Right now I’m reading Dick Meyer’s “Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in New Millenium”. It’s a very interesting book in that it boils down just what is wrong with society in the U.S. right now.

But one part really struck me. He mentions feeling based judgment. I’m seeing some of this coming from the National Organization for Marriage, an oxymoron if there ever was one.

They feel that it is morally wrong for members of the same sex to marry. Their recent ads play on the poor children, having to understand why Heather has two mommies, or David has two daddies.

The real motive behind their campaign is explained by this quote form the book.

The idea of choosing goods and values individually, by taste, and preference, is what truthiness is all about. It actually has a philosophic pedigree. It is called “emotivism” a term resurrected by MacIntyre from early nineteeth-century British philosophy. In After Virtue, MacIntyre defines it this way: “Emotivism is the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and, more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling.” So in this view there is no difference in saying “the death penalty is wrong” and “I don’t like the death penalty.” “Gay marriage is immoral” is just another way of saying “I don’t like gay marriage.”

Now I have to go request MacIntyre’s “After Virtue” from the library. But it also exposes the arguments of groups like NOM, FoF and AFA. They’re operating purely on emotivism.

Expressions of preference, attitude or feeling. This precisely defines the crime committed by Maggie Gallagher and her associates and the anti-gay crowd.

I’m so glad I’m reading this book now because this will definitely play into my testimony on Thursday night. I know that NOM is already planning to pack the house, but I’m planning to hold seats too.

Of course those preferences and feelings come directly from their religious leanings. What I can’t reconcile is that you have a large group of Christian clerics in support of gay marriage, yet you have Gallagher who is opposed but she’ll never ever say why she really opposes gay marriage. Instead she’ll cite bogus studies, talk about the harm to the children, etc. It comes to my studies of the Bible, the NOM group is an Old Testament group. They see God and his law trumping all. But they will use deceptive tactics to make that point because they know the religious argument is no longer credible.

The wing nut crowd generally points to a few passages in Leviticus while ignoring all the others, and occasionally you’ll see a New Testament reference from 1st Corinthians. The source material is pretty thin and they’re guilt of taking it all out of context.

This makes what Gallagher and ilk like her disingenuous and wrong.