Is it marriage that needs to be saved?
At it again, our ever compassionate president has called for discrimination to be written in to the constitution. His stated aim is to “protect” marriage. That it is under assault in the first place no doubt comes as news to many. That bigotry will somehow cure any ill certainly comes as news to more.
Bush’s crusade to “save marriage” is often couched as the promotion of “traditional values.” Shining some light on the sort of tradition that Bush and his kind are aiming for, Scalzi recalls George Wallace who stood up in front of the nation to support school segregation. To what end? Did he want to save us from the menace of educated minorities? Now Bush wants to do the same thing and fight to keep us safe from married homosexuals. Where’s the threat? Why the fight?
There are traditional values in danger here, but marriage — which is only in a position to be strengthened if more people adopt it as an institution — isn’t one of them. Granted that some of these values — for example, equal protection of the laws — were only accepted under duress, but I think it’s fair to consider them traditional. Others — Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, for example — are even considered “self-evident” and “unalienable.” If it’s traditional values we need to protect, perhaps we should start with these.
The push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is, at its core, anti-American. It’s bigoted, rooted in hatred and fear and stands against the freedom and tolerance that this nation has fought for time and time again. The fact that our elected leader promotes such an idea is bad enough. That we the people tolerate as much is beyond comprehension.
June 6th, 2006 at 7:24 am
It’s one of those wedge issues that panders to a certain part of his base and seeks to set everyone else against each other. The amendment has zero chance of passing, just as George Bush has zero chance of being president past 2008. Hopefully we have more than zero chance of electing someone with even half a brain next time.
June 6th, 2006 at 10:48 am
Yeah. The part that gets me is that it works. That in 2006 you can portion off anything other than a tiny minority of nutjobs and zealots with a “bigot vs. not a bigot” cut is sad beyond words.
June 6th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
History will not be kind to these people.
June 6th, 2006 at 6:08 pm
My guess is that he’s trying to distract the populace from more important matters at hand, like the war. I think he could be also clamoring to make people forget his abyssmal approval rating. Why else bring up the marriage bit now?