Burnt Orange Report

The Hate Amendment

By Byron LaMasters

Henseforth, on this blog, I shall refer to the Federal Marriage Amendment as the Hate Amendment. George W. Bush can't win this election on jobs or on foreign policy (because he's miserably failed in both regards), so he's playing the gay card. Blame it on the homos. Andrew Sullivan (someone who endorsed George W. Bush in 2000 if you all remember) has correctly declared (on his website, via a reader) that Bush's full endorsement of the Federal Marriage Amendment as a declaration of war against gays and lesbians in America:

The president launched a war today against the civil rights of gay citizens and their families. And just as importantly, he launched a war to defile the most sacred document in the land. Rather than allow the contentious and difficult issue of equal marriage rights to be fought over in the states, rather than let politics and the law take their course, rather than keep the Constitution out of the culture wars, this president wants to drag the very founding document into his re-election campaign. He is proposing to remove civil rights from one group of American citizens - and do so in the Constitution itself. The message could not be plainer: these citizens do not fully belong in America. Their relationships must be stigmatized in the very Constitution itself. The document that should be uniting the country will now be used to divide it, to single out a group of people for discrimination itself, and to do so for narrow electoral purposes. Not since the horrifying legacy of Constitutional racial discrimination in this country has such a goal been even thought of, let alone pursued. Those of us who supported this president in 2000, who have backed him whole-heartedly during the war, who have endured scorn from our peers as a result, who trusted that this president was indeed a uniter rather than a divider, now know the truth.

Amen to that (well, other than the fact that I never bought into the whole uniter crap in 2000). Never before has the United State constitution been amended to rewrite discrimination into that sacred document. It took hundreds of years to amend the constitution to do away with discrimination against African-Americans (XIII, XIV, XV) and women (XIX), and now the President of the United States, here in the twenty-first century wants to rewrite discrimination into the United States Constitution. This is not only a declaration of war against gays and lesbians, as Andrew Sullivan writes, this is a declaration of war against the United States Constitution.

There is some good news, however. Karl-Thomas wrote earlier that he wasn't sure if he could vote for Kerry in November based on some of his previous statements on the issue. Karl-Thomas, I'm here to tell you that you can gladly vote for Kerry or Edwards. Sure, neither of them support gay marriage (but then again, neither did Howard Dean), but both went on the record this afternoon as opposing a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. It's our job to hold them to it. The AP reports:

Democrats accused Bush of tinkering with a document that is the bedrock of American democracy to divert election-year attention from his record — an allegation the White House denied. Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), D-Mass., who hopes to run against Bush in this year's presidential election, said: "I believe President Bush is wrong."

"All Americans should be concerned when a president who is in political trouble tries to tamper with the Constitution of the United States at the start of his re-election campaign," said Kerry, who opposes gay marriage but will oppose the amendment if it reaches the Senate floor. Bush is "looking for a wedge issue to divide the American people," Kerry said.

Campaigning in Georgia, where the state legislature is debating its own ban on gay marriage, Sen. John Edwards (news - web sites), D-N.C., said he was against the president's idea of a constitutional amendment. "I don't personally support gay marriage myself," he said. "My position has always been that it's for the states to decide."

Ok, so now I just need to decide which one of these guys I'm going to vote for...

Posted by Byron LaMasters at February 24, 2004 03:00 PM | TrackBack