Jackson Free Press

In Salon today: :On the first day of his reelection campaign, George W. Bush attacked Sen. John Kerry as an equivocating wimp from Massachusetts. On the second day, the president announced his support for a constitutional amendment that would prevent "judges in Boston" from forcing gay marriage on Americans everywhere. With Super Tuesday still a few days away, the Bush-Kerry race has officially begun. And if Bush and White House strategist Karl Rove and their allies on the religious right have their way, gay marriage will be the ugly centerpiece of the coming campaign. "

Previous Commentsshow

I'm still amazed that "good Christians" want the government to do their bidding... And that Republicans (and Dems for that matter) want to impose more govt. restrictions on the American public and the Constitution. If this becomes the central focus of the campaigns, it will truly show both are detached from the real problems in American lives. Nader is looking more and more attractive. ;-)

kaust

Feb 27 2004

Noooooo! Not Nader! My personal bet is that this move will cost Bush and the Republican party far more than they anticipate. I think that there are more people scared of government intrusion into their lives than there are people afraid of gay marriage. Maybe (as my Berkeley hairdresser used to hypothosize) we will end up with 3 political parties - Dems, Republicans and some other party for the right wing christians. I'd rather have them legislate against marriage-based reality TV than on gay marriage.

kate

Feb 27 2004

Hmmmm... Kate, for a while, I was all about the "anyone but Bush" move but am now realizing Kerry does not truly speak for my values as clearly as Nader. To me, this run-off is becoming more and more of a 2000 redux than an obvious good-vs-evil situation. Dean, yes... I would have rallied behind him. Clark was quickly nudging his way above Dean (in my own poll). Kerry, to me, is as stiff as Gore and there's something about him I simply do not trust. I can't put my finger on it. I had the same gut feelings about Musgrove and those feelings were reinforced by his actions against the gay community. Still, as we all know, the only people breaking down hetero marriage is hetero's... No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Recently, I read that marriage as a civilly ordained partnership should be abolished and civil unions/domestic partnerships should be available to any two citizens regardless of sex, sexuality or relationship. If you want to get married, go to church, not the courts, was the general theme of the argument.

kaust

Feb 27 2004

. Maybe (as my Berkeley hairdresser used to hypothosize) we will end up with 3 political parties - Dems, Republicans and some other party for the right wing christians. Kate, you're certainly right. I think the Republican Party could be more powerful than it knows if it would cut off the radical wingnuts (so to speak). And there are so many Christians and other people of faith who aren't extremists who are very frustrated right now that they don't think there's a place for them. Many of them, of course, are Democrats or are becoming Democrats under Bush extremism, but many, I'm sure, would welcome an actual moderate Republican Party that lives up to the best ideals of the party's past. Bush and his devotion to the far right may well force that split, so maybe there's good to come of it all. But--and this speaks to Knol's Nader point--there's a helluva lot of danger to be done in the meantime. Imagine if Bush is elected to another term and get a chance to stack the U.S. Supreme Court. Constitutional rights, as we know them (or remember) them, will be a footnote in history. And that's a very real concern. I'm not a Kerry fan, either, but I will have to support him against what Bush is sure to do when he's not facing re-election. And I discourage anyone from supporting Nader right now with so much at stake. Now, if Nader is in there to force issues onto the table and then bows out gracefully, that's cool. But that's sure not what he did last time -- and look where that's gotten us. In a royal mess with most of the world hating us.

DonnaLadd

Feb 27 2004

I may have seen the same piece about marriage/church. There was a hilarious editorial (unintentially so) in the WSJ about how much gay marriages were going to cost society, in terms of benefits and such. It would have made more sense if they had not brought in the notion that the state supports marriage in part because it helps create stability for raising children. As if the only real reason to ever get married is to have children. and the only legitimate marriages are those that produce children. If you carried the logic forward, then we would be denying marriage benefits to childless couples, because it costs too much. That circular logic is topped only by the people who are opposed to the gay bishop because he was living with a man (for 13 years) that he was NOT MARRIED TO! Let's deny gay people the right to marry, then oppose them serving in the clergy because they are living in sin. It's just crazy. Happy Friday.

kate

Feb 27 2004

Let's deny gay people the right to marry, then oppose them serving in the clergy because they are living in sin. It's just crazy. It is crazy. It's not my debate how a particular religion wants to define marriage. I'll leave that to y'all Episcopals and such to fight out. ;-) But it makes no sense to me that the federal government thinks it can forbid secular vows of marriage and civil unions. And what, the government (and the right wing) wants to promote promiscuity??!! It's backward. And what about all the rhetoric about not having sex until marriage? OK, maybe that's what these people want to do. It's just all so silly. If you believe having sex with the same gender is a sin, then don't do it. But it's no one's damned business what someone does in their bedroom, and if they want to commit themselves to another person for the rest of their lives -- isn't that a good thing!!!??? It's not to us to set terms for other people. And isn't this America -- the country whose freedom we all want so badly to protect? It can't only be "freedom for people who agree with me." Believing in freedom means picking out the person who agrees with you the least and defending their right to think, and act, differently. Sorry. All this is just so dumb. With all the serious problems in the world, George Bush decides to pre-occupy the country with a culture war.

