We've all heard the argument that letting gays and lesbians marry will "hurt" heterosexual marriages. Or our country. Or children. Actual support for these claims is less readily available. Often those making the argument will resort to argumentative fallacies to back up their claims. The problem is, there are so many fallacious arguments to choose from, it's hard to keep it all straight. Pardon the pun.

Well, the Family Research Council's Peter Sprigg has just the thing for you. "The Top Ten Harms for Same-Sex 'Marriage'" is hot off the presses and it's filled with all of the half-truths, cherry-picked statistics, manipulated data, distortion, and outright lies a person needs to argue that God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

Sprigg separates the harms by "Immediate effects" (1-4) and "Long term effects" (5-10). Immediate effects include the trashing of religious liberties (i.e. the freedom to discriminate against gays and lesbians because God tells you to) and teaching grade school kids to be gay.

The number one immediate harm caused by gays getting married is the bilking of taxpayer dollars to "subsidize homosexual relationships." And just what are gays so shamelessly asking for? Social Security benefits for their partners and their kids if they die. That's right, same-sex couples want to help protect their families by receiving benefits from a system that they themselves have paid into all of their working lives. In other words, gays are today's Cadillac-driving welfare queens. Talk about piglets at the public teat.

It's a strange complaint considering that Sprigg also argues that gays don't stay together anyway and that they don't bother getting married even when it is legal. He seems to be claiming that legalized marriage really isn't something that gays want since all gay people aren't legally married in places where it's legal to do so. Sprigg points specifically to California, where same-sex marriage "was only legal for a few months, from the time that the California Supreme Court ruled in May of 2008 until the voters adopted Proposition 8 in November of the same year."

Got that? It was only legal for a few months. Now check out Sprigg's argument: "Press reports have indicated that about 18,000 same-sex couples got 'married' in California - less than 20% of the total identified by the Census.  By contrast, 91% of opposite-sex couples who lived together in California were married. In other words, only 9% of heterosexual couples in California have rejected the institution of marriage, while over 80% of the homosexual couples rejected 'marriage' when it was offered to them in 2008."

In other words, those homos who didn't get scramble to get married in the few months it was legal prove that they don't really want it bad enough.

Number 10 on the list, and a long term effect, is polygamy. Gays getting married would mean that all bets are off as far as numerical combinations of husbands and wives.

Sprigg writes, "If it violates the equal protection of the laws to deny homosexuals their first choice of marital partner, why would it not do the same to deny pedophiles, polygamists, or the incestuous the right to marry the person (or persons) of their choice?"

Okay, wait. Did he just say that not letting gays get married denies them "their first choice of marital partner?" As if there's a perfectly acceptable partner of the opposite sex just waiting in the wings? That's not how it works. Nor is being gay the same thing as being incestuous or being a pedophile or a polygamist.

To sum up his additional "harms," Sprigg argues that if gays get married, then heterosexuals will stop getting married so they can screw around or get married and screw around anyway and then get divorced and die alone. Regardless, heterosexuals will stop having kids. Apparently only gays will get married and all children will be intentionally brought into this world without the love of a mom and a dad. Does that sound realistic to you? Probably not, but why let that stop us? Sprigg has raised the bar high for homosexual domination. It would be a shame to disappoint him.