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<div class="timestamp">November 5, 2012</div>
<h1>Lessons in Fearmongering</h1>
<h6 class="byline">By
<span>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/frank_bruni/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by FRANK BRUNI"><span>FRANK BRUNI</span></a></span></h6>
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<p>
SEATTLE </p>
<p>
The nation’s vigilant theocrats figured us out. We can’t slip anything
past them. It’s not the right to marry that we’re after — to make the
same commitment that our straight peers are automatically able to, even
if they’re thrice divorced, tipsy and standing before an Elvis
impersonator in Vegas. It’s the nation’s young. We’re out to recruit the
next generation, plump up our ranks and pave the way to a gay utopia in
which the Tony Awards get higher Nielsen ratings than the Super Bowl
and we all dance at the inauguration of President Ellen DeGeneres.
</p>
<p>
Please. If you think we have time for such elaborate stratagems, you
underestimate how many hours we put in at the gym. Besides which, I
prefer football to “Footloose,” and I can round up plenty of other gay
men who are with me on that, along with lesbians more loyal to “The
View” than to “Ellen.” </p>
<p>
On this Election Day, citizens in four states are weighing in on
same-sex marriage. Minnesotans are deciding whether to ban it in their
Constitution, but here in Washington and in Maine and Maryland as well,
the issue is whether to permit it, and a majority of “yes” votes would
mark the first time that a state has done so by popular referendum.
</p>
<p>
That milestone seems within reach, and horrified opponents have
responded with their favorite and nastiest scare tactic, the insinuation
that America’s children are about to be corrupted. This fearmongering
worked four years ago in California, where voters rejected same-sex
marriage after the repeated <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PgjcgqFYP4">broadcast of a commercial</a>
in which an adorable little girl exultantly informs her aghast mother
that in school that day, she learned that princes could marry princes
and that she could marry a princess. A stern-looking man then sweeps in
to warn viewers that they will be saying O.K. to such ostensible
brainwashing if they let gay couples say “I do.” </p>
<p>
The <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MER3qEaQlkY&feature=plcp">analogous commercial</a>
this year spotlights David and Tonia Parker, who insist that after
Massachusetts began to allow same-sex marriage in 2004, their son and
other children were forced to learn about homosexual relationships in
school. While it’s true that some schools mentioned same-sex couples in
diversity discussions, it wasn’t mandated by the state or connected to
the advent of same-sex marriage, and the referendums this Election Day
say nothing at all about curriculums. Moreover, a federal court that
heard a lawsuit by the Parkers rightly determined that a cursory
reference to gay couples in classrooms “does not constitute
‘indoctrination,’ ” as the Parkers had claimed. </p>
<p>
David Parker is just a textbook homophobe in the garb of a humbly
concerned parent. He has likened homosexuality to alcoholism and equated
teachers who mention it to sexual predators using foul language in the
park. </p>
<p>
He and his ilk love to link gay rights with sexual predation. An <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91BqQCmpzug">ad used in Florida</a>
in 2009 shows a blond girl in a pink T-shirt entering a playground
restroom; seconds later, a man in a baseball cap and sunglasses follows
her in. The commercial then claims that the Gainesville City Commission
made this legal, presumably by including transgendered people in an
anti-discrimination ordinance that covered public accommodations.
</p>
<p>
As for anti-gay crusaders’ fixation with indoctrination, I’d like them
to explain how so many of us turned out gay or lesbian despite having
straight parents and, in my day, being exposed to movies, TV shows and
Top 40 songs that portrayed an almost exclusively heterosexual world.
</p>
<p>
I’d also like them to meet Jeff DeGroot, 27, a law student here who has
been giving public speeches in support of the Washington referendum. He
grew up in Oregon with two mothers — “the most wonderful parents in the
world,” he told me — who went to all his hockey games, nagged him about
his homework and have now been together for 38 years. They were even
married to each other briefly after a county clerk in Oregon began to
grant same-sex marriage licenses in 2004. The Oregon Supreme Court
nullified those weddings the following year, devastating them, he said.
</p>
<p>
Surely, I remarked, his upbringing had made him homosexual. </p>
<p>
He laughed. “My girlfriend would have something to say about that,” he said. </p>
<p>
You are who you are. And that’s all that Jeff and I and others who endorse same-sex marriage want anyone to be. </p>
<p>
I have 11 nieces and nephews, the oldest of whom is 16, and do you know
how many times I’ve discussed my sexual orientation with her? Zero. She
knows I’m gay, knows my partner — and that’s that. Instead we talk about
the New York Giants, whom she roots for, and the Denver Broncos, my
team. </p>
<p>
The Broncos won on Sunday. I’ve decided to treat that as an omen that at
least one of the same-sex marriage referendums will succeed, and that
unjustified fears and an unjustifiable inequality are in retreat.
</p>
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