{"id":1221,"date":"2004-11-05T06:29:50","date_gmt":"2004-11-05T14:29:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/11\/05\/how-did-anti-ssm-folks-frame-their-case\/"},"modified":"2004-11-05T06:29:50","modified_gmt":"2004-11-05T14:29:50","slug":"how-did-anti-ssm-folks-frame-their-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1221","title":{"rendered":"How did anti-SSM folks frame their case?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over on Marriage Debate<\/a>, Eve disagrees with Michael Triplett’s claim that “anti-gay marriage initiative campaigns were not waged on a ‘we need to save fragile marriage’ platform”:<\/p>\n

I really don’t agree about the way the issues were framed. Admittedly, I live in DC, so I saw virtually no campaign TV ads. But I’ve been doing Nexis searches for “gay marriage” and “same-sex marriage” daily for months now, so I’ve read about six quadrillion op-eds from supporters and opponents of the marriage amendments, from the New York Times to the Anytown Clarion-Pantagraph. And the overwhelming majority of the pro-amendment pieces focused on marriage<\/i>, on what children need and which cultural messages promote strong families.<\/div>\n

I don’t want to spend much time rehashing the election. Eve’s allies won, my allies lost. Maziltov <\/i>to you, Eve. But let’s remember that the vast majority of voters are not doing a daily Nexis search of the papers; they did not see what Eve saw.<\/p>\n

What the majority of Oregon voters did <\/i>see is flyers like this one<\/a>, which claimed that if they didn’t support Measure 36, “gay and lesbian sex will be taught in Oregon schools.” A similar message was given to all Oregonians via push polling<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The same thing was true in the voter’s ballot <\/a>delivered to the home of every Oregon voter – a theme repeated again and again by Measure 36’s advocates is that this was a vote about what children will be taught in schools.<\/p>\n

To be fair, the “Yes on 36” crowd also distributed a flyer saying “children do better with a mom and dad” (along with the usual anti-SSM lies about what social science research says), which by Eve’s standards possibly qualifies as being “focused on marriage<\/i>.” I disagree; since same-sex couples will raise children regardless of Measure 36, logically the issue of “shall same-sex couples be permitted to raise children” is distinct from the issue of SSM’s legal status. In essence, SSM opponents are performing a bait-and-switch; they’re promising to do something about providing all kids “a mom and dad,” when actually their proposed policy does no such thing.<\/p>\n

Could they have won this election without the “faggots will teach your kids gay sex” boogieman? I don’t know. Clearly, they <\/i>didn’t think they could win without bringing up such nonsensical claims (in Oregon, anyway).<\/p>\n

However, they did win – and they won by telling virtually every Oregonian, in multiple ways, that the alternative to their ballot measure was teaching children gay sex in public schools. By doing so, I think that they (and their fellow-travelers) have given up the ability to reasonably claim that this was an election “focused on marriage.”<\/p>\n

UPDATE<\/b>: Michael Triplett <\/a>replies to Eve as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over on Marriage Debate, Eve disagrees with Michael Triplett’s claim that “anti-gay marriage initiative campaigns were not waged on a ‘we need to save fragile marriage’ platform”: I really don’t agree about the way the issues were framed. Admittedly, I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-same-sex-marriage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}