A Salute to Audacious Inanity: What Would Your Grandfather Think?

Have you ever encountered somebody so utterly dense that enlightenment is incapable of navigating their gravity well? Someone capable of lowering the intellectual temperature of a room to somewhere around 12 Kelvin? What I'm getting at is someone of such limited faculties that they would have to hold their breath whilst tying their shoelaces, for fear of overheating their mental circuitry as a result of operating their lungs and their hands at the same time.

If so, you've met ProtectMarriageNZ's mascot, Chris Meyer (aka John Moe, aka proof positive to Creationists that whatever process created humans could not possibly ever be called 'intelligent design'). This detestable little troll inhabits the page like some cave-dwelling inbreed, dispensing homophobic slurs and creepy private messages like manna from whichever heaven Graham Capill believes in. The only opponent of Same-Sex Marriage to ever be banned from PMNZ (and then reinstated once the admin realized Chris is responsible for roughly 50% of the comments on the page), Chris was one of the first PMNZ die-hards to advocate a non-religious argument against same-sex marriage.

The... well, I'll call it an argument for the sake of consistency:
"If the ANZACs who fought in WWII could see us now, they'd be rolling in their graves!"

Yes. We shouldn't extend the right of access to a core social institution to a minority because some people may have disagreed with our decision. Not because of their reason for disagreeing, heavens no, relying on such things as 'reasons' for any given political action/inaction is just cheating! No, purely because people who don't like gay marriage who are claiming the right to speak for the dead on an issue wholly unrelated to them, have decided that people who can't object to the claim, are definitely against a bill they never lived to see.

So I guess the first point to consider here is... SO?

Look, I mean no disrespect to our returned servicemen. My grandfather served in World War 2, and I had great respect for the man, and certainly appreciate the sacrifice of those prepared to put themselves in harms way. But... that doesn't mean I'd have to agree with them. Nor does being a soldier make you right. If our grandparents fought in WW2, it doesn't mean anything to the contents of their beliefs not pertaining directly to the experience of war. Some of our returned servicemen are racist, that doesn't make racism right. Some are sexist, it doesn't make sexism right. Some are alcoholics, that doesn't validate alcoholism. This is the most oblique, misdirected, and practically insulting 'appeal to authority' I've ever witnessed.

There isn't really much point in going too deep into this, because it's a shallow argument, and you can tell at a glance that it's patently ridiculous. Why? Observe.

These are ANZAC soldiers:

ANZAC soldiers, notably not spinning in their grave over social issues

They served in WW2, where they fought the Imperial Japanese, and these guys:

The NAZIs! Everyone's favourite, snappy-dressing ENEMY OF HUMANITY

The Nazis were a totalitarian regime that employed coercive political violence and maintained control of their nation through fostering hatred of scapegoats like Jews, Communists, and these fine folks:

People thrown in concentration camps, for being gay.

The Nazi regime was utterly detestable and morally bankrupt, and they persecuted homosexuals quite enthusiastically.

Now, anyone with two brain cells to rub together (which is just as well for Chris, otherwise the entry requirements would've prevented him from thinking of it in the first place) can tell Chris Meyer decided to appeal to the 'moral authority' of the ANZACs because they fought against a truly inhuman regime. Anyone that fought the Nazis picked up a mother-lode of humanitarian brownie points just by association. So Chris makes an appeal to the moral authority the ANZACs earned by fighting an inhuman regime persecuting homosexuals, in order to deny rights to homosexuals. Is anyone else vaguely offended that he invokes the name of the people who fought the Nazis, to support a position the Nazis would support? It would be as ludicrous as invoking the moral authority of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior to validate and incite acts of violence.

Every soldier learns how to salute.