Official Gay Bashing Week in America
WHAT I KNOW 2006-06-06 -- The theme for this week in American politics is the divisive and
controversial issue, gay marriage. Should gay people have equal rights in their committed and loving
relationships or should the United States Constitution have added to it an amendment that clearly
discriminates against a class of Americans that some people just plain do not like?
To make sure that message gets across, likely 2008 Republican presidential nomination seeker Senator Bill Frist of Terri Shiavo fame said in a Sunday editorial:
"We need the Marriage Protection Amendment to protect American families. Nearly every social indicator, from household income to individual health, moves in the right direction when marriages are strong and rates are high. Children who live in homes headed by married couples do better by every measure than children living in any other setting. In the Netherlands and many of the Nordic countries where the government redefined marriage - almost always without popular support - redefinition has correlated with a falling marriage rate, and worse conditions for children."
Senator Frist seemingly stretches the bounds of logic in making the claim to "strengthen" marriage while denying that right to a certain class of Americans. Such was the case for interracial marriage until the Loving v. Virginia case in 1967 that struck down the bigotry being perpetrated upon another class of individuals. Just four decades ago black folks were largely in the same boat as gay folks. The judge in Virginia had a "godly" basis for his bigotry also:
"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."Sound familiar? And the baloney about being gay simply being a "lifestyle choice" is just that, baloney. No one wakes up one day and says "I think I'll be gay today."
President Bush yesterday gave a ten minute speech that was supposed to be held in the Rose Garden but was apparently moved by staffers to an obscure room in a nearby office building. A story in itself that ABC News broke and wrote late Monday night:
"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."
President Bush said in the (moved from the Rose Garden) speech:
"As this debate goes forward, every American deserves to be treated with tolerance and respect and dignity. On an issue of this great significance, opinions are strong and emotions run deep. And all of us have a duty to conduct this discussion with civility and decency toward one another. All people deserve to have their voices heard and a constitutional amendment will ensure that they are heard."
WHAT I THINK -- "Civility and decency"? The president of the United States is calling on the Senate to put discrimination against a class of Americans directly into the US Constitution and the Executive is impugning the Judiciary in his speech:
"An amendment to the Constitution is necessary because activist courts have left our nation with no other choice. When judges insist on imposing their arbitrary will on the people, the only alternative left to the people is an amendment to the Constitution, the only law a court cannot overturn."
This is an extremist position. It is not civil and decent. It is not "marriage protection." It encourages wingnuts to gay bash. They lost the fight to discriminate against black folks, todays group to hate are gay people according to these folks thinking. Our brothers, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers. Our American families. While it might be red meat for the Republicans, this use of the "bully pulpit" to perpetuate the notion that judges around the country simply impose their personal will instead of the law in cases that come before them is exactly the kind of divisive action that leads to the nut cases threatening judges.
Giving encouragement to the idea that this nation is held in the clutches of the imaginary and made up by the Republicans "activist" judges is wrong-headed. And it can lead to more ill-will from extremist whackos who seemingly don't need too much of a push to threaten or even do harm to judges who rule in a way that these people do not personally like. This position endangers the very rule of law by calling judges "activist" when they simply make decisions that are based in law but do not comport with the personal prejudices of the extreme right-wing in America.
This is just plain bigotry in the extreme. This is a throw back to the days of slavery. The more than 7000 marriages that have been performed in the State of Massachusetts have had no material effect on any other American in any way shape or form.
The extremist Web site "The Conservative Voice" penned an editorial about this pandering. It has the requisite Clinton bashing, how it was during the Clinton years that American morality "involved a tragic downward spiral on the morality front." And there are religion based quotes about how gay people are an "abomination." And of course the usual extremist rhetoric about Senator Edward Kennedy: "This is the same Senator Kennedy who supports abortion as a constitutional right, yet professes to be a Roman Catholic instead of admitting to being a heretic who has excommunicated himself by his perverse political choices."
It's sad, such hatred from folks who might be better served to actually focus on the important issues facing America. As stated above, equal rights for gay families and the marriages that have resulted in Massachusetts has no effect on anyone else, anywhere else. My marriage, your marriage and the neighbors marriage is not under threat by equal rights for gay American families. It's just pandering to bigotry. And the very first comment on the TCV editorial summed it up well:
"I find especially interesting that you quote Jefferson's support of government sponsored genital and facial mutilation as proof that the Founding Fathers were flatly opposed to same-sex marriage. The Founding Fathers represented a number of 'social values' that America has evolved a way from...you know list...it's long...it includes slavery...it includes child labor...it includes the exclusive legalized rights for land owning white men...etc. There probably is some sort of argument for denying men and women the right to marry whomever they choose...I haven't heard it yet. Your citation of grotesque laws from our past certainly doesn't help the "Conservative Voice" sound terribly rational or Godly."
Neither does it make our "leaders" sound too rational or godly.
This column is by Michael Hess, editor of BBSNews. It was inspired by Aaron Brown and his common admonishment to report 'what you know and not what you think' and also by a colleague who seems to always be in pursuit of a 'what what'. Here's both. Happy 666!
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