Talking Points From Maine’s Yes On 1

Nate Silver provides the below list of insanity from Yes On 1’s email to folks planning to call in to Maine’s talk radio stations.
Nate Silver:

So, paraphrasing somewhat, the arguments that the Yes on 1 campaign seems to be making are as follows:

1. The new law won’t make gay marriage equal to straight marriage. Instead, it will create a new kind of marriage in which gay people and straight people are equal.
2. Although we may not have proven any connection between gay marriage and public education, our opponents haven’t disproven the connection, and it’s their fault that the subject came up.
3. If gay marriage is upheld, then marriage will exist solely to make people happy.

These arguments run from the literally incoherent (#1) to the sublimely unpersuasive (#3), with #2 somewhere in between. Yet, they are, apparently, the best arguments that the Yes on 1 folks can muster — the ones they’re using to close out their campaign. The fact is that the overwhelming majority of people who dislike gay marriage do so for one of two reasons: either their religion has a taboo against homosexuality, or they find the practice gross. But “Adam and Eve, Not Adam and Steve” does not make for a good tagline in a “serious” political discussion.