Posted on 02/24/2004 9:41:45 AM PST by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
WAR IS DECLARED: 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.
NO MORE PROFOUND AN ATTACK: This president wants our families denied civil protection and civil acknowledgment. He wants us stigmatized not just by a law, not just by his inability even to call us by name, not by his minions on the religious right. He wants us stigmatized in the very founding document of America. There can be no more profound attack on a minority in the United States - or on the promise of freedom that America represents. That very tactic is so shocking in its prejudice, so clear in its intent, so extreme in its implications that it leaves people of good will little lee-way. This president has now made the Republican party an emblem of exclusion and division and intolerance. Gay people will now regard it as their enemy for generations - and rightly so. I knew this was coming, but the way in which it has been delivered and the actual fact of its occurrence is so deeply depressing it is still hard to absorb. But the result is clear, at least for those who care about the Constitution and care about civil rights. We must oppose this extremism with everything we can muster. We must appeal to the fair-minded center of the country that balks at the hatred and fear that much of the religious right feeds on. We must prevent this graffiti from being written on a document every person in this country should be able to regard as their own. This struggle is hard but it is also easy. The president has made it easy. He's a simple man and he divides the world into friends and foes. He has now made a whole group of Americans - and their families and their friends - his enemy. We have no alternative but to defend ourselves and our families from this attack. And we will.
The antithesis is just that.
Gov't recognized marriage is NOT a civil right. A gov't issued LICENSE is required. You can't just up and marry if you want to marry a child or more than one person or a goat. It's a PRIVELEGE in secular and constitutional terms. A religiously recognized marriage is out of the realm of the gov't, but there are few churches that recognize gay marriages, and those are not entitled to gov't recognition.
What do these arrogant bastards know about the law?!
It is their very contempt for the law that forces us to seek an amendment!!!
Huh, I guess you are in favor for Mass. same sex marriage licenses to be valid in Idaho, where they are against same sex marriage.
Homosexuals are not being discriminated against. They are as free to marry a person of the opposite sex as anybody else is.
They are not free to marry a person of the same sex anymore than a person who doesn't like corners is free to draw a square without them. A square has to have corners to be a square. A marriage has to have two persons, one each of either sex, to be a marriage. Corners aren't enough to make a figure a square, and two persons, one each of either sex aren't enough to make a marriage. But without corners there is no square ... and so forth.
As it happens, some heterosexuals find themselves sexually attracted to people who are their spouses. This is not always the case. Kings often have not been permitted to marry those for whom they felt romantic affection. I wonder what per centage of all marriages in history were entirely at the choice of the couple who chose on the basis of affection. My guess is not many were like that.
But, it seems, for homosexuals, sexual attraction and affection are the most important thing. What they call marriage and what we know to be marriage are two very different things.
Andrew is simply wrong.
The secular religion of liberalism continues to attack the laws of this nation.
The flatheaded mayor of San Francisco breaks the laws of the state because liberalism protects him.
A rogue court in Massachussetts orders the legislature to make law.
Looks like it's high time for a revolution in this country.
When the rule of law starts to break down a shakeup of the troublemakers is far overdue.
Time to remove the bums who disobey their oaths of office!
If the silent majority were to get pissed enough to riot, the cathartic cultural cleansing that followed would be a work of art.
Some cheese to go with his WHINE!
You labelled this article right. Hissy-fit indeed! What a crybaby! Hey, Andrew! You have the right to marry. No one is stopping you from marrying a person of the OPPOSITE GENDER so stop your whining!
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