Jennifer Roback Morse, founder and director of the Ruth Institute, a project of the National Organization for Marriage's Marriage Education Fund, is once again shifting the blame for antigay rhetoric to those meanies at ThinkProgress, Good As You, and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation who called attention to Morse's patently homophobic statements.
Zack Ford at ThinkProgress LGBThighlighted Morse's false equivalencies between "fatherless households" and families headed by same-sex parents -- a red herring frequently posited by antigay activists. Despite oppositional claims to the contrary, several studies have found that children raised by two same-sex parents are every bit as well-adjusted, socially and emotionally, as children raised in houses headed by opposite-sex couples. Ford also pointed to Morse's assertion that "the parallels" between Nazi Germany and modern America are "really quite chilling," and what happened in Nazi Germany "is happening to us."
In a response posted on Mercator.net, Morse continues to dodge questions raised about the content -- and inaccurate sourcing -- of her homophobic statements, opting instead to claim that Ford and other equality supporters have falsely equated opposition to the "gay lobby" with opposition to "gay rights."
Do you see what they have done? They have slipped in an unstated assumption that the "gay lobby" = "gay rights." Anyone who disagrees with the gay lobby automatically, always and everywhere, opposes gay rights. Put it another way: they have turned an important and debatable question into an unquestioned assumption.
Morse fails to address the content of the statements she made that landed her on GLAAD's Commentator Accountability Project, which seeks to bring attention to antigay, biased statements made outside the mainstream media by frequent commentators and so-called experts on marriage equality and LGBT families.
While Morse and others are free to hold whatever beliefs they wish, the assertion that LGBT families and identity are a "debatable question" is an effort to erase the existence of those thousands of LGBT parents and people, many of whom are legally married spouses raising children.
