First Things: Lying again about Obergefell and marriage equality

As I remarked about a week ago, it is inherently sad to see First Things, which used to be the conscience of conservative Catholicism in the United States become nothing more than the tool of a right-wing agenda.

The once-proud journal has embarked upon an essentially continuous crusade against Obergefell v Hodges, the decision that codified marriage equality. This seems to be primarily due to more and more MAGA Republicans calling for the decision to be overturned, and to the apparent willingness of several of the Supreme Court's most conservative justices to do just that.

Still smarting from having his own inept arguments before the Supreme Court in 2015 having significantly contributed to marriage equality being upheld (here some of his worst moments here -- choose Clip 2), John Bursch is back with a new piece at First Things, "How Obergefell harmed children."

Let's go straight to his assertion of EXACTLY HOW Obergefell harms kids, which is contained in three arguments (two of which contain links to pieces he asserts support his point:

First, let's note that the source Bursch cites regarding an "historically low marriage rate" makes absolutely no claim that marriage equality has had a negative impact on the longterm decline in marriage rates. In fact, that USFacts report provides a graph making it clear that Obergefell (in 2015) couldn't have had any significant impact on declining marriage rates, which actually saw their steepest decline between about 1965 - 2000, when same-sex marriages were illegal.

Nor does the MacroTrends article on birth rates support his argument that marriage equality has been some sort of devastating event that fundamentally harmed birth rates. Again, the largest decline happens here between about 1985-1990, and post-Covid years saw a significant rebound back to near 2015 rates. It is important to point out -- again -- that NOTHING in the article to which Mr Bursch links suggests marriage equaity as a major factor. What the article DOES say is that people have been getting married later and later in life, and therefore having fewer children.

Mr Bursch's third point -- that there has been an explosion in young people coming out as transgender because of marriage equality and that this is a trend inherently harmful to children is something he does not cite a link to support. Primarily this seems to be because (a) his figures are ludicrous and (b) he can't even show a correlation to Obergefell, much less causation.

Mr Bursch claims (see above) that the number of 18-24 year olds identifying as transgender jumped 422% since Obergefell. This statistic is simply wrong. The most authoritative sources for the period in question (here and here) document that the transgender population in the 18-24 year old range went from 0.3% to either 0.5% or 0.6%.

For Mr Bursch's statistics to be accurate, the 422%would have to have jumped that stat to 12,66%. 

Not only is there no correlation between marriage equality and increased transgender identity, the opposite appears to be true. Since Obergefell, while 18-24 year old transgender identification has increased from 0.3% to 0.6% of the total population, same-sex marriages have declined from 10.2% of LGBTQ+ adults to 8.0%.

It beggars belief that Mr Bursch can make his arguments with a straight face (and straight bow-tie) when LGBTQ+ marriage rates have declined by over 20% as transgender identity increased by 50%.

Oops.

Lastly, Mr Bursch blames Obergefell for the increased numbers of donor-conceived individuals who feel disconnected with their biological parents. He creates this paragraph by lifting random quotes from this study, which was a Facebook study generated from a group of respondents with literally no formal controls. It does not report findings consistent with Mr Bursch's arguments.

According to the study, only 6% of donor-conceived individuals live with same-sex parents (whether such parents are married or not isn't specified), while 78% were raised in traditional, two-parent households, and 16% by a single parent. The increasing prevalence donor gametes in reproduction raises many issues, but Mr Bursch's contention that ANY of those issues come from Obergefell is so smelly you'd hope you never step in it.

The bottom line is this: The position of the Alliance [that claims to be] Defending Freedom, as expressed by the attorney they hired to represent them before the Supremes, is groundless, distorts the evidence that it does not ignore, and denotes a severe lack of intellectual understanding of the requirements necessary to prove correlation, much less causation.

It is a steaming hot mess served up by people grasping at straw-man arguments to justify denying civil rights to people whose very existence seems to personally affront them.

 

A Candidate and a Clown: Zohran Mamdani's ludicrous critic strikes out at criticizing socialism

Today's right-wing media organizations, like Christopher Rufo's Manhattan Institute or Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, have this inexplicable fascination with grooming young happy idiots who can spew their talking points all over creations as if they actually understood them. Or had researched them. Or could even write a coherent essay that would earn a decent grade in an undergraduate political science class.

Case in point: this week's Santiago Vidal Calvo's intended-to-be-a-hit-piece in the New York Post, "Unlike Zohran Mamdani, most Dems want prosperity -- not class warfare."

In this post we're going to walk through Mr Calvo's sophomoric attempt at a hit piece on socialism, sentence. Maybe if at least one of his professors at Georgetown had ever bothered to do so, he wouldn't be out here publishing such drek.

Let's start:

This is a textbook case of intentionally confusing terms in order to create a false equivalence.