Over at Salon, Mark Oppenheimer has a longish, interesting piece on Maggie Gallagher, NRO hack, NOM founder and arguably the most prominent opponent of marriage equality in the US. I read it because the thing that has always puzzled me most about the gay marriage controversy is why those who oppose it are so convinced it is a threat to straight marriage, and I wondered if Gallagher would offer any fresh rationales. Alas, no.
As Oppenheimer says, for fundamentalists, the answer is straightforward enough, if kooky. But I’ve never heard people who accessorize their opposition to gay marriage with supposedly secular arguments make a convincing case for why marriage equality is bad for society in general. The arguments always come down to someone’s personal conviction that it must be so, and that conviction is almost invariably derived from a personal experience projected planet-wide.
Gallagher is no exception: For her, it all boils down to her unshakable conviction that the ideal for every child is to be raised by its biological parents and that the institution of marriage must be exclusively about facilitating that arrangement or else, I dunno, cats and dogs, living together. She offers no convincing evidence for this conviction and baldly asserts that there is no evidence to the contrary that could convince her otherwise.
Oppenheimer notes Gallagher’s claim that gay marriage is, for her, wholly detached from the happiness of individuals and that, according to Gallagher, marriage equality is an issue only insofar as it broadens her very narrow definition of what constitutes a marriage. This is why Gallagher is able to airily wave away the implications of her crusade, shrugging off suggestions that otherizing LGBT people contributes to the staggeringly high rate of LGBT teen suicide, violence against the LGBT community, etc., as so much collateral damage.
Gallagher comes off as more than a little sociopathic on that score in her utter indifference to the real-world implications of what has become her life’s work. But Oppenheimer’s piece also makes the origins of Gallagher’s single-minded focus on a Platonic ideal of Marriage clear: Her college boyfriend knocked her up and then dumped her and her son.
That she was able to fend for herself and her son and later marry (although apparently not all that happily) and go on to achieve what would surely be some folks’ idea of success evidently does not balance the scales or impart any subtlety to her world view; in fact, it appears to do the opposite.
Here’s what I thought was the most revealing portion in Oppenheimer’s piece:
At one point, breaking from my script of questions, I interrupted her to ask if, despite all of her fears about same-sex marriage, she didn’t find it heartwarming to see those pictures of joyous gay couples in Massachusetts or Iowa or California, crying and hugging as they celebrated their marriages. Before answering, she takes a long pause, the only long pause of our conversation. “Am I happy for them?” she finally says. “That’s a tough question. I like to see people happy. It’s better than seeing people sad. So yes, I am happy for them. But I am sad. But I am not sad because they are happy.”
I believe her about being sad. And if she weren’t so relentlessly focused on giving her evidence-free, faith-based convictions force of law, I’d be sad for her. Because encasing the hurt and bitterness you felt in 1982 in concrete and swinging it as a mace through real, live human beings in a quest to grasp some abstract ideal is no way to go through life.
[X-POSTED at Rumproast]
kindness
And it is exactly for that reason that I don’t allow my dogs and cat to read Mary Gallager. I’m afraid they might begin to question their fellow family members.
Cassidy
These people don’t need evidence as long as they have their voodoo and their magic book.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cassidy:
This.
Mino
The Prop 8 trial paraded every sociological hack the Right could come up with, and all their arguments were demolished by Olsen and Boies. In fact, several were rendered mute on the stand.
Benjamin Franklin
Child Protective Services, for years, maybe still, had the priority of keeping he children with a bio parent, even if it made no sense.
eg; In the late 80’s i knew a day-care provider who had a couple of twin boys.
The mother had been abusing one of them and both were removed from the home. The day-care provider offered foster care, but the boys were put with the bio father, who had abandoned them. He couldn’t afford day-care, so he took them to work, where heavy machinery abounds.
I am not sure where or why this has been so very important (bio-parent) but it is fallacious reasoning. Natural parents are not always the best parents.
Mnemosyne
@Cassidy:
IIRC, Gallagher is not particularly fundamentalist and doesn’t base her arguments on “Jesus said so, QED.” Her mania really does seem to be based in that early experience where she was abandoned by her boyfriend.
It’s almost like she thinks that if she can force everyone else to get into a traditional marriage, the universe will turn on its axis, time will spin backwards, and the old injury will be repaired.
kdaug
Faith requires no evidence.
Steve M.