DonnaLadd

Feb 27 2004

You'd think they would both want to steer clear of this topic. It's such a 50/50 issue in the polls (or close)... Not supporting an amendment could be an issue for approx. 40%+ votes. Supporting it could be an issue for 50-60%... The polls show this is a very "iffy" topic and using it as a fulcrum in politics could actually be a death knell rather than a boost in the polls. Hell, both Kerry and Bush feel the same way except Kerry doesn't feel an amendment is necessary. Technically, Kerry falls into the majority according to the polls. So, I guess what I'm saying is this could backfire on Bush in more ways than one...

kaust

Feb 27 2004

So, I guess what I'm saying is this could backfire on Bush in more ways than one... I agree completely. Bush is certainly pushing himself farther and farther to the right by choosing such a wedge issue. But he is in a rather difficult place right now: it's hard to argue that he's done a good job fiscally or internationally these days after the horrendous few weeks he just had; so he decided to play the morality/culture/"family values" card. The problem, though, is that a whole lot of people also care about the federal government staying the hell out of their personal business. I'd guess he's losing the Libertarian vote by the day -- at least the ones who really mean what they preach. And young people? Many just aren't as concerned about these culture-war issues as the administration might think. Of course, they probably assume they'll all just stay home. Whether or not they do will probably determine the outcome of the election.

DonnaLadd

Feb 27 2004

I thought the split was a little bit broader when the question is changed from "opposed to gay marriage" to "supporing a constitutional ammendment". As in, there's a nearly even split on the issue of gay marriage in general. But only about 35 to 40% support ammending the constitution. I'll try to post real stats if I ever find them again.... And, Donna, I hear what you're saying about defining marriage and such. It's just the freakin' circular logic that gets me, in this particular case. I just think that particular argument should be dropped from the discussion because it really makes no sense.

kate

Feb 27 2004

Ditto on the circular logic. So much of what passes for discussion and reasoning these days simply makes one dizzy. "I must be free to do what I want, but you can't." "Amoral corporations deserve constitutional rights, but sinners don't." "Deficits are bad if they result from education spending; groovy if it's due to the costs of a near-unilateral, preemptive war." Argh. I gotta go pack. We're movin'; we've movin'!

DonnaLadd

Feb 27 2004

"First, a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage will never get through Congress. Even if it does, it will die in the states. There aren't 38 legislatures ready to turn back the clock on the evolving gay-rights movement. Coming out in favor of the amendment is Bush's way of reassuring evangelicals he's one of them. Think of it as the political equivalent of Mel Gibson's passion play. It rouses the true believers. Second, what Bush did is all about base-tending, and the fact that he had to do it this deep into the election cycle reveals a weakness. This is the time when Bush should be reaching for the political center. Instead, from his perspective, he had no choice but to bow to the fire-breathing evangelicals. Without their enthusiastic support in November, he would suffer the same fate as his fatheróone term and out. " "The risk for Bush is that openly pandering to religious conservatives will energize the Democratic base more than the Republican base. A willingness to amend the Constitution to enshrine an ideological position is proof positive for Democrats and potentially independent and swing voters that Bush is no compassionate conservative." Eleanor Clift via Newsweek... Full story...

