A week has passed since Texans voted overwhelmingly in favor of defining marriage in the state constitution, and the Chronicle editorial idealists finally ranted about it today, characterizing the position of the majority as “mean-spirited” and as “a direct attack on gays.”
But they save their “best” stuff for black voters:
Inner city black voters in Harris County, many of whom have long experience with the denial of civil rights, favored the marriage amendment by an even higher majority than the general Harris County voting population. Black discomfort with homosexual marriage is rooted less in conscious discrimination than in religious belief, but support for the amendment brought blacks into incongruous accord with members of the Ku Klux Klan, whose members rallied in Austin in support of Proposition 2.
So, the non-blacks who voted overwhelmingly for Prop. 2 are mean-spirited discriminatory gay bashers, and the blacks who voted even more overwhelmingly for Prop. 2 are too blinded by their stupid religion to realize they’re no better than the KKK. Previously, of course, the Austin Bureau Chief compared supporters of Prop. 2 to the KKK (so much for “the division between the opinion pages and the news pages“).
Reasonable people can debate the merits and demerits of Prop. 2 without name-calling and demonization. The Chronicle editorialists continue to show they are not reasonable people. Before long, they’re going to have insulted just about everyone who might consider picking up their newspaper!
RELATED: One Week Later (Sedosi Alhambra, Isolated Desolation), Chron editorial says Texans supported “mean spirited” amendment (Owen Courreges, Lone Star Times).
UPDATE (11-16-2005): A reader emails that OpinionJournal’s James Taranto also noticed that paragraph about black voters in Harris County, and wrote:
So let’s see if we have this straight. If you’re a person of pallor and you oppose same-sex marriage, you’re guilty of “conscious discrimination,” whereas if you’re black, you’re following “religious belief” and presumably discriminating unconsciously. Oh, and does this mean people who favor same-sex marriage are religious unbelievers? Seems to us the Houston Chronicle has just managed to insult pretty much everybody.
It’s good to see our editorial idealists get a little national attention.
