The Worst Argument Ever Made Against Gay Marriage [View all]

[swimboy]

From Slate, but courtesy of the Virginia courts. Pathetic as the argument is, this presentation is hilarious.

I won’t hide the ball here, so here it is: Gay people should not be able to get married because Pocahontas married John Rolfe.

David Oakley was the attorney representing the local court clerk who denied the plaintiffs a marriage license. He was closing up his argument making this exact point—that there is no deeply rooted tradition in our country of protecting the specific right to same-sex marriage. When he made this point, Judge Roger Gregory jumped in and very sternly said “Same thing was true in Loving. Nobody would have considered interracial marriages in Virginia in the 1920s/30s [to be deeply rooted].”

Which is when Oakley shocked everyone with this horrendous Pocahontas argument. He responded, in full: “There is a history, prior to the Jim Crow era laws, the anti-miscegenation laws. The idea of interracial marriage was not prohibited. It still fit within the fundamental right of marriage, the idea of a man-woman marriage. Before Virginia passed those affirmative anti-miscegenation laws, it might not have been the social norm, but people certainly could have married, and indeed did marry, across racial lines. Pocahontas married John Rolfe in the early 1600s and their marriage wasn’t declared unconstitutional.” (You can listen for yourself here, starting at 12:25.)

My favorite comment: "We can't have gay marriage because of Pocahontas?!?"

Enjoy!

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/05/pocahontas_argument_against_gay_marriage_officially_the_worst_ever.html