8 responses to “A constitutional amendment?”

1. 

   ashley said on February 25, 2004 at 12:15 am

   Was I right? Now people are going to vote using this as the sole criterion as opposed to anything that matters. Congrats, dubya.

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2. 

   John Ritter said on February 25, 2004 at 8:20 am

   I thought this was a farce too, but my son turned me around. He said that if this amendment is to “defend” marriage, then it should outlaw divorce, separation, adultery, and the pesky cohabition habit the US seems to have adopted. An amendment written like that would die a quick death.

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3. 

   Michael G said on February 25, 2004 at 10:02 am

   Though it’s no more than I’ve come to expect from this President, there are many other people who are expressing their disgust and sense of betrayal far more eloquently than I could.

   Maybe we can take a deep breath and lighten it up for a moment with this email fragment posted by Andrew Sullivan:

   “I can feel your depression through the computer monitor, but if it makes you feel any better, I’ve been married to my wife for 26 years, and let me tell you something, you ain’t missing a goddamn thing.”

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4. 

   deb said on February 25, 2004 at 11:29 am

   until recently, i was proud to live in one of the handful of states that doesn’t prohibit same-sex marriages. now, however, the wisconsin lege is proposing its own constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between opposite-sex couples. no others need apply. groan.

   all the self-righteous blather about how this will “protect” marriage just kills me. protect it from WHAT?

   you ask me, a better way to ensure the sanctity of marriage would be to outlaw drive-through weddings in vegas and spare us any more of those cutesy “what happens here, stays here” commercials or britney-jason/dennis-carmen nuptial spectacles.

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5. 

   Lance Mannion said on February 25, 2004 at 11:36 am

   I’m with Law and Order’s Jack McCoy: “Let them get married. Why shouldn’t they be as miserable as the rest of us?”

   Really, though, this isn’t funny. The issue isn’t simply whether or not gays should be allowed to get married. The issue is whether or not we’re going to turn the US Constitution into an explicitly Fundamentalist Christian document.

   George W. is trying to rally the troops with this ammendment, and it’s important to remember who the troops are. The people who buy the Left Behind novels. The people who want to turn the country into a “Christian” theocracy. The people who believe God annointed W. president—although I don’t understand why they think God had to do the job so clumsily. Instead of screwing up the ballots in Palm Beach county, wouldn’t it have been more efficient, and more decisive, for Him to have sent angels to appear in the dreams of a *majority* of Americans telling them to vote for George? And as long as God was interfering in human affairs why couldn’t he have arranged for even one of the teams of hijackers to miss their plane on September 11?

   Strange sort of God to believe in, an incompetent bungler who prefers practical jokes to out and out miracles. But then they don’t believe in God, really. They don’t believe in Jesus either. At least they don’t seem to care very much about what Jesus actually said and did. Jesus didn’t say anything about gay people. But he was pretty explicit on the subject of divorce. Not to mention on the subjects of praying in public, storing up treasures on earth, the separation of church and state, and the odds of rich people getting into heaven. They’re supposed to believe in the Bible as God’s literal word, but the only book of the New Testament they take literally isn’t Matthew, or Mark, or Luke, or John. It’s Revelations, the one book that if taken literally is pure nonsense. You might as well accept Alice in Wonderland as a literal description of life in Victorian England.

   They don’t believe in God. They don’t believe in Jesus. They believe in their own personal salvation, which is to say their own superiority to everybody who isn’t exactly like them. It doesn’t stop with gays. They don’t believe any Christian but their own sort is truly “Christian.” They don’t believe anybody who doesn’t believe what they believe and vote as they do are truly American. Basically they don’t believe that any of the rest of us actually matters and when they get control they will rule as if we don’t.

   The ammendment probably won’t even get out of the Senate. By Novemember it probably won’t be an issue. But Libertarians and moderate Republicans and compassionate, truly compassionate, conservatives, and all real Christians need to remember. George W. just declared who his real constituency is, and you aren’t in their club.

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6. 

   alex said on February 26, 2004 at 2:21 pm

   Rather than get gloomy and doomy about this mad farce, I’m jubilant. The issue needed to be forced at some point and now it’s finally happening.

   The GOP got hoisted by its own petard when it started fulminating over Monica Lewinsky, and was quite taken by surprise when Clinton’s approval ratings shot up. Right now, no one’s doing more than the GOP to make gay-hating look unhip and stupid.

   This is a historic moment, not unlike the march on Selma. They’re not using water cannons or attack dogs this time, but the ugliness of it all could very well backfire on them. And George Dubya’s legacy will be, fittingly, like that of George Wallace.

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7. 

   Dick Walker said on February 26, 2004 at 4:30 pm

   And HERE’s what’s going on in Austin today:

   http://austin.indymedia.org/newswire/display/15722/index.php

   Perry is, of course, close to GWB.

   It’s all a damn hoot and I’ll be glad to see this piece of divisiveness blow up in the uniter’s monkey face…

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8. 

   ashley said on February 26, 2004 at 6:31 pm

   Hey alex, don’t dis George Wallace like that. At least, he finally repented.

   Dubya’s gonna be a confirmed loser until the day somebody finally puts him out of his misery.

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