodo with a General Zod-like plea for the purity of our genetic heritage:

I think this is the conundrum and gets back to what you were saying in the opening -- whether or not churches should decide this. But it is difficult because if we have no laws on this people take it to one extension further. Does it have to be humans?

This was on Glenn Beck's show, so there was no possibility of anyone with good judgment standing nearby ready to stuff a towel in the Senator's mouth before he said something exactly like this.

But once again, we have to ask the awkward but necessary questions:

Why is it that this is the first place their minds go?

Can you really be this worried about stopping something that you haven't already been thinking about -- a lot?

H/t to Pierce.

[Update: John Oliver writes a concurring opinion.]

The unforgiving minute: Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry

(Updated below.)

Once again, a conservative homophobe (but I repeat myself) goes there (emphasis added):

And I pointed out, well, once you make it ten, then why would you draw the line at ten? What's wrong with nine? Or eleven? And the problem is once you draw that limit ; it's kind of like marriage when you say it's not a man and a woman any more, then why not have three men and one woman, or four women and one man, or why not somebody has a love for an animal?

Where Rep. Gohmert (R [of course] - TX [unsurprisingly]) started was complaining about the very idea of limiting clip-sizes for automatic and semi-automatic rifles.

Where he wound up, in three short sentences, is his worry that gay marriage will lead to people having sex with barnyard animals. This is a problem which has long troubled such moral thinkers as Gohmert, Rick Santorum, and Mike Huckabee, and has raised some equally disturbing questions of its own, which I must ask again here:

Why is it that this is the first place their minds go?

Can you really be this worried about stopping something that you haven't already been thinking about -- a lot?

(Update: Oh, yeah -- and this.)

The unforgiving minute

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.