Via Bilerico, there’s a bill in the South Carolina legislature that would introduce a program into the schools for educating middle- and high-school students about domestic violence—except its sponsors are adamant that it should only teach about domestic violence in opposite-sex relationships. Here’s one of the sponsors of the bill:
Bill sponsor Rep. Joan Brady said excluding gay relationships is fine and declared that, “Traditional domestic violence occurs in a man-woman, boy-girl situation.”
“The fact is, this is a gender-specific, abusive behavior. The overwhelming predominance of dating abuse occurs in a traditional or heterosexual relationship,” said Brady, R-Columbia.
This is one of those homophobic statements that’s so ridiculous, you have to laugh. Not only is traditional marriage between a man and a woman, so is traditional domestic violence! Since I usually expect the anti-gay line to be that same-sex relationships are more unstable or more prone to issues such as domestic violence, I was pretty surprised at this one. Maybe if that’s what the South Carolina legislature thinks of same-sex relationships, they should consider striking down their gay marriage ban….
Emily Rutherford 