UPDATED: Bush Rose Garden Speech 'shameful politicking'
HRC via BBSNews 2006-06-05 -- WASHINGTON - As President Bush announced his support for the discriminatory Federal Marriage Amendment, a group of hard-working Americans were at the Capitol today making their opposition to the proposed amendment known. Almost a quarter of a million Vote No! postcards were delivered to Capitol Hill as part of the event.
"Surrounded by a group of extremists, President Bush showed today how enormously out of touch this administration is with the rest of America," said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. "Discrimination never belongs in the Constitution. At a time when hard-working Americans are losing sons and daughters in Iraq, struggling to afford health care for their families and worrying about being able to fill their tanks with gas, the discriminatory attack on the U.S. Constitution and American families is shameful politicking. Today, Americans are speaking out."
"As an Episcopalian I have taken vows to respect the dignity of every human being and as an American citizen I have pledged allegiance to a flag guaranteeing liberty and justice for all. The Federal Marriage Amendment violates both of those principles," said the Rev. Susan Russell of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Calif., and a member of the Human Rights Campaign Religion and Faith Council. "Last October I sat in the bleachers in Columbia, South Carolina, as my son graduated from boot camp and heard all those brave, young soldiers swear to 'defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.' It never occurred to me that a few months later I myself would be on the steps of the U.S. Capitol defending the Constitution from those willing to exploit it for political gain. My son and his colleagues preparing to be deployed to Kuwait deserve better than that. America deserves better than that."
"I took time off of work today because I am fed up with what's going on in Washington and want to send a message," said LaWana SlackMayfield, a North Carolinian who spoke on the Capitol steps today at a Human Rights Campaign event in opposition to the amendment. "As a working woman and a woman of color, I believe there are many more important issues. President Bush's policies have devastated my community, and I'm here to tell him this amendment is no solution. In fact, for the first time in history, this amendment would actually add discrimination into the document that over time has come to be the very thing that protects us all."
"President Bush and Senator Frist, the American people want you to stop playing divisive politics and lead on issues that matter," said Joann Elder, who flew in from Wisconsin to appear at today's event with her husband, Joe. "Writing such discrimination into our national Constitution saddens me because our son is one of millions of wonderful Americans who would have no hope for equal civil rights of marriage. This amendment is divisive ... This amendment is unnecessary ... This amendment is un-American ... Well, I am here today to deliver postcards and to deliver a message: It hurts us that you would discriminate against our son and millions of our good Americans for your own political gain. President Bush and Senator Frist, the American people want you to stop playing divisive politics and lead on issues that matter."
Editor's note: ABC News reported late Monday night after the press time of the above story: "White House organizers moved President Bush's endorsement of the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage from the austere and unmistakably presidential Rose Garden, where invitations last week advertised it would be, into a plain room with blue curtains at an office building next door."
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