Image by Dave Schumaker via Flickr

If I were to believe Katherine Kersten’s latest screed, I would expect to page through the rest of the newspaper and find report after report detailing how gay marriage opponents are being attacked, beaten, or bullied into suicide merely for expressing their views.  Instead, what I find are story after story about gay people being attacked, beaten and bullied into suicide for being who they are, and editorials like Kersten’s calling for even more discrimination.  Her victim card gambit is practically Orwellian in the way it claims the mantle of suffering on behalf of the very people who have been responsible for discrimination and abuse.

But then she ratchets up the ironic rhetoric another notch, and doubles down on the claim: she is, if we are to believe her, just like someone speaking out against Jim Crow laws in the South.

She misses completely the point that Jim Crow laws were meant to maintain status quo oppression against a group that wasn’t allowed to freely marry the people they loved, using the exact same reasoning she uses to in her rally calls in opposition to gay marriage.   The fact is, there ARE a lot of similarities between the situation then and now: the mistake Kirsten makes is understanding what side of the fence (and history) she stands on.