There
are few topics that raise the collective temperatures of Americans on all sides
as much as gun control and gay marriage. At first blush, it seems like the two
debates are separate without much to connect them. I mean, shooting people and
marrying people are pretty different things. So it would take a real master of
rhetoric to combine the two in one astounding argument.
Ladies
and gentlemen, meet United States Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-Texas, duh),
member of the newly minted Tea Party Unity organization.
While
discussing gun control in a recent conference call he addressed the idea that
the number of rounds in a magazine should be limited to, say, ten, because, fun
fact, you can kill and maim an awful lot of people in a very short amount of
time when you don't have to stop and reload.
Gohmert
responded, "Well, once you make it ten, then why would you draw the line
at ten? What's wrong with nine? Or eleven? And the problem is once you draw
that limit. It's kind of like marriage when you say it's not a man and a woman
any more, then why not have three men and one woman, or four women and one man,
or why not somebody has a love for an animal?"
Yes,
indeed it is "kind of like marriage" if you equate vowing to spend
the rest of your life with someone and being legally recognized as a family
with a large capacity magazine being emptied out into the bodies of people in
order to kill them. And if Gohmert doesn't see the difference between those two
things then I think he and his wife should really get some counseling, quick.
Of
course, Gohmert isn't content to just make a comparison between gun control and
marriage control, he's got to bring polygamy and bestiality into it, too, to
show off his command of the slippery slope argumentative fallacy, a favorite
among anti-gay conservatives. Because if two women can get married then why not
three men and four wives and six goats and a partridge in a pear tree? You
can't argue with - or follow, for that matter - logic like that.
Gohmert
continued, "There is no clear place to draw the line once you eliminate
the traditional marriage and it's the same once you start putting limits on
what guns can be used, then it's just really easy to have laws that make them
all illegal."
Got
that? Lines are hard and confusing! And in Gohmert's world are apparently all
drawn in chalk in the middle of a rainstorm. He seems to be forgetting that
humans draw lines all of the time and, for the most part, all hell does not
break loose. Take speed limits for example. States set the limits, we follow
them, and if we don't we can get pulled over and given a ticket. Speed limits
also have changed over time, which is why Sammy Hagar's "I Can't Drive
55," a cutting edge lament in 1984, is but a rock and roll relic today.
So you
see? "Lines" (also known as laws) such as these are drawn and redrawn
over time and the process does not involve humans having sex with animals of
any kind. Unless, of course, they do things differently in Gohmert's district
in Texas.
Pullquote: Of course, Gohmert isn't content to just make a comparison between gun control and marriage control, he's got to bring polygamy and bestiality into it.