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Protect Marriage Washington Spreads Fear Along With Misinformation

10/20/09-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
If truth is important, it will not need a bodyguard of lies to make it shine through. The fact that those who oppose marriage equality have surrounded their beliefs in a bodyguard of lies only shows that their ‘truth’ is not worth anything. Protect Marriage Washington has put out another ad full of lies in order to “protect” marriage. They trot out the idea that marriage equality in Scandinavia lead to an epidemic of suicide and drug use. Never mind that Scandinavia is a region not a nation, and that suicide rates in those three nations have gone down in the last decade not up. But this is about fear, not reality.

According to Protect Marriage Washington, 77% of all AIDS cases are due to homosexuality. This is a VERY old statistic since the latest from 2007 pegs it at under 50%, and that is likely due not to the number of actual cases so much as the fact that gay men are more likely than straight men to get tested due to the attitude that AIDS is a ‘gay disease’. Roughly a quarter of the AIDS cases are related to heterosexual activity. Of course, this would all be relevant if the facts were important in this discussion.

Of course, Protect Marriage Washington brought out to show the world the whole “they are going to teach your children about same-sex marriage!” conspiracy. This, of course, is a fear held by people who hate homosexuals. Oh My God! They’re going to teach our children that homosexuality is…acceptable. The HORROR! Yes, they will, along with teaching that other religions, ethnicities, and cultures are alright. But it is not alright, of course, to scream that it is wrong to teach your children about Asian or Mexican cultures.

The truth is that the definition of marriage has been amended and changed so many times in the last two millennia that it is not what the Ancient Greeks practiced. Even the idea of one man/one woman marriage is not even of the Northern European culture and comes from Ancient Greece where a woman had no choice who she married, and was typically raped on the wedding night. It was also a society where men and women were segregated to an extreme, and where homosexuality was encouraged.

Of course, knowing this means being willing to be open to reality and not fear. Change is frightening, and these are people who are in the business of spreading that fear like manure on a field and hoping to have a bumper crop.