High surrealism

This blog has stayed away from the current debates over gay marriage, since the topic doesn't interest me much. I'm not against gay marriage; I'm against marriage period. Not my battle, this is.

What is my battle, and everyone's battle, is the fight for sane political discourse. And if this piece by Erick Erickson (blogger, radio host and CNN talking head) is any indication, that battle is lost.

Erickson dislikes the idea of gays getting married. Okay. Fine by me. I'm not going to fly into hysterics just because someone has articulated a viewpoint at odds with my own. What bothers me is the form of the argument -- if argument it can be called, and if it may be said to have any form whatsoever.

Here are some words. I would like you to search through these words to determine if they contain any kind of rational narrative. 

Once the world decides that real marriage is something other than natural or Godly, those who would point it out must be silenced and, if not, punished. The state must be used to do this. Consequently, the libertarian pipe dream of getting government out of marriage can never ever be possible.

Within a year or two we will see Christian schools attacked for refusing to admit students whose parents are gay. We will see churches suffer the loss of their tax exempt status for refusing to hold gay weddings. We will see private businesses shut down because they refuse to treat as legitimate that which perverts God’s own established plan. In some places this is already happening.

That's right: Even though a million people have stipulated a zillion times that civil weddings and religious weddings are two very different things, this nutcase actually thinks that gay marriage will lead to churches losing their tax-exempt status.

Churches, businesses, and individuals who refuse to accept gay marriage as a legitimate institution must be protected as best we can. Those protections will eventually crumble as the secular world increasingly fights the world of God, but we should institute those protections now and pray they last as long as possible.

The left cannot allow Christians to continue to preach the full gospel. We already see this in, of all places, Canada. Gay marriage is incompatible with a religion that preaches that the unrepentant are condemned, even of a sin the world has decided is not one. The religious freedom will eventually be ended through the judiciary.

Does any of this make any sense to you?

I'm not asking if you agree with Erickson. We may fairly presume that you do not, if you are a regular reader of this blog. There is no need for you to mount a counterargument or to offer a contrary opinion.

My question is more basic: Can any kind of logic be salvaged from this collection of verbiage? Does Erickson develop a point which leads to another point in a rational fashion? Do you see anything here that reminds you of those "How to write an essay" lessons you sat through in high school? Or is Erickson playing a fundamentalist variant of Mad Libs, with words like "gospel" and "sin" and "gay" and "Canada" tossed into his text at random? Has Erickson favored us with his own riposte to Noam Chomsky's famous observation that "colorless green ideas sleep furiously"?

I mean...just which leftists have disallowed which Christians from preaching the Gospel? When has that happened? Who did what?

For more insanity, glance at the comments section:

Great analysis! The goal is not gay marriage, the goal is the destruction of religious freedom. Once they accomplish that, then freedom of speech, assembly and petition are not far behind. Then the Third and Fourth Amendments will crumble and the rest of the Bill of Rights, and the Fourteenth will be gone, and other constitutional protections as well.

The Left are relentless in their desire to rule the rest of us like serfs, and they will stop at nothing, especially constitutional niceties, until they have won their goal. "Reaching across the aisle" is only hastening our own downfall.

So. The fact that I don't give a damn what people do in private means that I must be ruthless in my desire get rid of the First Amendment because I want to rule everyone else like serfs. That's like saying: "Eric Erickson drinks water, and therefore Hitler will rise from the dead and eat fried squirrel dipped in chocolate."

At one time, the only rightwinger who specialized in high surrealism was Steve Ditko, back when he drew Doctor Strange. At one time, conservatives who wrote articles for a mass audience tried to make sense. I may not have agreed with their opinions, but at least I could follow their train of thought. Things are different nowadays. David Lynch's Inland Empire is a model of clarity and simplicity compared to what passes for discourse on blogistan right.