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Rachel Maddow sparred with conservatives over gay marriage on Sunday's "Meet the Press."
The Supreme Court handed down its landmark ruling striking down DOMA this week. The news dominated the roundtable on "Meet the Press," where Jim DeMint and Ralph Reed expressed their opposition to the decision.
DeMint argued that marriage between a man and a woman is "better for children." Maddow objected, saying that denying same-sex couples the right to marry was "humiliating and demeaning" for kids raised by gay parents.
She continued: "Gay people exist. There's nothing we can do in public policy that makes more of us exist, or less of us exist. And you guys have been arguing for a generation that public policy ought to essentially demean gay people as a way of expressing disapproval of the fact that we exist, but you don't make any less of us exist. You just are arguing in favor of more discrimination, and more discrimination doesn't make straight people's lives any better."
Reed said that Maddow's argument would mean that Obama, who first stated his support for gay marriage last May, was a "bigot" until fourteen months ago.
"No one's calling anybody a bigot," Maddow shot back. "You're the only one who's saying 'bigot.'"
Reed also said that the decision would spur Republican voters to action in the mid-term elections. Maddow pointed out that opponents of gay marriage recently challenged gay marriage in three major votes, and lost all three.
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