Dan Savage has said it (over and over), folks. Straight people should care about the anti-gay crazies not just because they are bigots, but because they don't limit themselves to being anti-gay. That's merely a wedge issue for their bigger anti-sex theocratic agenda, and they're going after "straight rights"—to birth control, cohabitation, divorce, freedom of religion, sex toys, what have you—too.
Just take the ballot measure certified in Arkansas a couple weeks ago. Having suffered a legal setback when a court struck down an administrative regulation prohibiting gays from being foster parents, the fundies did what liberals have yet to master: instead of bowing down and shifting toward the center, they just set their sights higher. This ballot measure would prevent anyone "cohabiting with a sexual partner outside of marriage" from fostering.
Voila! No longer discriminatory on the basis of sexual orientation. Well, not quite so directly at least. Since same-sex marriage is, unsurprisingly, illegal in Arkansas, the burden still falls much more heavily on queer couples, who wouldn't have the option to marry.
Still, now more opposite-sex couples feel what it means to have the government asking about what they do in bed. After all, how will they prove "cohabiting with a sexual partner" without asking unmarried potential foster parents if they are getting it on? What would they do with two people who were living together and swore they were platonic, but wanted to foster together? Come and look for two twin beds in separate rooms? (Probably they would determine, ironically, that if it were platonic that it also wasn't a stable situation.)
Is Arkansas really facing such a glut of potential suitable foster parents that they can impose what is, in essence, a religious screen on who does it? Arkansas Families First argues certainly not. So does a local cartoonist. Just remember, it's all about values.
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