While the loons who use terror to rouse anti-gay panic complain about scare tactics, the real enemies of marriage show their faces

"They misled voters. They scared seniors into believing they would lose Social Security benefits. Our problem was we did not have funds to respond to the attacks."
--Cathi Herrod (right), president and director of policy for the far-right Center for Arizona Policy, and spokeswoman for the campaign for Arizona's failed Proposition 107, which would have banned not only same-sex marriages but all forms of legalized domestic partnership

This was all set for tomorrow's Quote of the Day. Yes, I cheated a little, and for once it was all set to go, with pictures in place and everything. And then reality intervened.

It was the very loud thud of the other shoe dropping, as reported by ABC News via AOL:

Abuse Led Preacher's Wife to Kill Husband, Family Says

It was a crime that stunned the nation. In March, 32-year-old Mary Winkler, a soft-spoken preacher's wife, was charged with the murder of husband Matt, a Church of Christ minister in the small town of Selmer, Tenn.

Shocked parishioners discovered Matt's bloodied body, riddled with a blast of bird shot, in the home the couple shared with their three daughters.

When Winkler was questioned the day after the shooting, authorities said she confessed to the crime, saying she had snapped after years of abuse.

Now out on bail, Winkler is working in a dry-cleaning shop and preparing for her trial, where she will tell her side of the story.


Oh, I remember the day the story broke. Howie and I swapped e-mails about it. I actually never did hear about that next-day confession. All it took was hearing about a 32-year-old woman with three children killing her minister husband. I wondered, could there possibly be anyone who didn't know with something near 100 percent certainty what the rest of the story was going to be?

Well, here it is--


In an exclusive interview with Good Morning America, Winkler's family said she killed her husband because she was abused.

"Physical, mental, verbal," said Clark Freeman, Winkler's father. "I don't know how she took it. She's a stronger individual than I am."

Freeman says the abuse became more apparent the last three years of Winkler and Matt's marriage.

"I saw bad bruises. The heaviest of makeup covering facial bruises," Freeman said. "So one day, I confronted her. I said, 'Mary Carol, you are coming off as a very abused wife, very battered.'"

But Freeman says she denied the accusations.

"[She] would hang her head and say, 'No, daddy, everything's all right. Everything's all right.'"

Friends say Winkler didn't talk about the abuse, but her growing fear of her husband was obvious.

"One Sunday, Mary came into the church and I looked at her and she had a black eye," said Winkler's friend Rudie Thomsen.


The story goes on, but it doesn't get any better, or any less predictable:

• Mary Carol's sisters say that Pastor Matt kept her from seeing her family.

• "Winkler's attorneys say there are also indications that Matt may have sexually abused her as well. 'What went on behind their closed doors is going to have to be told,' said Winkler's attorney Leslie Ballin. 'Some of what we've got from the state of Tennessee touches on sexual abuse.'"

• Finally there's one surprise: "What's striking to many outsiders is how accepting and supportive the majority of the community has been to Winkler." Might this suggest that perhaps the religionist stranglehold on American sense and decency is loosening? That more people have an easier time now understanding that the preacher man up there spewing his phony pieties is as likely as not to be not just a hypocrite but a power-tripping thug?

The only thing missing from the story--so far, anyway--is allegations of child abuse. And let's hope that, for once, this is not part of the story. We're told that the children are now living with their father's parents, and as long as we're hoping, can we hope that the late Pastor Matt was no reflection on his parent's nurturing skills?

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Now, to get back to Cathi. No, I'm sorry, sweetheart. I really don't think your problem is all of us mean homos with our scare tactics and all of our money. I think what your problem comes down to is that you and your fellow crusaders are terrorists who--possibly to take your minds off your own meager existences?--have made it your business to arouse knee-jerk hatreds so you can try to impose your prejudices on other people's lives.

In "New Tactic in Fighting Marriage Initiatives," the Washington Post's Sonya Geis explains that, in states where proposed bans on same-sex marriage include prohibitions against all civil partnerships, opponents have begun highlighting the expectable impact on unmarried straight couples. She reports that Arizona's anti-Proposition 107 campaign--

avoided almost any mention of gay marriage, except in small liberal pockets of the state. Instead, the message was about the section of the measure that would have banned government agencies from recognizing civil unions or domestic partnerships.

That apparently struck home in the state's sizable senior-citizen enclaves, where many older couples do not marry because their retirement income would be affected. The initiative was defeated, 52 percent to 48 percent.

As Marty Rouse (right), national field director of the gay advocacy group Human Rights Campaign said of the Arizona fight: "Once you say gay and lesbian, people home in on that. We have to focus on the majority of people that will be affected by this. And the majority of people are straight couples."

There does appear to have been some murkiness concerning the exact harm straight domestic partners would have suffered. However, the idea of the anti-gay busybodies whining about scare tactics is almost too grotesque to be humorous. Although it's hate that they're ultimately selling, fear is always their most potent weapon. (Meanwhile, if Arizona's merchants of hate really couldn't match their opponents in fund-raising, maybe there's hope for the republic after all.)

As the wackos peddle their religionist psychoses, based on absolutely nothing in reality (no, I'm sorry, but their own delusional prejudices and fantasies, while real enough as such, don't count as "reality"), they never summon the minimal honesty to explain who is harmed by same-sex marriage and how. In the absence of any attempt to do so, if they had even the teensiest modicum of decency, they would keep their fool mouths shut.

Yes, the institution of marriage is in woeful shape. But the threat has nothing to do with the homos. The people screwing up marriage are the straight people who've made such a frigging mess of it.