It is so pittiful when one thinks of New Orleans and the Katrina's aftermath.
The state of Louisiana and its conservative lesgislators had lots of plans, lots of
proposals, and lots of thinking to make sure that Louisiana approved the state
constitutional amendments that define marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
The measure passed last year (2004). Yet, no legislator had any plans, any proposals,
or any thinking to make the levee good enough to protect the city of New Orleans.
It is so pittiful that Katrina did strike. For better or for worse, it did strike
with a message to let politicians pause and think as which one should have been
consider a real "issue".
Protecting the levee to withstand catastrophic hurricanes or preventing same-sex
marriage that seemed to threaten no one? Which "issue" had the potential
of changing others' lives is now no longer a tough question for politicians to answer
in front of the public.
I happen to read the article below. It was written by Jacquielynn Floyd, a Dallas Morning News staff
writer, and published on the "The Dallas Morning News" on Thursday, Oct, 06th, 2005.
Texas statewide election is aproaching, before Nov 08, 2005, the election day that the
Prop 2 would appear on the ballot, the writer has a few words to the opponents
of gay-marriage.
It seems to be an excellent article. Could not help but post this article
on my web for those who enjoy reading it.
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Prop 2 Is Bigotry Wrapped In Cruelty. (by Jacquielynn Floyd)
(published on The Dallas Morning News - Thursday, Oct. 06, 2005)
If you're opposed to gay marriage, you can take a stand: Don't go to any gay weddings.
If you really want to signal your disapproval, don't send a present.
But don't vote for the mean and meddlesome proposal on the Nov. 8 ballot that would
amend the state constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage.
Proposition 2 is a cruel piece of ideological bigotry that attempts to create and
solve a problem that doesn't exist.
It's hard to understand why so many otherwise sensible people have seized on gay
marriage as the most menacing potential threat that American society faces.
And it's hard to understand why otherwise decent people see a need to purposely
discriminate against couples who want the same workaday legal safeguard as everybody
else.
So far, this particular ballot measure is cruising a little beneath the
public radar.
We've been too preoccupied with natural disaster and Supreme Court vacancies to
get whipped up in a big front-page frenzy on this one.
But there's a steady grassroots campaign going on, targeting specific interest
groups with direct mailers and e-mail "alerts." The rest of us will just be left to
make up our minds in the voting booth.
Sadly, a lot of people will vote in favor of it because it's worded simply as
a "definition" that limits marriage in Texas to "the union of one man and woman."
Sounds OK; sounds like marriage as most of us know it. But there's a little extra
language in there that also bans "any legal status identical or similar to marriage."
In other words, no marriage for gay people and nothing that even legally resembles it.
This could mean real legal trouble for, say, sick people who want to assign benefits
or powers of attorney to a partner.
Look, I understand the visceral discomfort some people experience when they see two
guys kissing on TV. Sexual orientation is part of your hard wiring, and it's pretty
difficult to go against the grain.
That's exactly the reason that it's disingenuous and downright spiteful for
gay-marriage opponents to suggest, as they do in their campaign literature,
that "homosexuals have the same right to marry as we all do. They choose not to marry
members of the opposite sex, but they could if they wanted to."
Never mind that this would mean perpetrating a fraud on the other marriage partner.
They could if they wanted to.
A lot of people seem to view the "threat" of gay marriage as emblematic of
everything that seems to be deteriorating in our selfish, vulgar, navel-baring
popular culture. Marriage sometimes looks less like a sound foundation to our
societal structure that it does a tabloid soap opera.
They see marriage cheapened by partner-swapping celebrity dimwits, by selfish jerks
who don't stick around long enough to watch the kids grow up, by the cartoonist
Anna Nicole Smith and her late husband J. Howard Marshall II, who was 90 when he died.
Or they believe the hysterical predictions that gay marriage is the first step in a
long decline toward institutionalized polygamy, or weddings uniting people and donkeys.
It seems to me that if you're worried about all those things, there's a real benefit in extending
the franchise to stable couples who see marriage as a serious commitment.
That's a matter of character, not of sexual orientation.
Of course, there are those who just flat don't like gay people, who
consider homosexuality offensive and amoral.
Thus, they would limit somebody else's rights to protect themselves from being
“offended." Aren't these the same people who wring their hands over out-of-control "political correctness"?
Proposition 2 will not stop people from being gay. It wouldn't stop them from
moving in together or throwing housewarming parties or joining the PTA.
All it will do is make life a little harder for them, and why do you want to do
that to people you don't even know?
Same-sex marriage is already illegal in Texas, and even if it weren't,
it wouldn't change your life.
But if you really want to take a stand, go ahead and boycott gay weddings.
There'll be more cake for everybody else.
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