In this March Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, seated center, signed the Civil Unions Act into law at the Colorado History Museum in Denver, Colo.
Trigger Warning: heterosexism, cissexism
Unless you’re a resident of Colorado, the on-going silliness in Colorado over same-sex civil unions has probably been something you’re blissfully unaware of. Just yesterday, September 24, state senator Kent Lambert went on former Navy Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt’s radio-meets-YouTube show, Pray in Jesus’ Name News, in order to explain his concern over the “new” Colorado policy on civil unions. I say “new” because same-gender couples have been able to enter civil unions in Colorado for four months, which will become five actually by this time next week.
Here’s a few choice portions from the half hour broadcast, which starts with Lamberts apparently urgent concerns over a rather settled issue and then spirals into some really gross cissexism:
So, in all its grossness, state senator Lambert apparently thinks that a young female student, who happens to be transgender, is actually a boy being forced to dress femininely by her parents and that same-gender couples using their civil union status to control everyone’s minds, serve George Orwell’s “Big Brother” from 1984, and simultaneously bring about the Brave New World described by Aldous Huxley. Somehow this hasn’t even remotely begun to happen in the past four months, but soon Colorado will be transformed into a smorgasbord of dystopias, just you wait!
The grain of truth in the idea of everyone being compelled to “believe in gay marriage” (whatever that means) is that the newly passed bill will require adoption agencies that received state funds to not discriminate between same-gender couples with a civil union and married couples. Of course, that’s been the situation in Colorado for months now, and likewise been the law of the land in numerous other states (either intermittently for years like in California or more recently but stably like in New York). So far, there hasn’t really been any nightmarish totalitarianism as a result, just queer families like mine that can breathe a little easier.
That’s all that’s really at stake here – that same-gender couples have some optional but legally recognized status that people can’t willy-nilly be exempt from (or as Lambert put it have “exemptions” from acknowledging). If having the government legally do that is mind control, then what’s marriage proper (which Colorado reserves for male-female couples)? What are corporations? Does Lambert question the right of the government to recognize any group of people for any purpose as necessarily “brainwashing” the populace that those groups or couples… well, are groups or couples?
It’s important to remember that this weird mess of heterosexist and cissexist paranoia are the true colors Kent Lambert showed in the midst of recall campaigns against Democratic state senators and in preparation for 2014’s Spring primaries. He’s an extremist and he should be treated as such, but we need to remember what he’s doing now, while he doesn’t think most people are paying attention.
Velociriot! 