The Bilerico Project | Daily experiments in LGBTQ

io9 reported yesterday on a letter written to the editor of a New Zealand newspaper by a fourteen year old girl regarding the topic of same-sex marriage. In the letter, she makes the argument that since ducks form pair bonds, if SSM is legalized, ducks will overtake humans in the scheme of evolutionary development.

In a statement that we all can likely agree on, she asserts that

I don't want my children to have to compete with ducks.

She doesn't specify, but I will give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that these are hypothetical children she's referring to.

The young woman closes by assuring the editor that she does not in fact believe in evolution, and so is not overly worried about this possibility. Before then going on to explain that since lawmakers as a rule do believe in evolution, they should oppose same-sex marriage.

The letter is either a cleaver hoax, or one of the most persuasive arguments against homeschooling that I've ever encountered.

Given that it's either the rantings of a sheltered and misled youth, or a hoax designed to poke fun at (someone), I easily could have let this story slide for today. But it's worth remembering that this isn't the first time that ducks have been made the burnt of anti-equality campaigners.

And really the only reason that's worth remembering, other than it pointing out how absurd our opponents can be, is because it gives context to the delightful video below, by comic song duo Garfunkel and Oates:

And now, what you need to know today:

• One of NOM's leaders went a bit overboard and revealed the depth of anti-LGBT animus lurking beneath their "reasoned" opposition to same-sex marriage.
• Disney Corp. is spending unprecedented amounts of money to influence elections across Florida, with %90 of their spending going to Republican politicians and action groups.
• An ESPN poll highlights what players of the four major pro-sports in the U.S. think about same-sex-marriage.
• An instructive pamphlet warning of the dangers of heterosexuality illustrates how right wing hate groups twist studies and statistics to prove their point by doing the same thing in reverse.
• Saying that he'd like to slap her, and that her husband should "correct her," a Christian pastor in Iowa went off the deep end over a woman who'd been critical of his Church's anti-equality political activism.
• NOM's newest video opposing same-sex marriage is one of their most callous and dehumanizing of all time.
• Anti-LGBT sentiment and violence, continues to grow in Russia.
• An issue with Facebook privacy settings has resulted in two University of Texas students being outed to their homophobic parents.
• Finally, it's not precisely an LGBT story, but this video of Fox News' Chris Wallace taking a page from his father's playbook and hitting a senior Romney advisor hard over how precisely Mr. Romney's tax plan would work, is intensely satisfying:

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