Munch
October 22, 2004, 6:34pm
21
I would drop the Auchwitz commentary in your footnote. It just brings up too many issues that are unrelated to your point. Great article.
Bill_H
October 22, 2004, 8:28pm
22
Very good. But too long to get published. The below is still a bit long, and I’m sure you’ll find that a lot of your meat was cut. But see what you think.
As part of the infamous Manson family, Susan Atkins held down Sharon Tate, eight months pregnant and pleading for the life of her unborn son, while Charles “Tex” Watson stabbed the actress fifteen times. Separate juries voted unanimously to sentence everyone involved in the crimes to death.
While their trips down death row were regrettably cut short, Atkins and Watson both made it down the aisle. Through conjugal visits, Watson had four children. The right of such criminals to marry has been upheld more than once by the Supreme Court who ruled that “since the right to marry is of fundamental importance” it cannot be denied them.
Atkins and Watson are destroyers of life who have contributed nothing to society. Nevertheless, to George W. Bush and his supporters, they are less threatening to the American family than even the most law abiding, peaceful and productive gay American. Marriage therefore is Manson-proof, but not queer-proof.
In February 2004, Phyllis Lyon & Del Martin, partners since 1952 became the first same-sex couple to obtain a marriage license in California. Their marriage was overturned a few months later. This in the same state where Atkins told Sharon Tate “I have no mercy for you bitch,” and considered cutting out her victim’s dead fetus and delivering it as a trophy to Manson. Yet Atkin’s marriage is legally recognized. And of the two unions, it is the former that Bush feels the need to protect America from.
A straight person may not understand how humiliating and frustrating it is to be told that their right to legal kinship with the person they love is of less consequence than that of the most heinous killers in American history, or to be told they are so great a danger to the lives and liberties of married couples that the Constitution itself must be amended with the first amendment ever specifically designed to deny a right to a specific group of law abiding American citizens. And this is why I find in the opportunity to vote against George Bush the passion I lack in supporting John Kerry. I will not be told that I am less deserving than a Manson.