TYPO: “drain” should read “toilet”.
Sorry for the confusion.
I’m FOR gay marriage, but calling this pandering in an election year is stupid, IMHO.
The laws of this country are supposed to reflect the views of the people, and the vast majority of people oppose gay marriage.
Vast majority of people in this country are fucking morons.
It wasn’t too long ago that the vast majority of people in this country thought that interracial marriage should be illegal. Did that make anitmiscegenation laws all right?
“Life, Liberty and the Pursuit Of Happiness”, right? Unless the vast majority of people can show some actual harm that is done by gay marriage then the vast majority of people shouldn’t be allowed to turn their distaste at somebody else’s relationship into law.
Sorry, I know that was a bit of a tangent to your point. I don’t think that the Founding Fathers imagined that the majority should be able to arbitrarily deprive the minority of something because they don’t like it.
And yes I do think that this is election-year pandering. Bush wants a nice little wedge issue, he wants the votes of the millions of far-right voters that he didn’t get last time. If it was such a legitimate social concern of his then he would have tried it a few years ago.
Good points, all, Valgard.
Sorry, posted too quick…
Given the recent happenings in Massachussettes and San Francisco, I think the issue is sort of being forced now. I tend to chalk it up to poor timing all around, but this issue has certainly been dropped on Bush’s plate moreso now than four years ago.
Careful, he’d probably enjoy it…
You of course realize that that margin, if extended to Congress, is not enough to pass a new amendment?
Well, fark. If our country actually manages to pass this amendment (which I seriously doubt, but with a furrowed brow), I hope we reap the whirlwind. I hope that gay rights supporters and sympathizers unleash a fury that stifles the national economy with relentless protests, that overloads the government with acts of civil disobedience, that gives America a black eye in front of the whole world. Cuz we would surely deserve it.
Uhm… 64-32 anti-gay-marriage is far too close to 67-33 for my tastes. I doubt it’s 64-32 in-favor-of-amendment, but still… [furrows brow]
I’m impressed: what is this group? (I’m not from the US.)
How did the Defense of Marriage Act make it through with Democratic support? It does by legislation much of what the proposed amendment does, and it passed the House by a vote of 342-67, and the Senate passed it by a vote of 85-14. Both those majority are sufficient to pass an amendment.
- Rick
That doesn’t mean anything, because if it’s 64-32 (or whatver) in each district, then 100% of self-serving Congressmen will vote for it. Insofar as that’s pretty much all of them, I’m seeing this as a legitimate threat to pass. I don’t think it will, but I think that it has the best chance it ever will right around now.
They’re Gay and Republican. I wonder if they’ll survive this election year as a group. It’ll be interesting to see how much news coverage of their National Convention in August.
The stupidest thing that I see is that everything that “troubles” Him about homosexuals they already do, can do and have been doing for awhile. Gays and lesbians can ask each out, date, hold hands and kiss in public, form deep emotional bonds, get married and exchange vows in some churches (Freedom of religion and all. It’s not state recognition but it certainly gives them a good enough reason to call their spouse their husband or wife), have sex, have children (through various means), raise said children, go to parent teacher conferences, sit in the bleachers at soccer games and cheer their kids on, send their kids to college and eventually grow old and die together. It seems to me that everything anti gay rights people really want to stop they already are doing and will continue doing forever.
What really saddens me is that they’ve already marred my state constitution with a fucking amendment just like the one Bush is proposing. I can’t wait for it to be declared unconstitutional.
“Cram your Constitutional Amendment up your ass Bush.” If I was looking for cheap publicity, I’d be very tempted to propose this as an ammendment. Think about if - there’s a lot of people who hate Bush (rightly or wrongly), who’d be galvanised by it. And you could claim you were just doing it to parody the other stupid ammendment.
If it was “cram your evidence for WMD…” it might pass 
(Though I wouldn’t vote for it.)
Here’s an ABCNEWS/Washington Post poll taken in January. Most interesting to me is that it shows 55% of people aged 18-29 think same sex marriage should be legal. If only our voting record was a whole lot better. Anyway look at the past polls and see the steady rise over the past decade. They don’t take into account the events in San Francisco though which probably did cause some sort of knee-jerk negative reaction but I tend to think those people will come down and mostly return to their original position. And that America will continue it’s trend towards acceptance.
>Vast majority of people in this country are fucking morons.
Yep. Democracy’s great unless the people don’t agree with you, eh?
I’m really surprised no threads have been started pitting the San Francisco mayor for blatantly disregarding his state’s laws. If you opposed Roy “10 Commandments” Moore, you should oppose this guy as well…unless you have an ideological double-standard.
Actually, Judge Moore was violating the US Constitution. The mayor of SF is “only” violating state law, so far.
Re “the will of the people”: In what I assume is the same ABC News poll cited by Fern Forest, while 55% of Americans oppose legal SSM, 58% oppose amending the Constitution. A constitutional amendment is not the will of the people.
Re “bad timing”: The Massachusetts case was filed in April 2001. The SJC was supposed to announce its decision in IIRC April 2003 but didn’t until November. Had the court announced this ruling in on schedule, even had it built the same 180 day delay into it, same-sex couples would have started getting married in that state in October of last year. The timing was not really under the gay community’s control.
Militant answer; how long must gay people be expected to wait for equality?
Re “Hillary will vote for it”: So far the public voice of the Democrats has been that they oppose SSM but also oppose amending the Constitution. I have seen nothing from Senator Clinton indicating she supports this amendment, and seeing as how she represents a state with a large and somewhat powerful gay community she will most likely adhere to that line. That her husband signed DOMA can’t be considered evidence of her support for an amendment.
What I will be more interested in watching than Hillary and the Dems are the Republicans who scream “states rights!” every time the federal government seeks to exercise power. Here’s something that has largely been left to the states (with notable exceptions like Loving v Virginia etc.) and the feds are wanting to come in and stomp all over the states.
I wish I were as sanguine as some others about the chances this amendment will be defeated. If it does make it out of Congress, I don’t think there will be much opposition among the states, since more states have DOMAs on the books than would be required to ratify.
And after all these morons get fucked, they get pregnant and eventually beget other morons.
And thus the number of morons increases. <sigh>