kaust

Mar 2 2004

Salon has a great article today, Bush's Backfire on gay marriage, which is well worth the read. A couple of quotes: "Both President Bush and Sen. Kerry have talked about marriage as a sacred institution, but the government is not charged with defending the sacred. That is the job of religious leaders. When the sacred needs politicians to defend it, the sacred is in big trouble. The surest way to protect the sacredness of something is to keep politicians as far away from it as possible. " and: "Rep. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said on Fox News on Feb. 15 that 60 percent of Americans oppose gay marriage. But the day before the president's announcement, the National Annenberg Election Survey released a poll showing that a plurality of Americans opposes the Federal Marriage Amendment, by a margin of 48 percent to 41 percent. Setting aside dueling poll numbers, 60 percent (or 64 percent, another recent figure) is short of the two-thirds needed in both houses of Congress and the three-fourths of state legislatures needed to ratify a constitutional amendment. To be sure, if you had a simple majority of public support in two-thirds of all congressional districts, and all members slavishly voted according to the polls, it could still pass the House. But there was a lot more than 60 percent public support for an amendment to ban flag burning, and it hasn't happened. " and: "Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution writes: "Something really new, without historical precedent, is happening in America. Today, for the first time, a majority is coming to realize that homosexuals actually exist: That we're not just heterosexuals who need treatment or jail. This realization will, must, and should drive change in a society whose institutions are premised on the notion that homosexuals do not actually exist." Rauch argues: "Now that we know that homosexuals exist ... the extension of the nuptial contract to them is not a sundering of tradition but an extension of it."

kate

Mar 2 2004

A humorous "conversation" between Cheney and Richard Cohen... "So you oppose a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage." "I support the President." "What if your daughter wants to marry? "I want her to be happy." "How can you reconcile the two?" "The same way I do weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." "Huh?" "Exactly." Full column.

kaust

Mar 5 2004

Another interesting column on Marriage/ Gay Marriage in the United States (and the industrialized world). Historians who study marriage (a growth industry, by the way) point to three distinct versions of American marriage. Now, with gay marriage in play and with powerful forces pushing men and women to redefine the roles of husband and wife, many think America might be re-creating marriage yet again. Think of it as Marriage 4.0. "We live at a moment when marriage (is) undergoing a seismic shift," says Steven Mintz, a professor of history at the University of Houston and author of "Domestic Revolutions," a 1988 book that looked at, among other things, the history of marriage in America. "For a lot of reasons, we've invested more and more expectations into marriage ... at least in terms of emotional fulfillment. "Marriage ñ the form we have now, anyway ñ is simply unable to meet those expectations." In China it was once possible to marry a ghost. In some American Indian cultures, a marriage could include animals or elements of nature. And in some African cultures, as well as some American Indian cultures, homosexual marriage has been tolerated, particularly if the people getting married took on separate gender roles. Apparently, the needs of group survival trumped any free-floating antipathy that may (or may not) have existed toward homosexuality. "In every culture, marriage is a tool," says Stephanie Coontz, a professor of history at Washington's Evergreen State College and author of "The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap." Marrying ghosts or trees or people of the same sex "isn't really so odd in the scope of how people have married throughout history," adds Coontz, whose current book, due this year, will look at forms of marriage throughout history. "In some ways, American marriage, with its emphasis on monogamy, has been the exception rather than the rule." A constant in American marriage has been its basic structure ñ one man and one woman living monogamously. The other constant has been Big Brother. Government, not religion, has been the most important arbiter of American marriage. Marriage in America has always been, first and foremost, "a civil contract," says Gordon Babts, an assistant professor of political science at Chapman University who last year wrote "Liberal Constitutionalism, Marriage & Sexual Orientation," a look at the history of marital law in the United States. "The definition of marriage is created by the government. And a marriage isn't official until the government says so. "Generally, the government's definition of marriage has reflected what society has needed and accepted." Full story... *requires registration. I've archived a text version of the story on my server if you'd rather not register... To view, click here.

kaust

Mar 5 2004

Quote for the day on gay marriage and Dubya: Bush warned me that gay people in San Francisco were getting married to each other and that, as a result, my traditional marriage is now threatened.† But I just checked with my wife of 25 years and she told me our marriage is still doing just fine.† Is it possible my president is misinformed? †Misguided? †Mistaken? ñ Art Verity, Van Nuys

kaust

Mar 6 2004

Donna, all, I know I said I wouldn't post any more until at least a week from today.. but THIS you HAVE to see. Guess who a certain poster on this board is . Ok, it was irrestable !

Philip

Mar 8 2004

Here's another turn of events in this unfolding drama... Gay GOP group challenges Bush on marriage In a dramatic break with President Bush, a prominent group of gay Republicans that supported him four years ago is launching a $1 million advertising campaign today attacking the administration for trying to ban same-sex marriage. The ad, by the Log Cabin Republicans, uses grainy footage of Vice President Cheney saying during the 2000 campaign that the matter should be left to the states. Bush's decision to endorse a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage was "the line in the sand" for the 27-year-old group, which has never run a campaign ad, said Executive Director Patrick Guerriero. He said he had warned the White House as Bush edged toward supporting an amendment that "despite our historic loyalty to the party and the president, we would be forced to speak out if gay and lesbian families were going to be used as wedge issues in swing states." Full story @ MSNBC.com.

kaust

Mar 11 2004