# data[].attributes.body
1. Cinco de Mayo is not the Mexican Independence Day

2. May 5th is the day the Mexicans had victory over France

3. France sent troops to Mexico because of the suspended payments on foreign debts

# data[].attributes.headline
Why do people worry about gay marriage being a threat to themselves when they have their own issues to worry about ? Topic Personal preferences vs. 21st century life

# data[].attributes.subject
Why do people worry about gay marriage being a threat to themselves when they have their own issues to worry about ? Topic Personal preferences vs. 21st century life

# data[].attributes.body
"Marriage should be between a spouse and a spouse not gender and gender " - Hendrik Hertzberg

# data[].attributes.body
•gay marriage opponents are desperate

•

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Gay-marriage bans don't discriminate against gays because they apply to heterosexual people, too.

At least, that's what Kentucky is arguing - apparently with a (ahem) straight face - to the Supreme Court. This and other Onion-worthy arguments illustrate how desperate gay-marriage opponents have become, and how nakedly their logic now mirrors that used to justify the bigoted anti-miscegenation laws struck down a half-century ago.

In most states, conservatives realize they've basically lost the war against gay marriage, both in the court of public opinion and the literal court of law. Same-sex couples are legally allowed to wed in 37 states and the District, and there have been 65 court decisions expanding the freedom to marry since June 2013, when the Supreme Court struck down a key component of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. That's why many opponents to gay marriage see "religious freedom" laws, such as the one now igniting a firestorm in Indiana, as the last remaining policy tool available to them.

But in a large chunk of the country, gay marriage is not quite a fait accompli. On April 28, the Supreme Court will hear cases from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee relating to both bans on same-sex marriage and refusals to recognize such marriages performed in other states. The justices' reaction to these cases is expected to finally, formally determine whether gay marriage must be legal in all 50 states.

Of course, the Supreme Court has already made multiple rulings expanding same-sex marriage access and recognition. States have thus been forced to get more creative about how they justify their remaining marital prohibitions and how they can plausibly claim that their knee-jerk restrictions on matrimony, which the court has repeatedly called a " fundamental right," don't violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution.

And so we arrive at Kentucky's legalistic gymnastics.

In a Supreme Court brief filed last week, a lawyer for the Bluegrass State's Democratic governor argued that gays are not being discriminated against because they're still allowed to get married - so long as they disregard whom they're sexually attracted to.

According to the brief: "Men and women, whether heterosexual or homosexual, are free to marry persons of the opposite sex under Kentucky law, and men and women, whether heterosexual or homosexual, cannot marry persons of the same sex under Kentucky law."

This logic seemed so disingenuous when I first read it that I had to check whether it was an April Fools' Day hoax. It's just too close to that old biting Anatole France quote about how "the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

More to the point, Kentucky's argument closely resembles one used, and rejected, in a landmark Supreme Court case about marriage restrictions: Loving v. Virginia, decided in 1967. Virginia presented similar logic as to why its law banning interracial marriage - like those then on the books in 15 other states, including Kentucky - was not discriminatory. Both blacks and whites were allowed to marry inside their race, after all, and both were equally punished for marrying outside of it. The court didn't buy it. (In a delightful and almost poetic coincidence, one of the petitioners in the Kentucky same-sex marriage case is surnamed "Love." History rhymes in multiple ways, it seems.)

Backed into a corner, the states defending same-sex marriage bans today have presented other, equally absurd arguments, too. Kentucky also said it should be able to ban same-sex marriage because the "promotion of birth rates is a legitimate interest" and "supporting the formation of relationships that have the natural ability to procreate furthers the commonwealth's fundamental interest in ensuring humanity's continued existence." Michigan made a related argument in the brief it filed with the Supreme Court.

These and other arguments contained in the four states' briefs often imply that gay men and lesbians can ignore and switch their sexual orientation at will, despite the scientific community's consensus to the contrary. In the absence of the ability to legally marry, the states suggest, gay couples will simply shrug, break up and decide to procreatively pair up with a member of the opposite sex instead. This scenario is almost funny, in a sitcom-y sort of way. Or at least it would be, if so many loving couples' fates didn't hang in the balance.