I haven’t read the piece yet. Did the interviewer ask her why she hasn’t made it her life’s work to ban marriages between senior citizens? After all, as she and Santorum and all the other wingnut scolds from my former church never tire of telling us, all sex should be marital and the point of marital sex is procreation. Shouldn’t all marriages in which the sex can’t possibly lead to procreation be outlawed?
kindness
@Mnemosyne:
I’m sure I’m not the only one who believes she’s never had an actual boyfriend. Probably more that her pocket rocket refused her as well.
James Probis
I think it’s dangerous to give sociopaths like Gallagher any benefit of the doubt. She promotes hatred and bigotry because it’s easier than working for a living. She got government handouts under the Bush administration for promoting bigotry.
Scott
I almost feel sorry for Gallagher. I guess that’s the problem with being human and empathetic.
She had a few rough years, and she’s let those few years dominate her entire life. A healthier person would be focused on building a happy life with her current husband and her children, not obsessing over dispensing misery to a bunch of people who had nothing to do with her college-age problems. She’s a pitiful and pathetic figure.
Woodrowfan
and she’s a Randian. why was I not surprised?
Villago Delenda Est
@kdaug:
Which explains why they’re so desperate to secure equality between Intelligent Design and Evolution.
elmo
Wow. What a depressing read. Anybody else get a faint Aspie whiff from the almost childlike insistence on the primacy and infallibility of Rules?
Mnemosyne
@kindness:
She has a son, so unless you’re suggesting that the use of vibrators can cause a pregnancy through parthenogenesis, she had a boyfriend at one point.
Betsy
Personally I think that every “family” that has ONLY a mother and a father, but lacks the essential child-rearing components of a devoted spinster aunt, at least two or three nearby grandparents, and a few cousins clustered around the children’s own ages, is a woefully deficient amputation of the TRADITIONAL family in which children were reared.
Therefore, marriage between a mere man-and-woman pairing falls far short of the extended traditional type, and should be banned. History is the best teacher, after all.
scav
@Betsy: Oh, yes, Aunts absolutely essential. If you can’t provide your children with an Aunt, you’ve no business having children. Living Grandparents are equally essential, so you’ve a limited window in which to get cracking at the the output. Still, if one of you doesn’t have a sister, you’ve no business getting married.
Tone In DC
I almost pity her, too. Even without reading that screed, that long ago pain jumps right out from my screen.
cmorenc
@Betty Cracker:
If so, then fertility tests should be a mandatory prerequisite for getting a marriage license. For both the prospective husband and the prospective wife. And they must also sign a commitment, the violation of which shall be a felony offense, to actually produce at least one child within a given time deadline, or at least provide proof of a pregnancy terminated by natural causes.
jeffreyw
…and cue the link in three..two..one
Dustin
So let me get this straight: Her entire reason for her crusade stems from abandonment issues? Talk about a case study right there.
Someone should really clue her in to the history of marriage. You know, the part where the future groom
offers to purchase his daughterasks the father for permission to marry his daughter came with a dowry offer and a handshake. Heck, why not go back to arranged marriages where the parents forced their children to marry the person of their choice because it was negotiated in advance? No sense sugar coating it, not if she really gives a damn about “tradition”.Marriage has evolved, like all cultural institutions. Marriage for no better reason than the love shared between a man and a woman was the natural outgrowth of female empowerment and the equality movement. Following on it’s heals came interracial marriage, something I remember was taboo even when I was in middle school. Now we’ve progressed past (mostly) that and on to the idea that ANY two consenting adults can marry for love, if that’s their choice.
People like Gallagher have already lost the argument to the next generation. She just hasn’t admitted it to herself yet.
scav
@cmorenc: Might just be simpler to call them engaged until the viable raison d’etre and entire focus of the married state pops out. Will still have to resolve what status the individuals have if the child dies later though. Does the marriage immediately pop out of existence?
Betty Cracker
@Steve M.:
Not in those exact words, but kind of: He did ask her why she focuses on gay marriage so much rather than the high straight marriage divorce rate, etc., and she claims to be just as concerned about that (all evidence to the contrary) but focuses on gay marriage because it’s a big legal threat that can be stopped (she thinks).
Gallagher claims that she was the victim of a sexual revolution that lied to her by telling her that sex and procreation were separate things. The fact that they certainly can be separate things — that they demonstrably are since we humans are not stacked 100 deep on every square inch of the earth — matters not a whit on Planet Maggie.
