Glenn Beck Shamelessly Shoots Off on Breeding

America's new Dr. Ruth, Glenn Beck is weighing in on procreation, marriage, and children. Speaking to Daniel Horowitz, an editor (God help us!) at Beck's bastion of fake and unethical news, The Blaze, Beck likened the Senate-passed Respect for Marriage Act to China's one-child policy.

Oh, where to begin?

Beck's comment sounds like something Herschel Walker would say? I was trying to think of a metaphor for comparing one thing that has absolutely nothing to do with the other, and I couldn't think of anything as ridiculous as comparing marriage equality to a one-child edict.

The only thing I could think of was something that Walker actually said about solving the climate crisis: "Since we don't control the air, our good air decided to float over to China's bad air, so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then now we got we to clean that back up."

I don't see any difference in that statement in terms of clear context than what Beck and his bigoted cohort Horowitz said about marriage equality and China:

"When the government makes it that it's a [sic] equal proposition, it's a 50-50 proposition, it's not even a biblical values issue anymore, this is straight-up a continuity of civilization issue," Horowitz said. And Beck replied, "This is why China reversed their one-child policy. You cannot sustain anything at this level without procreation."

Later, Horowitz added, "That's what this is all about. It's about destroying the continuity of civilization."

I don't really feel like repeating the rest of their repugnant conversation, but in my nearly four years of writing for The Advocate, I've heard just about everything you can imagine about marriage equality. I even warned last year about all the arguments against it, and how the Supreme Court would come after marriage equality, Part of my argument was Amy Coney Barrett and her Handmaid's Tale attitude of men being breeders and women being birthers, and all the hatred for us that stems from this court and seeps into the lexicon of the current Republican Party.

All Beck is doing is taking that dark view that Barrett must harbor about marriage equality and putting a new spin on it, that government is "mandating" marriage equality like some tyrannical country the same way China said its married couples, a man and a woman, can have only one child. China has since rescinded this command. So if Beck wants to move to China and have lots of babies, then he's free to do so, since he feels that procreation is being stymied here in America because of same-sex marriage.

Beck is just the latest to turn our community and marriage equality into bogeymen. The Department of Homeland Security has just issued a terrorism advisory bulletin that warned of potential threats to the LGBTQ+ community, Jews, and migrants. And there is a thread that connects Beck, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert to the Club Q shooting and Republican reaction and the 36 U.S. senators who voted against the marriage bill.

Beck is just taking his cues from those Republicans who rail on the Senate floor about marriage equality being evil and a threat and then, like proud peacocks, run to the microphones and cameras bragging about voting against the bill to "save our families."

Beck just follows in the footsteps of Republicans who condone a mass shooting at a gay nightclub with their silence and then refuse to offer condolences or support to the victims, just because they're LGBTQ+. Beck's authoritarian China comparison fits squarely with Marjorie Taylor Greene's tweet last week about a gay California lawmaker, who she called "a communist groomer."

Moreover, as Kevin McCarthy desperately tries to become speaker of the House, he will have to kowtow to the whackadoodles in his caucus. That means he will end up giving virulently anti-LGBTQ+ legislators like Boebert, Greene, and Paul Gosar positions on committees and maybe even in leadership, where their hatred of us will be elevated as they continue to offensively use words like "groomer" and "pedophile."

All this hatred this labeling and this revulsion was cause enough for the DHS to issue its threat advisory for our community this week. A DHS official explained that the most serious threat to America's safety comes from Americans and that foreign threats such as the Islamic State terrorist groups and al Qaeda are not as persistent as they used to be.

It is Americans who preach violent ideologies against our community, according to a senior DHS official, who pose the "persistent and lethal threat." And we all know where all that hate is coming from, being firehoused out by all the haters and all those who are seeking to diminish -- no, crush -- our way of life.

The reason Congress is rushing the marriage equality bill through so that President Joe Biden can sign it is that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his LGBTQ-hating wife Virginia want to take a wrecking ball to marriage equality. In essence, Congress is circumventing a Supreme Court that would be best suited for a country like China, where human rights are trampled upon. After Dobbs last year, the court in 2023 is going to be stripping rights left and right, up and down, near and far. Just watch! They might even be brazen enough to overturn Obergefell -- the court's 2015 marriage equality ruling -- just to spit in the eye of Congress, and smuggly try to humiliate our community by trying to make our marriages "illegal."

We recently reported on the Russian Duma passing a law that makes it all but illegal to be gay in the country. And we all know how much the Republicans love Russia, or at least rely on the country to interfere in elections.

Justices Thomas, Barrett, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch, U.S. Reps. Taylor-Greene, Boebert, and Gosar, Sens. Josh Hawley, Lindsey Graham (of all people), Rand Paul, and loathsome Ted Cruz, and Ron DeSantis, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Beck among many, many others would like nothing more than to mimic Russia's Duma by making being queer illegal or at the very least punishable by fines and jail time.

Now you have a bit more context as to why Beck puts marriage equality in the same sentence as communist China. Frankly, does anyone give a rat's ass what Beck has to say anymore? Of course not, which is why he's trying to make news at our expense. Anything provocative against the LGBTQ+ community -- or the alphabet, as he cruelly calls it -- to give him a headline of hate.

Instead of the headline for this column, "Glenn Beck Shamelessly Shoots Off on Breeding," I wanted it to read, "Breeder Glenn Beck F's Himself," but my editors thought that was too provocative. Unlike at TheBlaze, we're decent people over here.

John Casey is editor at large for The Advocate.

Views expressed in The Advocate's opinion articles are those of the writers and do not necessarily represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, equalpride.