Read more about this topic:

Tim Cook: Pro-discrimination 'religious freedom' laws are dangerous

Arnold Schwarzenegger: 'Religious freedom' laws are bad for Republicans

Edwin Meese III and Ryan T. Anderson: Religious-liberty protections promote tolerance

Dana Milbank: The GOP's collision course with American voters

Ann Telnaes: Evangelicals, big business and equality in the GOP

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Kentucky's farcical defense of anti-gay bigotry

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Gay-marriage bans don't discriminate against gays because they apply to heterosexual people, too. At least, that's what Kentucky is arguing - apparently with a (ahem) straight face - to the Supreme Court. This and other Onion-worthy arguments illustrate how desperate gay-marriage opponents have become, and how nakedly their logic now mirrors that used to justify the bigoted anti-miscegenation laws struck down a half-century ago.

# data[].attributes.body
• Gay marriage kills

• this type of marriage is like abortion

• larger number of unmarried women

• lower birth rates

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As the Supreme Court prepares to take up same-sex marriage next week, conservative scholars have produced a last-ditch argument to keep the scourge of homosexual unions from spreading across the land: Gay marriage kills.

They're saying that legalizing same-sex marriage will cause 900,000 abortions.

The logic is about as obvious as if they had alleged that raising the minimum wage would increase the frequency of hurricanes. If anything, you'd think that more same-sex marriages would mean more adoptions.

But comes now Gene Schaerr, unsuccessful lawyer for Utah in that state's case against same-sex marriages, to file an amicus brief with the Supreme Court on behalf of "100 scholars of marriage."

"On the surface, abortion and same-sex marriage may seem unrelated," Schaerr acknowledged in a post on the Heritage Foundation Web site in advance of a presentation he made to the conservative think tank Monday. But "the two are closely linked in a short and simple causal chain."

To wit: Legalizing same-sex marriage devalues marriage and causes fewer heterosexual couples to marry, which leads to a larger number of unmarried women, who have abortions at higher rates than married women. As a result, Schaerr wrote, "nearly 900,000 more children of the next generation would be aborted as a result of their mothers never marrying. This is equal to the entire population of the cities of Sacramento and Atlanta combined."

Case closed! Or at least it would be, if Schaerr's "causal chain" were real. He freely acknowledged that he had no cause-and-effect proof when I asked him about it at Heritage on Monday.

"It is still too new to do a rigorous causation analysis using statistical methods," he admitted, saying that he had found only a decline in marriage rates in states that had legalized same-sex marriage (in fact, marriage rates have declined overall). "The brief doesn't even attempt to say conclusively that this reduction in marriage rates has been the result of adopting same-sex marriage," Schaerr said, though there are "theoretical reasons" such causation might occur.

Or perhaps theological reasons. When Schaerr quit his law firm last year to take the Utah case, he wrote to colleagues that he was going to "fulfill what I have come to see as a religious and family duty." A colleague leaked his resignation letter to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group.

Utah argued that legalizing same-sex marriage would lead to lower birth rates, pointing out that some of the states with the lowest birth rates, such as Massachusetts, Vermont and Connecticut, had same-sex marriage, and some of the highest birth-rate states, such as Texas and Utah, did not.

But the national birth rate has been declining for years, from 14.2 per 1,000 people in 2006 to 12.4 in 2013. Texas and Utah actually had larger drops than Massachusetts, Vermont and Connecticut.

Utah lost its case, but Schaerr - a former clerk to Antonin Scalia - is now making a similar argument, claiming to show drops in marriage rates in the years after states adopted same-sex marriage.

Heritage's Ryan Anderson, appearing with Schaerr on Monday afternoon, went even further than Schaerr's conclusions in alleging that "every nation and every state that have redefined marriage have seen their marriage rates decline by at least 5 percent after that redefinition, even as the marriage rates in the rest of the states remain stable."