IM
@Mnemosyne:
There still is the possibility of immaculate conception. If it was good enough for…
Anakin Skywalker, perhaps it worked for Gallagher junior too.
geg6
@kindness:
You should read it. The “boyfriend” denies that the relationship was any such thing. He says it was just a casual relationship that got out of control and not ever what he wanted. He’s a jerk, but she’s completely and utterly insane.
twiffer
leaving aside same-sex marriage (which i’m for), i stopped reading when i got to this nugget:
as an adoptee, i cannot read any further, because i want to find this woman and smack her with the brick of reason. i don’t know much about my b-parents, beyond the fact that my b-mom was 15 and i am likely the unintended result of a drunken/stoned/somecombonationthereof hook-up. what fucking warped sense of reality must one have to think the wonderful parents i have are in anyway inferior to the parenting i would have received from a pair of teenagers? my brothers were adopted from a different family: their b-parents were physically and sexually abusive crackheads. again, how does a biological relationship cause abusive crackheads to magically become better parents than adoptive ones?
reading this just makes me angry.
add to that the idea that same-sex marriage should be banned because it will somehow redefine an idea of marriage that only exists in the fantasy of 11yr old girls and i feel the need for an extra brick of reason. i honestly find this argument more offensive than simple bigotry. the abhorrent notion that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be allowed because someone nitwit finds guys fucking to be icky is still a better justification than this dewy-eyed, rainbow-farting unicorn level crap.
a final note, on her cockeyed gender roles view. my wife makes more than i do. so what? the idea that being her equal somehow emasculates me is both offensive and laughable. anyone claiming to be a man who views gender equality as a threat and of depriving him of a “role” is lying, cause he’s actually demonstrating that he’s still a boy.
Jay C
One does have to wonder, though: even given that Maggie Gallagher’s personal experiences (and religious obsessiveness) may have – to say the least – colored her personal views of “marriage” per se: but what seems to be missing, IMHO, is any analysis of why NOM (and so many of its clones) seem to have become merely vehicles for institutionalized homophobia. To me, the nut graf was this:
And yet, the focus of most of the barrage of propaganda and political agitation against same-sex marriage seems, for the most part, to be fixated on the “same-sex” part (which must be what gets the voters out) and kinda/sorta elides over the “marriage” bits. Except, of course, to wail incessantly about it “being destroyed”. Wonder why?*
*rhetorical question
Cat Lady
Another damaged nutjob who should be in professional therapy but instead gets a right wing media platform. Film at 11.
Comrade Scrutinizer
Gallagher is a sad person. Which doesn’t mean that she doesn’t need to be stepped on hard. As Will Graham said of the Tooth Fairy in Manhunter:
I thought it interesting that Maggie cites Heinlein as one of her formative influences. Especially in his later novels, Heinlein advocated a wide range of marriage forms, from renewable term contracts to menage-a-trois relationships, to various group arrangements. Although most of these appeared during and after Time Enough for Love, alternatives to monogamy can be found as early as Stranger in a Strange Land, Puppet Masters, Glory Road, Farnham’s Freehold, and particularly The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.
Heinlein seemed to hold that marriage was designed primarily to provide a safe stable environment for childrearing, and any arrangement of consenting adult that accomplished that purpose was okay. It’s interesting that Gallagher never absorbed any of that philosophy from a “major influence”.
Jess
The reason same-sex marriage is seen as a threat to some is because, to them, sex is a sin. Marriage is a holy sacrament (ritual of making sacred) that permits sex for the purpose of procreation. Allowing marriage between people who are not going to procreate together makes a mockery of the marriage as a sacrament. Kind of like how teaching Intelligent Design as a science makes a mockery of science.
Don’t think this is how I see it; I’m just trying to understand where the opposition is coming from.
Betsy
If poor Margie hadn’t been brainwashed that single motherhood is a deficient, shameful state (and then forced to live in a world where single moms truly are poorer and have more difficult lives than partnered moms — if our culture supported single parents), she might not have all these horrible scarrings and regrets and neuroses about marriage.
But she draws the conclusion that single parenthood is regrettable, instead of wanting to reform the way her co-culturists treat single parenthood.
burnspbesq
@Steve M.:
“After all, as she and Santorum and all the other wingnut scolds from my former church never tire of telling us, all sex should be marital and the point of marital sex is procreation. Shouldn’t all marriages in which the sex can’t possibly lead to procreation be outlawed?”
The Catholic Church has never gone there. It does not deny the sacrament of matrimony to couples that are unable to conceive, whether due to age or medical condition. Nor should it.
