He Was Going To Shoot Them Because They Were Full Of Hate

So Floyd Corkins walked into the Family Research Center offices planning to shoot him some hate-filled homophobes. He carried with him a Chick-fil-A bag, the product of other hate-filled homophobes. He had the motives and almost all of the props one would expect of someone who had been immersed in the left's echo-chamber of ignorant bigotry. He seemed to be missing a US flag pin and Bible, though they may have been found on him and not mentioned in the stories. After all, we all know that when fascism comes to the US, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a Bible. Oh well. You can't expect him to get it all right.

When I first heard about the story, I thought of the guy I had snarked on Twitter, the one who was convinced he was some kind of caped crusader defending gays from crazed Christians. He lived in a fantasy world, completely ignorant of what his political opponents thought or felt. He just knew we were all full of hate and nothing would convince him otherwise. It's not surprising that one of his intellectual brethren would buy a gun and go homophobe hunting. Given the population of that particular echo chamber, it was just a matter of time before someone on the fringe decided to take the fight to the enemy like that.

Since the problem is ignorance, it seems like the solution is not to curse the darkness of their bigotry*, but to light a candle. Let me see if I can light a tiny one here.

Why I'm in favor of traditional marriage

1. The breakdown of the traditional family is the top source of social pathologies in the US. Nothing else is even close. 
2. People are not rational, they are rationalizing. That is, education does not prevent bad decisions that promise short-term pleasure. 
3. Social opprobrium provides a working deterrent to destructive behavior. Johnny and Suzy are less likely to create an illegitimate baby if "that sort of thing just isn't done." 
4. While providing marriage for gays might be beneficial to the gays, it is destructive to the rest of us as it acts as one more bit of moral equivalence. Making the traditional family, which is the key building block for civilization, no better than any other relationship enables the rationalization of bad decisions.
5. In short, if you want less poverty, smaller prison populations, less drug use and more education, you need to place the traditional, married family far above all other sexual relationships.

See? There's no need to yell. Lighting candles can be fun!

* - Cursing and yelling are sooo cathartic, though!