Oh?

The national marriage rate declined to 6.8 per 1,000 in 2012, from 8.0 in 2002, before Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage. The Massachusetts rate dropped from 5.9 in 2002 to 5.5 in 2011, while Connecticut went from 5.7 to 5.5 and Vermont went from 8.6 to 8.3. But Texas and Utah, free of same-sex marriage, dropped from 8.4 to 7.1, and from 10.4 to 8.6, respectively.

Fred Sainz, vice president of the Human Rights Campaign, accused Schaerr of "cherry-picking" his statistics. But though the numbers are dubious, Schaerr's argument has the useful purpose of switching the debate away from same-sex marriage - on which public opinion is shifting decidedly against conservatives - and toward abortion, where positions are hardened.

Schaerr had other arguments, too. He asserted that Abraham Lincoln would find it "preposterous" that the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing equal protection, would be used to justify same-sex marriage.

What Lincoln would think in 2015 is unknowable - but such considerations did not deter Schaerr. He also speculated that an unemployed man who got his girlfriend pregnant in a state that had legalized same-sex marriage would be more likely to conclude that "I'm not going to assume these obligations to this woman and this child."

From that idle speculation, all it takes is a slippery slope and an active imagination to get to 900,000 abortions.
Twitter: @Milbank
Read more from Dana Milbank's archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

Read more:

Cardinal Donald Wuerl and John Garvey: Disagreement is not discrimination

Catherine Rampell: Kentucky's farcical defense of anti-gay bigotry

Ryan T. Anderson: D.C. just launched a culture war

The Post's View: Why new state anti-discrimination ordinances are so concerning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The new argument against gay equality: Same-sex marriage kills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As the Supreme Court prepares to take up same-sex marriage next week, conservative scholars have produced a last-ditch argument to keep the scourge of homosexual unions from spreading across the land: Gay marriage kills. They're saying that legalizing same-sex marriage will cause 900,000 abortions.

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.procon.org/debate-topics.php

# data[].attributes.body
• can make families stronger

• reduce number of divorces

• more stability within families

• acceptance to be equal citizens

• boost economies for struggling communities

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As outrageous as it may sound, heterosexual families will become stronger and stronger as more states follow the New York gay marriage attempt, Iowa's gay marriage ruling and the Vermont gay marriage veto override. Gay marriage will reduce the number of divorces caused by fraudulent marriages, ensure that more orphaned children grow up in stable homes, raise the standard of living for children with gay parents, make neighborhoods safer for families, and boost the economies of struggling communities.

It's not the license to marry that will create these benefits; it's the massive shift in attitude that'll result from it. The more gays are accepted as equal citizens, the more stable heterosexual marriage will become. Why? Because there are an untold number of "traditional" marriages that break up because one of the spouses comes out.

Homophobia drives fearful gay men and women into fraudulent marriages. The pressure to conform, the weight of discrimination, the potential loss of cherished dreams (serving in the military, worshiping in church, getting job promotions, raising kids) propels many into marriages they otherwise wouldn't commit to. Like my friend Cooper.

Cooper is 64 and recently divorced. He was married for 38 years before he came out. He left behind him a woman whose life was shattered by a truth that tunneled its way out of the mounds of shame, hostility and hatred that society heaped on it. The woman is 62. What is she supposed to with her life now that he's found his?

Homophobia has a way of wounding gay and straight alike. It creates two classes of victims: People who are forced to lie and the people they lie to. As homophobia decreases, so will the pressure for gays and lesbians to enter into fig leaf marriages. Which in turn, prevents children from being hurt by divorce and helps heterosexuals, like Cooper's wife, create authentic, stable marriages.

Homophobia punishes heterosexuals, too. For every gay man and woman that gets punished by the legal system there are straight mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters who suffer with them.

According to my calculations (see box below), 57.6 million people are either directly or indirectly affected by homophobia. Since demographers believe there are only about 6.4 million self-identified gay people,* that means 89% of the people affected by discrimination against gays are heterosexual.