Josie
@Jess: I can understand how people can believe that and live according to those beliefs. What I can’t understand is how they have the temerity to make laws forcing the rest of us to live according to their beliefs when we believe something entirely different.
tom
Jes askin. Do we know if the guy who knocked her up and dumped her ended up gay or straight?
Pender
She’s a totally evil person and a blight on humanity — the kind that makes me want to believe in Hell. She is personally responsible for an unfathomable amount of suffering, and the blood of children is on her hands.
burritoboy
Wait, Aristotle makes a rational argument that would – at least seemingly – define marriage as a device that promotes procreation in ways that build a society. Aristotle certainly isn’t a Christian, though he is a theist. His argument is based upon a teleological nature, which implies a First Mover, but that First Mover has little practical relationship with any current (or past) religion.
Not that you can’t argue against Aristotle – I probably would – but that argument isn’t irrational perse. Aristotle may well be wrong, but his argument wouldn’t be an irrational one.
That’s not Gallagher’s argument, but it’s incorrect to say there’s no rational arguments out there whatsoever.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
Well, duh. Of course, that wasn’t an option for my two adopted sons, was it? So they got two non-biological parents and they’re turning out to be fine young men.
She and everyone else can take this argument and FOADIAF.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Jess:
Oh, so now infertile couples can’t marry? Wait! They won’t know until they’re married, will they? Can’t have sex before marriage and find out. So now that they know, they have to get a divorce? What? No! Divorce is a sin! What to do, what to do?
These assholes live in a very tiny box, and most of the real world doesn’t fit into it.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq:
Yeah, the Catholic Church may not have gone there, but Santorum has.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@kdaug:
Which is precisely why “Faith” has no place in post-Enlightenment politics. Again: These fuckers need to stay on their side of the First-amendment fence.
If they seriously want this battle, I say give it to them: In an all-out war between religion and science, science wins. (At least until the Pope figures out how to keep drones aloft with the power of prayer).
IdiotSavant
@Mnemosyne: Or she had someone willing to have sex with her, thus her quest to end any relationships that are not her old world Disney view of how relationships should have been.
Emma
@Comrade Scrutinizer: The Heinlein thing was the first thing that hit me, because Heinlein’s work was the first time I encountered multiple-partner marriage in fiction, and it was treated as a positive good for the children. The whole “biological parents are best” thing is in direct opposition to Heinlein’s view.
Bokonon
What we are seeing the same thing happen all over the right. Whether it is the recent Susan G. Komen imbroglio, or the Catholic Church’s nuclear-war-scale-outrage over the requirement that they offer contraception as part of their corporate-purchased health plans. We encounter the same basic claim that “hey, my personal religious beliefs trump your substantive rights. I believe it … and that’s it … no discussion … too bad for you.”
And let’s say the word. It is a form of nullification – or massive resistance.
As a Christian, I understand the importance of personal conscience and moral choice. But despite all the wingnut protests about “criminalizing” their viewpoints or being “forced” to accept abortion or gay marriage, their pushback isn’t about their OWN choices – it is about controlling the choices made by other people.
Gallagher (and faith-based fellow travelers like Rick Santorum) are in the forefront of this trend. And no matter how you dress it up or sanctify it with the gauzy, happy, angelic beaming smile of “hey, I am a person of faith! I love God! I have strong personal convictions!” – it is still a form of aggression when you take your own convictions and weaponize them, in the form of explicitly political decisions to target and beat up people or programs that don’t share your beliefs. That’s not personal anymore. That’s political.
And no … things like NOM are not defensive. You are NOT defending your personal beliefs by, say, reaching out and preventing gay people from getting married in your state. You are trying to order civil society according to the precepts of your own personal faith, and you are forcing other people to dance to your views.
elmo
@Jess:
Oh my goodness, what a fascinating insight. Seriously, this gets me as close as I think I can ever come to understanding their viewpoint. Of course teaching “anti-science” as science is wrong and twisted, and makes a mockery of everything science is supposed to be about.
These people might seriously believe that marriage is empty and meaningless without procreation (while being too polite to say so to their infertile friends). So a marriage that definitially excludes even the possibility of “natural” procreation is not only empty and meaningless, but twisted and wrong.
Wow.
Thanks for the insight. They’re still evil, though.
