Moral Equality

Atrios’ quote of the day was good enough that I’d like to repeat it here:
The gay community has yet to apologize to straight people for all the damage that they have done.

That’s the Catholic League’s William Donohue, referring to the damage gays have done to America’s blood supply by being promiscuous and giving everyone AIDS.

But that’s not the quote I was interested in.  Here’s mine:
And I find it amazing that, when people are acting so morally delinquent, that they're asking for more rights at the same time.

Is that really how this works?  That to be given equal rights in this country, you have to act morally?  Does this mean that he’s granting equal rights to monogamous gays (who are the likely ones to want gay marriage)?  Or do all the gays have to start being monogamous before we give any of them these rights?  And what about immoral heteros?  Are we going to start denying them rights?  And are we going to enforce collective punishment on all the heteros until the bad ones get their act together?

And of course, he’s really just full of shit.  He doesn’t actually believe there’s a link between morality and rights, and was just talking through his ass; desperate to find some argument to rationalize discrimination against gay people and grasping on to that embarrassing argument.  Especially as it’s not too difficult to see how racists could use such a policy to reinforce discrimination against blacks (an argument I believe they did make, in fact).

And really, there is no good argument for the continued discrimination of gay people.  And so when you’re at that level, one bogus rationalization is just as good as any other.  Whether it’s the perceived destruction of the family unit or the contamination of our blood supply, they don’t really care.  They’ve got an irrational bigotry to rationalize and they’ll take anything they can get.  And in the meantime, it does nothing but discredit their own position and show us how these “moral” people can continue to act so immorally.  

And honestly, I don’t think this is a bad time to go for Donohue’s scalp.  I’m not really into that kind of thing, but it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to keep the pressure on by alerting Catholics everywhere of what Donohue is saying in their name.  I think Atrios is already on this, and think it should continue.  Donohue represents a group that is quite tiny, compared with the large number of Catholics nationwide; and I strongly doubt they’d approve of what he’s saying in their name.  And I wouldn’t doubt if many of the members of his own group are only faintly aware of what he’s saying either.

If he wants to be the national spokesmen for Catholics, that’s fine.  But I’ve known enough Catholics to believe that they probably aren’t going to like him.  Besides, the Catholic Church has a pretty strong hierarchy when it comes to who represents them publicly, and I’m fairly sure that being President of the Catholic League isn’t part of it.