No matter how they feel about homosexuality, no parent wants to see their children hurt, no brother wants to see his sister in danger, no uncle wants to see his nephew suffer. One of the intangible costs of homophobia is the excruciating emotional pain felt by everyone related to the gay family member. Lessen homophobia, as gay marriage will, and you lessen the strain on millions of families.

Estimated Numbers:
6.4 million gays and lesbians
6.4 million siblings of gays and lesbians (assuming each gay person has one sibling)
12.8 million parents of gays and lesbians (assuming each parent is alive)
25.6 million grandparents (assuming two sets of living grandparents)
6.4 million uncles and aunts (assuming one per gay person)

Total: 57.6 million

How Gay Marriage Helps Your Neighborhood
Ferndale, Michigan's downtown, was once lined with abandoned buildings. After years of courting gays to live and start businesses there, it had a vacancy rate of less than 3 percent (before the recession hit).

Ferndale followed the theories in the bestselling book, The Rise of the Creative Class. Civic leaders across the country pay over $10,000 to hear the author, urban planner Richard Florida, talk about the best way to revitalize their communities. His thesis: If cities want to jump-start their economies they must attract the dominant economic group in America -- people who think for a living (doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and computer programmers). Dubbing them the "Creative Class," Florida points out they're the most dominant economic group, making up nearly 30% of the workforce.

Florida produced a number of indexes measuring characteristics of successful cities. There's a High-Tech Index (ranking cities by the size of their software, electronics and engineering sectors) and an Innovation Index (ranking cities by the number of patents per capita).

But one of Florida's most talked-about rankings is the Gay Index. He told Salon.com: "Gays are the canaries of the creative economy. Where gays are will be a community that...
Click here to read Part 2*. Includes:
- How "gay meccas" are economic engines for straight counties
- How demographers calculate the number of gay people in the U.S.
- Which Medical Associations are for gay adoptions
- How gay marriage improves the lives of straight children

Also

For an explosively emotional website that helps conservative parents accept their gay children, go to familyacceptance.com.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
New York Gay Marriage: How It'll Strengthen Heterosexual Marriages

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As outrageous as it may sound, heterosexual families will become stronger and stronger as more states follow the New York gay marriage attempt, Iowa's gay marriage ruling and the Vermont gay marriage veto override.

# data[].attributes.body
• this gives couples the right to be together as "one"

•one of the nations highest courts agrees with same sex marriage

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
West Virginia will "bring to a close" the pending litigation over its same-sex marriage ban after the Supreme Court effectively allowed gays to wed in the federal circuit that the state belongs to, its attorney general said Thursday.

West Virginia becomes the latest in a flurry of states to allow gay marriage. The state's decision came after the nation's high court last week declined to take up challenges to same-sex marriage bans from five states in three federal circuit courts - all which had ruled in favor of gay nuptials. In doing so, the justices allowed same-sex marriage to proceed in those states, plus the six others that are part of those circuit courts, including West Virginia in the 4th circuit.

"By refusing to consider the appeal, the Supreme Court has caused the Appeals Court's decision to become final and binding on West Virginia," Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said in a statement. "While we disagree with the Supreme Court's decision to allow the Fourth Circuit's opinion to stand and believe it improperly displaces state and local decision-making, we will respect it."

Twenty-six states, plus DC, allow same-sex marriage. Another seven states are in federal circuits where gay marriage bans have been declared unconstitutional, putting the prohibitions in those states in jeopardy.

IN-DEPTH

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Gay Marriage Gets the Green Light in West Virginia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
West Virginia will "bring to a close" the pending litigation over its same-sex marriage ban after the Supreme Court effectively allowed gays to wed in the federal circuit that the state belongs to, its attorney general said Thursday. West Virginia becomes the latest in a flurry of states to allow gay marriage.

# data[].attributes.body
What : Same sex marriage legalized in the United States

•federal court in Alabama affirmed freedom to marry same sex

When : 2015

Where: 37 states listed in article