LGRooney
@Benjamin Franklin: I am adopted and neither of my parents is biologically related to me (in its familial sense). However, I have never had any desire whatsoever to seek out my biological parents or learn more about my biological origins. My parents are my parents, full stop. They were not perfect but they are my parents; I will never think differently. So, anyone who steps in and says kids are always better off with their own is full of shit because I know that I am not the only case where a child was loved, cared for, and raised adequately by non-biological family. They are the same morons who reject evidence for evolution, anthropogenic global warming, and a billions-year-old universe.
All this is to say, they can’t understand being gay so they refuse to let anyone else engage in it. They are afraid of what they don’t understand and since they don’t understand so much, they are fearful of so much in this world.
brantl
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Heinlein was a Randian. TANSTAAFL.
brantl
@burnspbesq: You really miss the point, lumpy.
Interrobang
@twiffer: What twiffer said. I’m adopted, too. My female genetic donor was something like sixteen when I was conceived, and my male genetic donor was in his thirties. Abortion wasn’t legal in Alberta in the mid-1970s, so I am the product of a statutory rape, and giving birth to me nearly killed both of us (I wound up with cerebral palsy). As far as I’m concerned, my male genetic donor is a shithead who had no business having sex with a teenaged girl, with or without a condom (apparently without). If I should ever encounter the guy, well, I’ll have to figure out if I can still post comments here from Kingston Women’s Correctional.
And fuck any and all people who think that adoption is “settling,” “not as good,” or otherwise somehow lesser. It’s a really base, asshatted thing to do, to insult someone for being more of a humanitarian than you could manage. (I get especially tetchy about this because lots of prospective adoptive parents won’t even consider adopting a handicapped kid, nor a non-newborn, and I was 10 months old, besides.)
Grr.
ciotog
My 78 year old grandfather married a 76 year old woman after my grandmother died. I can assure you, it had nothing to do with the raising of children. We had no objections, but the marriage actually complicated the inheritances of the children of both of them. Yet Maggie Gallagher didn’t poke her nose in to their private desires.
I might add that I, like Maggie Gallagher, had sex in college. Yet somehow I didn’t get pregnant. Hmm, could it be that that’s because I have a contraceptive mindset? Unlike Gallagher I know that feminism is about responsibilities as well as rights.
dmbeaster
The article is worth the read. It suggests one source of motivation for these soul-troubled and rule-bound people. The belief in certain absolutes (marriage can only equal man and woman; sex, procreation and marriage are all the same thing) creates a false comfort, and people that live outside those absolutes upset the comfort created by that belief.
She cannot articulate why these beliefs have an alleged intrinsic value — only that they allegedly do and must therefore be protected.
This point of view can be sold because there is a lot of importance in finding and adhering to values. Many people learn and adapt to values as rules that are not questioned that much – it is a failing of our species to operate this way. People who are hopelessly rule bound can be persuasive because of this tendency. But what is utterly different is how one settles on values and defends them. Us rational folks believe that values represent choices after debating the issues, which leaves them open to change as circumstances or awareness changes. Gallagher finds that whole concept underpinning how we settle on our values abhorrent. Its natural law and received wisdom, or nothing. Anything else that requires questioning of initial assumptions and allows for change is just too unsettling.
Monala
@geg6: The article also says that they lived together for a year. Just because he didn’t want a long term commitment doesn’t mean the relationship was casual when it was taking place.
Mnemosyne
@geg6:
I’m guessing that she’s operating from that mindset that in the good old days he would have been forced into a miserable marriage with her because he impregnated her, and she just can’t get over the fact that he dodged his responsibility while she got stuck with the kid.
Of course, the fact that in reality men dodged their responsibilities all the time in the “good old days” and women ended up having to do things like prostitute themselves so as not to starve doesn’t even enter into her tiny brain. The world should have worked a certain way, but it doesn’t and never did, and she cannot and will not forgive the world for not acting the way she wanted it to.
Monala
I wonder if she and Linda J. Waite are still talking. Waite, a U. of Chicago sociologist, did the research for and co-wrote The Case for Marriage with Gallagher in 2000. IIRC, the book said very little about the importance of children in a marriage–instead, it focused on research showing that married couples on average have higher incomes, better health, and are happier than single people. (To the extent that children were mentioned at all, it was negative: some of the benefits of marriage diminish for a woman when she has children; for example, she gets less sleep, which affects her health, and her income often goes down).
