Forget Tokyo, can I go to OKC?
It never ends.
Just when you think you've heard it all, just when you think you've reached the end of the crazy, and they can't go no further, it's just like a geologist: "Wait! We found another layer! Let's dig a little deeper!"
Not even a week after we had the GOP Congressional hopeful from Illinois who thinks tornadoes and autism are caused by teh gay marriage, we turn to Oklahoma, where a state representative wants to ban all marriages entirely.
Jump below the Chee-to for the facepalm-inducing logic.
In response to a federal court ruling that Oklahoma’s same-sex marriage ban is unconstitutional discrimination, a state lawmaker says he wants to skirt the equal protection argument by banning all marriages in the state.
“[My constituents are] willing to have that discussion about whether marriage needs to be regulated by the state at all,” Rep. Mike Turner (R) told News 9. He said the idea has the backing of other conservative lawmakers, and could be achieved through a shell bill he filed in the state legislature, intended to adapt to any court rulings on same-sex marriage.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the Eric Cartman strategy:
"If it can't be the way WE want it, then NO ONE gets to have it".
As the article mentions, it's reminiscent of the post-Brown v. Board era, when Virginia ordered schools closed that had to desegregate. When that was overturned, whole counties shut down their entire school systems.
And even earlier this year, when after a Federal Judge struck down Utah's ban on same sex marriages, a county closed its clerk's office so no licenses at all would be issued.
And the sad part is, this is the kind of thing that would pass in Oklahoma. Because if you go to the News 9 website, you should read some of the comments. Here's one as a taste:
I understand that, although we mere mortals would do well to love/serve God as our heavenly King, we each are (or should be) sovereign with respect to each other, and we can (and generally should) charter Earthly governments in bottom-upward fashion to help us to defend this sovereignty from each other, as well as from themselves, but NOT to seek to arrogantly run society, including its families. Families perpetuate as one man and one woman forge (via mutual voluntary informed consent) a lasting social union called marriage (which is at least a secular contract if not also a sacred covenant with God) and then procreate children over whom they temporarily exercise limited parental rights as those children mature to adulthood.
Sadly, modern political collectivists have generally been laboring for over two centuries to replace traditional nuclear families with a nontraditional communal "family" in which marriage is absent, sex is recreational, and governments oversee both procreation and education---and, as part of this effort, they have fostered marital licensure. Such licensure violates contractual rights by subjecting marriages to the state, including by refusing to recognize marriages to which the state did not consent (which have traditionally included both interracial and plural marriages), regulating marital relationships through statutory law as a dominant party, and reducing parents to the state's agents to raise "its" children at its pleasure.
But this is wrong. Marriages should not be run by the state as a privileged activity but, rather, defended by the state like other valid contracts. (Not all contracts are necessarily marriages, but all contracts should be defended.) Which is why I'm glad to read this news that some state legislators in Oklahoma (where marriage under common law has been prohibited since 2010) are now considering abolishing marital licensure, instead. Abolishing marital licensure won't necessarily abolish marriage itself any more than ending chiropractic licensure will prohibit chiropractors from conducting business. But I can understand why some people might want to make it appear otherwise.
Yes, that's how these comments are running. Thankfully there are people also commenting countering this stuff.
But still. Today's Republican Party...
Oy Vey.