Pride parades are a bit more fabulous than usual this Pride Weekend, on the heels of the Supreme Court ruling making gay marriage legal across the United States.
A Voice for Men “CEO” Paul Elam is using the occasion as an opportunity to “warn” unwary gay marriers that they may be embarking on “a trip to the gallows.”
Elam, you see, considers himself a bit of an expert on marriages — possibly because he’s had so many of them himself — and wants gays to know that marriage is terrible and that their celebrations this weekend will ring hollow once they end up in divorce court.
After acknowledging that, sure, laws should apply equally to gays and non-gays alike, he offers up this disconcerting toast to all the potential new marriers:
I will say congratulations to the gay community.
And welcome to the governmental tyranny over your lives with the rest of us.
NOTE TO ALL POTENTIAL BRIDES AND GROOMS: Whether you are gay or straight or something else, don’t invite Paul Elam to your wedding.
Elam delivers up a patronizing lecture to “the gay community,” complete with a nasty little aside suggesting that adopted children are all “damaged.”
Instead of less government intrusion in their private lives, the gay community has just seen the floodgates open. They will start figuring it out when the divorces start rolling in, especially for couples with adopted children and one crazy spouse. It will be even worse for gay parents. Adopted children are already damaged from some form of abandonment. A follow-up of dose parental alientation is hardly what they need.
It is exactly what many of them will get.
Elam predicts that gay men — he seems to have forgotten about lesbians — will end up joining him in his “foxhole” once they realize just how right he is and how thoughtless “their cause” has been.
I support the right of every gay man to be treated no differently by society or under the law than anyone else. So in a system that sucks, and laws that suck, and the beatings they and their children will take I will be happy to make room in the foxhole right alongside the rest of us.
Perhaps a generation or two in the trenches of family law will convince them a little more thought should be put into their cause.
Somehow I doubt it. After all, more than a few in the Men’s Rights movement have trouble understanding just why gay people get together at all. In their minds, after all, most relationships between men and women are all about “privileged females” extracting resources from their own private “disposable males.”
But what if both of them are dudes?
In the comments to Elam’s article, regular AVFM contributor Tom Golden — described in his bio on the site as “a psychotherapist specializing in men and boys’ issues [and] a member of Warren Farrell’s proposed White House Council on Boys and Men” — asks a classic ignorant question:
So who will play the role of the male? How will the family court hyenas decide who will get the shaft? Maybe money will be the factor? The lawyers will favor he who has more wampum? Then again maybe since they are both males they will both get the shaft?
Someone calling himself Clear Thinker offered up a wall of text, which I’ve taken the liberty of breaking into paragraphs, with especially, er, “clear” thinking bolded.
The only solution to Gay Marriage IS Gay Divorce.
In Ontario it has been a bit of a(trigger alert) sniggering disgrace, the activities of the Gay community, but now they are finding out what it is to be truly miserable. No longer will they be able to trade one boy toy for another, once they put a ring on his finger, or other appendage.
The rich old Queen’s of Toronto will now face what heterosexual men have known for 30 years in our Province … You will pay alimony to your husband or wife or whatever it is you call it. If you have adopted children, which is all the rage these days, the courts will hand over the children to the mentally ill partner, as this is what they do today and yesterday to the men of real marriage.
Now you will have real marriage, and you will be toast.
Imagine our jails filled with gay deadbeat dads who wont pay the court ordered baksheesh demanded by the boy toy. Guys you have been warned, Lesbian women, no one cares, you don’t have any money, and if a judge can figure out which one of you is the most crazy, then that one will win.
Welcome to the real world of family law, and if you are in a fight, YOU WILL DO all that you can, to crush the one you said you loved. Call me in 5 years and tell me how right I was/am. America, read, learn, then laugh. This disaster for gay men is on its’ way to them right now.
Yeah, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before gay men flock to you guys for answers.
I have rarely been so disgusted. These “men” need a quick, and powerful, lesson in compassion and reality.
To the gay community across this nation, I say a happy YAY!!!!! May you all find joy in your marriages, in yourselves and in each other.
And please ignore the stupids of this world. They have nothing better to do with their lives then try to make all of ours unhappy.
MRAs hate marriage because feeemales, but there aren’t any feeemales in a same-sex male couple… Huh?
I used to say smart-assed things like “I support gay marriage because everyone deserves the right to be miserable. Har har.
I stopped saying that a while ago because it just wasn’t funny, it was gross, and it stemmed from my heteronormative privilege. So yeah, don’t do that.
Holy moly. Fuck you, Elam and “Clear Thinker”. Go eat a mountain of dicks, each.
@sunnysombrera
How is eating a mountain of dicks insulting (as, I’m assuming, was your intention)?
http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bluahh.gif
Do they really think courts go out of their way to give the kids to the mentally ill parent? I would think that it would be the opposite and the mentally ill are probably discriminated against in family court.