In the introduction to the book, Waite makes it very clear that she disagrees with Gallagher about gay marriage. Paraphrasing from memory, she writes, “If marriage really has all the benefits we believe it does, then I believe it should be extended to LGBT individuals, and that will be good for society overall. My co-author thinks differently.”
Monala
I should clarity: that was me paraphrasing from memory, not Waite!
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Bokonon:
This, exactly.
Someone here the other night (Southern Beale I think? Apologies if I misremember) pointed to Rick Warren’s tweet quoting Acts 5:39 out of context. “We ought to obey God and not men”. Exactly the sentiment you describe.
Of course, he neglected to mention Acts 5:28: “[The High Priest] Said, Did we not command you not to teach in this name? and, behold, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to being this man’s blood upon us.”
So… out of context, as so often happens. Nobody is telling Xians that they can’t preach against contraception, abortion, or even red meat on Fridays. Nobody is forcing any Xians to use contraception, or to have abortions. Nobody is even telling the Church, itself, to change its doctrine.
This is solely about power. The church, as religion, wants to secure its power over its members. And the church, as corporation, wants to secure its power over its employees.
Neither goal seems very Christian to me– if anything, this is more the work of Mammon.
sherparick
A thought that has long occurred about the Conservtive Religious Movement (allied with the Conservative Political Movement), with the fundie-Protestants the more Papist then the Pope Roman Catholics. There love of humanity, their pro-life zealotry, is oddly abstract. It is focused on the imagined zygote, the just forming embryo,the still largely undifferentiated early stage feotus. Real, concrete, specific human beings and their suffering, particularly women, poor people, minorities, foreigners, etc. Not so much. These folks we have to screw over.
Actually, when you read the gospels, the Carpenter guy had a word these kind of people, these pharisees. Hypocrites. He regarded then spiritually corrupt and dead, they were “whitened sepulchres.” He was not to fond of moneychangers either. But our literalists only like reading certain portions of the Bible literrally. The rest they like to forget.
John M. Burt
@Betsy:
Absolutely true. The “traditional” nuclear family was a temporary statistical phenomenon of the late 1940s. A fully-functional family has to be more than just one or two adults and one or more children.
Older
@tom: Maybe we should ask if she is gay. She referred to heterosexual marriage as bridging the “challenging gender divide” — as my husband said, that’s what he likes about marriage. If she thinks it’s a problem, that could be her problem.
gex
@Mino: Which is why the Supremes wouldn’t let Americans see the video. This is how you keep those debunked lies alive.
gex
No need to pity someone who makes a choice to spread their misery instead of heal themselves. Boo hoo, she had a tough time. You know how many women have been knocked up by a guy that didn’t want to marry them? You don’t get to become the fucking Inquisition because of it. Fuck her. She can go rot in her hell.
gex
@elmo: Even if you give them that, they’re full of shit. How many 12 children Catholic families do you see anymore? They don’t have to follow their rules. Only I do.
Monala
Interesting comments to the Salon article. First, there are those wondering if her older son, who is involved in musical theater, is gay, and if this may be part of the reason for her insistence that children need both a mother and a father (She’s thinking that if his dad had been around, he wouldn’t be…)
Second, there are those wondering, since she is such a traditional Catholic and is so insistent that sex is purely for procreation, why she only has one son with her second husband…
Monala
And third, there are those pointing out that once again, in a story about conservatives’ failure to adhere to family values and personal responsibility tenets they advocate, those self-same conservatives blame their failures on feminists and liberals.
Michael
Ghostbusters!
Epicurus
For the record, I don’t hate Maggie Gallagher. She is a pretty messed-up person to begin with, apparently, and she had some tough breaks in life. Much like Nancy Grace, she is apparently trying to exorcise the bad spirits by making other people miserable. Seriously, what kind of person lives to deny happiness to others? Also, too, and this veers way into speculation; her grown son is a theater major and interested in composing libretti? Hmmmm, not to perpetuate a stereotype, but men involved in musical theater are very often…you fill in the blanks! Wait till Patrick brings home his future “husband” to meet Mom; heads WILL explode!
Will
This was my favorite part of the Gallagher piece:
Cargo
It’s great how Maggie was “influenced by Ayn Rand” and knocked up by a fellow rightie in College, who did the Randian thing and bailed as soon as he heard the news.
And now we’re all paying the price for that psycho.
BobN
She makes six figures for writing short, shrill, illogical and inflammatory articles in right-wing publications and for travelling around the country meeting with people who think what she thinks.
Psychology, schmycology, it’s a sweet job.