When Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette looks back on his political career and wonders at what point he should have realized he was wrong on the issue of marriage equality, the last few days would be a good place to start. Because that’s when a white nationalist group filed an amicus brief in support of Schuette’s appeal to the Sixth U.S. District Court defending the state’s same-sex marriage ban.
The state’s same-sex marriage ban was struck down on March 21 following a decision by a federal judge in Deboer v. Snyder, but then Schuette filed an appeal staying the decision days later. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced March 28 that the federal government would recognize the 300-plus marriages performed after the judge’s decision and before the appeal.
The white nationalist group, Traditionalist Youth Network, decided to give Schuette a hand with his case by comparing the LGBT community to pedophiles and pig screwers.
“The totality of the history of the Western and American traditions demonstrates quite clearly that same-sex conduct can be penalized,” wrote attorney Kyle Bristow, suggesting that legalized gay marriage would be a “mockery” of historical customs and cultures.
“If a state cannot be permitted to define marriage as simply as constituting one man and one woman, then our culture will be taken down a very slippery slope that will see pedophiles, polygamists, zoophiles, those in incestuous relationships, and every other sexual deviant with proclivities now known or to be invented to challenge laws that, likewise, prevent them from marrying whom—what—they wish.”
For his part, Schuette passed on the group’s help, calling the language in the brief “derogatory” and saying the Sixth Circuit should “use this brief to line a birdcage.”
But if anything it highlights the company Schuette and others against marriage equality are keeping. At what point do you look around at the people on the same side of an issue as you are and say, “Maybe I need to rethink this one?”
psaunders@thegavoice.com | @patricksaunders
(photo via Indiana Daily Student)