1/19/04 For those of you who have put the election,
along with terms like "right-wing nut job," behind you,
here's a little piece of nostalgic insanity, via the
Washington Post:
President Bush came under fire from some social
conservatives yesterday for saying he will not
aggressively lobby the Senate to pass a constitutional
amendment banning same-sex marriage during his second
term.
Prominent leaders such as Tony Perkins, president of
the Family Research Council, and many rank-and-file Bush
supporters inundated the White House with phone calls to
protest Bush's comments in an interview published Sunday
in The Washington Post. "Clearly there is concern" among
conservatives, Perkins said. "I believe there is no more
important issue for the president's second term than the
preservation of marriage."
If this guy believes restricting the rights of gays
is the most important issue for the President in the
next four years, I think his entire belief system is due
for a reality check.
In other news, Iraq is an inescapable quagmire that
has lost the support of a majority of Americans,
Afghanistan isn't much better, Iran is already posturing
amid a new investigative report that said the Pentagon
is performing reconnaissance missions in preparation for
a new "regime change," prisoners are still having their
human rights violated every day in Guantanamo, and our
foreign relations are in such shambles that we've been
told to leave some of the areas devastated by the
Tsunami in South Asia as soon as possible.
But, oh my God! Gays are getting rights!
No sir, I don't want to hear any more of this
nonsense about moral values. If people want to talk
about moral values then they should be debating the
morality of the war in Iraq, which has claimed the lives
of somewhere between 16,000 and 100,000 Iraqi civilians.
How many people have been killed because of gay
marriage?
Where are these "moral leaders" in debating the
ongoing and illegal imprisonment of detainees in
Guantanamo and other prisons around the world? We have
held them for so long that the military is asking to
have beds installed so that the detainees can make
themselves at home (their old home was probably bombed
anyway). We're holding some of these people without
trials, without evidence, and we don't even expect to
get information from them! I'm not sure which moral
value it is that has allowed these people to be held in
purgatory, but it's one that deserves more attention
than homophobia.
And yes, it is homophobia that is driving people like
Perkins. It's the same ridiculous fear that led the U.S.
Military to discharge 20 Arabic speakers between 1998
and 2004, during which time there was a desperate need
for translators. The military decided that gays were a
greater threat than an armed, Arab mob to our brave,
straight soldiers. Forget moral values - that's just
stupidity.
I suppose this has been the basis of my complaining
against all of this "defending the sanctity of
marriage" talk from the beginning: Who is hurt when a
gay couple is married? I'm sure people like Perkins
have a bag full of prepared answers, but here's my point:
Gays didn't attack America on September 11, 2001; Gays
are not working on a nuclear program; and gays did not
abuse the prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Much less than being the most important issue of
Bush's second term, this so-called "preservation of
marriage" movement is so insignificant and against the
ideals of America that it should be dropped completely.
The Republicans are going to have to go after extremists
like Perkins or else they will risk being dealt
long-lasting damage to their reputation as a whole
party.
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articles written by Scott Zuke