Rand Paul Is Terrible

[Content Note: Homophobia; straight privilege.]

Last Friday, Republican Senator and presidential hopeful Rand Paul gave an interview to Bret Baier at Fox News, in which he discussed his views on same-sex marriage, which are exactly as terrible as you'd expect:

Baier: —gay rights?

Paul: Well, I'm for traditional marriage. I think marriage is between a man and a woman. Ultimately, we could have fixed this a long time ago, if we just allowed contracts between adults. We didn't have to call it marriage, which offends, um, myself and a lot of people. But I think having competing contracts that would give them equivalency before the law would have solved a lot of these problems—and may be where we're still heading.

Insert here what could easily be a full dissertation on the comprehensive fuckery of even using the phrase "traditional marriage" as though there is a singular marriage tradition, no less defining it as simply as "between a man and a woman," as though both of those parties traditionally had equal agency in marriage agreements. Anyone who is ignorant—or cynical—enough to talk about "traditional marriage" at all, particularly in such simplistic and ahistorical terms, deserves nothing but contempt.

Besides that, I'm not sure which part of this I like (ahem) better: That Rand Paul can't even bring himself to say "same-sex couples" or "gay people," instead simply referring to "them" like he's got shit in his mouth; that he frames the entire debate about what "we" should or should not allow, which gives a pretty clear picture of who he thinks "we" are and who he thinks "they" are; that he's essentially proposing civil unions as a new idea, as if civil unions haven't been proposed as a solution and dismissed as separate and unequal to marriage; or that the Great Libertarian Crusader once again only to seem to have "libertarian principles" [sic] insofar as they apply to unfettered freedom for straight white cis men.

This fucking guy.