Besides, I thought only men could be for real mentally ill and feeemales are just making it up for attention.
We had same sex marriage in Denmark for ages. And same sex divorce. The World hasnt come to an end – go check reality, Lame Paul…
@weirwoodtreehugger
sooooo not true. “Real men” NEVER have mental illness, only womenz have “the crazys”. Hence the stigma attached to mental illness, and the reason that so few actually seek treatment.
Huh. Canada had marriage equality for the last ten years, doesn’t Clear Thinker know that?
‘Adopted children are already damaged from some form of abandonment. A follow-up of dose parental alientation is hardly what they need.’
Abandoned and alienated children? At least this is an area in which Elam has some first hand experience.
This is dumb and wrong on so many levels.
A) They assume that all marriages end in divorce.
B) They seem to think all gay men are raging sex addicts that wants to bang every man in sight.
C) These guys always seem to think that a divorce happens because the wife/husband is “crazy” Elem, your ex-wives aren’t crazy, they are the sane ones here.
Also, HST is Dr. Gonzo. His attorney is just that.
My. Attorney.
The action never stops in this town.
@weirwoodtreehugger
MRAs love e-diagnosing women with personality disorders. According to Red Pillers in particular, 99% of women have Borderline Personality Disorder.
If MRA’s hate marriage so much then … don’t get married?
Oh fuck it, I don’t understand what they want anymore. Is this an anti-government thing? Did feminists do it? Why does Elam want the gay community to climb into a foxhole with him? Did the feminists marry the foxes? What’s even happening???
http://memecrunch.com/meme/69EXX/i-dont-know-whats-going-on/image.jpg
@Danny
I had a feeling someone might pick me up on that. Sorry, it just tumbled out.
MRAs just have no consistency. When it’s convenient, women are crazy. But when they’re talking about male suicide, only men really get depression. Women only attempt suicide for attention.
Yeah, “clear thinker” clearly knows fuck-all about family court. Both myself and my sister have been dragged though awful custody battles by our exes. In my case, my son’s dad (who had been in and out of my son’s life since he was a baby and who I had relentlessly tried to maintain contact with for my son) decided that he wanted 100% custody.
In both my case and my sister’s case, our exes pulled the predictable bullshit move of screeching “she’s crazy!!” in order to make themselves seem like the better parent. I had to undergo a mental health assessment which was fucking horrible knowing what was at stake. I had to explain to court social workers how long I’ve been on antidepressants and how I cope with living with depression. I had to prove that I manage my depression well enough to not effect my son.
The entire case I was offering him 50-50 custody and he was adamant that he was getting 100%. We were awarded 50-50 and the judge remarked that I had been balanced and fair throughout, refusing to sling accusations back despite having an array thrown at me. He said that the investigation into my parenting had been a waste of court resources.
Once again an MRA spouting lies to suit their agenda. This has seriously pissed me off.
There’s no logic in this.
Tom Golden is groping toward some kind of reason here, but doesn’t find it. If you go by MRA calculus, divorce ends 100% of the time in the man getting screwed. However, in a gay male divorce, only 50% of the men will be screwed (MRAs don’t acknowledge the possibility of divorce without someone getting the shaft, so work with me on that one). This is a win for 50% of gay men! They should be happy!
Except that Elam and the other MRAs here are clearly speaking to only a particular subset of men. The “butch” gay man, the guy who is a Real Man ™. They’re not talking to effeminate gay men (who are not “really” men), and they are assuming that all gay marriages will be 1 butch man and 1 effeminate man.
In other words, they are speaking from a heteronormative perspective, and showing no awareness of a world outside that perspective. Surprise! MRAs are homophobic even when they are trying not to be!
I don’t really have words for this, and I’m torn between two macros:
http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/19fpb7u9ju2v6gif/original.gif
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s–fONDG8TV–/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_320/hpofonerqyzc6p0wxjr7.gif
Is anyone surprised that there was nothing from the MRAs that was stupider than most of the “judicial” “reasoning” in Scalia’s dissent?
@Nequam
The bottom one is awesome, but Metalocalypse trumps all.
TRUMPS. ALL.
“Lesbians don’t have any money”
But the wage gap is a myth, eh MRA’s?
Last time I checked gay marriage was already legal in a few states, New York included since the 2010s at least. Somehow I dont see rioting near my house.
Where does he get the idea that all lesbians are poor? Several of the ones I know are professionals, property owners, business owners, and a few I’ve known live in posh gated communities.
Honestly? Not really. Thomas and Scalia are so intensely stupid that I’ve given up all hope.
Anyone else hoping that Scalia dies before Thomas does? I desperately want to see him deflate once Scalia pulls his hand out of him.