Lawmaker Obsessed With Gay Sex Opposes Gay Marriage

If you ask its detractors, there are a lot of reasons to oppose gay marriage. Excuses include that these unions destroy traditional family units, go against religious doctrine, and, yes, even condone anal sex.

That last issue seems to be a big one for some folks. Take, for example, New Hampshire Rep. Nancy Elliott who is one of the co-sponsors of a bill to repeal same sex marriage in that state. During a hearing on the bill last week, she tried to drum up support for her agenda by painting a graphic description of what she thinks two men do in bed.

“You know,” she said, “I started thinking, and we’re talking about taking the penis of one man and putting it into the rectum of another man, and wiggling it around in excrement. And I have to think, I’m not sure, would I allow that to be done to me? All of us, that could happen to you. Would you let that happen to you?”

Now, I’m actually pretty sure that some people in the audience would let that happen to them. I’m also pretty sure that not all of those are the married gay men Elliot seems so offended by.

But for people like Elliot, one of the best ways to discredit gay men is to pull out the anal card. Reducing gay men to a sex practice that a lot of people are uncomfortable with (It hurts! It’s messy! It’s unnatural!), allows opponents of gay rights to feel that their views are justified. Gay men are no longer people who might want to legally bind their unions with a partner they love. Nope, they are just perverts who only want to have more opportunity to put their penises in shit.

It is unlikely that this bill will ultimately rest on the issue of anal, and Elliot has already taken a lot of flack for her comments (including a disputed claim that local fifth graders, “were given as part of their classroom instruction naked pictures of two men showing a presentation of anal sex.”) But whatever the outcome of the bill, this legislator’s remarks are a reminder that for every step the gay community takes towards equality, there is always someone waiting to scare the public into thinking that the discussion shouldn’t be seen as a fight for rights, but rather as a fight against deviance.