[this reminds us of what one of our senior lifelube staffers likes to ask his straight male friends after a couple of microbrews:
ll staff - if you were out camping in the deep woods and you woke up one morning sore and sticky, would you tell anyone?
straight guy - uhhh, no way dude.
ll staff - wanna go camping?]
There's a lawmaker in Iowa who has a problem with gay people pitching a tent. And no, we don't mean it in that way, but in the camping way. Smores. Fishing. Fires. Mosquito repellent.
Apparently those items are solely the domain of straight folks, and specifically straight families, according to Iowa State Senator Merlin Bartz. Senator Bartz is crying foul because, now that Iowa recognizes same-sex marriage, he's worried that his state's Department of Natural Resources is going to allow married gay couples and their children access to family camping grounds in state parks.
For Bartz, the idea of two moms or two dads roasting marshmallows next to straight people is exactly the type of horror that he was afraid of when the Iowa State Supreme Court legalized gay marriage last year.
"A lot of the advocates of gay marriage in Iowa have said, ‘It doesn’t affect anything. Nothing has changed,'" Bartz told Radio Iowa. "The reality of it is that everything is changing."
Is there anything that illustrates the rampant homophobia of opponents of gay marriage more than Senator Merlin Bartz? Here's a man who is literally trying to suggest that campgrounds should segregate LGBT families, and only allow straight people to have access to designated family camping areas. Why? Because, as Senator Bartz put it, he doesn't want state agencies like the Department of Natural Resources writing rules that extend new benefits to gays and lesbians.
Because apparently being allowed to camp next to straight families is a new benefit. Huh. And all this time I thought it was just something called equality.
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