Log Cabin Republicans See The Light
The dumbshits finally realize supporting George Bush might have been a bad idea:
An Open Letter to President Bush from Patrick GuerrieroMr. President,
On behalf of millions of gay and lesbian Americans, I write to denounce your decision to divide the American family by promoting an amendment that would insert discrimination into the United States Constitution. Your decision to use the grounds of the White House—America's House—to advance discrimination is an insult to millions of fair minded Americans from all walks of life.
Mr. President, gay and lesbian Americans pay taxes, contribute to community and family life across our great nation, and worship the same all-loving and compassionate God. Thousands of gay and lesbian Americans, under your command, serve proudly in our nation's military, fighting to win the war on terror and promoting liberty across the globe. Your effort to codify discrimination against our families, including men and women in uniform while the nation is at war, is offensive and unworthy of the office of the Presidency. Great Republican Presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Ronald Reagan have united Americans and appealed to our best hopes, not our worst fears.
Wedge-issue politics may score short-term political points but will end up eroding your ability as President to unite the American people behind winning the war in Iraq, enhancing border security, advancing immigration reform, and controlling spending. Your call for "civility and decency" in this debate rings hollow because the effort to write discrimination into our Constitution is intolerant and uncivil.
While Americans deserve a chance to debate contentious issues, the constitutional amendment process you propose denies states the right to handle this issue as they deem appropriate. This proposal runs completely counter to our Party's conservative belief in federalism. We suggest you listen to your own Vice President who has reminded us that this is an issue that should be left to the states. And, we suggest you listen to your former U.N. Ambassador and former United States Senator John Danforth (R-MO) who has called this amendment one of the silliest ever proposed in our nation's history.
While decent Americans can respectfully disagree about how to offer fairness to our families, your White House event today further legitimizes the voices of intolerance who have made an industry out of denigrating gay and lesbian Americans. That legitimization has sadly fueled discriminatory state amendments across America that go beyond denying civil marriage equality—by denying even domestic partnerships or civil unions that allow for hospital visitation, inheritance rights, and basic dignity to life-long loving couples.
Mr. President, the White House has been the site of historic legislative triumphs that expanded liberty and opportunity for the American people—from expanding equal opportunity for women to the signing of the Civil Rights Act to the Americans with Disabilities Act. Today, you desecrate America's House by using the White House grounds to denigrate part of the American family. History recalls those moments in America's past when our nation's leaders expanded liberty and fairness for American citizens. History also remembers those political leaders who have stood in the doorway of equality and tolerance.
Mr. President, may God bless our great nation—and each and every American who believes in the promise of the Declaration of Independence that all Americans are created equal.
Let's have more Arlen Spectors in the Republican party. From a New York Times story by Maria Newman:
Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said that while he believed marriage should be between a man and a woman, he said he would vote against the amendment to ban gay marriage because the matter was already being addressed by the states. He quoted the late Sen. Barry Goldwater as saying that government "ought to be kept off our backs, out of our pocketbooks and out of our bedrooms.""This is a matter which ought to be left to the states, and the states are taking care of it," he said. "It's a matter of privacy, it's a matter of tolerance, two very, very highly placed values in our society."
Another Republican, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, said that he would support the amendment, and that he was disturbed that some critics of it said the measure amounted to bigotry against one group in society.
"What people are trying to do here is make fundamental policy for the country on a fundamental issue, and that's marriage," he said. "It is not bigotry to define marriage as between a man and a woman."
If that were the case, Mr. Brownback said, then people would have to conclude that people in the states that have banned gay marriage, as well as the many religious leaders who backed them, were bigots.
Yep. That's about the size of it.
Yeah, yeah.
(Hi Patrick!)
Crid at June 6, 2006 2:06 AM
Yes, proposing the first Constitutional ammendment to diminish rights rather than expand them is nothing more than a cynical ploy to rev up the fundies before the mid-term elections. No one in Washington is deluded enough to think this has an ice cube's chance in hell of actually passing. It's just a chance for posturing and sound bites.
deja pseu at June 6, 2006 5:51 AM
Interesting letter to the President. Liked most of it, but I think dude was a bit mixed up when he said, "We worship the same...God..."
Ummm, I have a funny feeling "we" don't worship the same deity as does W.
SteveHeath at June 6, 2006 8:31 AM
I would like to ask Bush "If two men/women marry, would you love Laura or the twins any less?"
Eric at June 6, 2006 12:29 PM
Oh, for Christ's sake. You guys are so sanctimonious.
Promise me that if such an amendment DOES pass, or that if the threat of it DOES bring votes from those oh-so-terrifying 'fundies,' that your feelings will be badly hurt. And that you'll shed one poignant little tear, like the littering Indian.
Crid at June 6, 2006 12:52 PM
I would like to ask Bush "If two men/women marry, would you love Laura or the twins any less?"
Eric at June 6, 2006 12:54 PM
It might pass! Let's destroy the American Family while there's still time!
Lena at June 6, 2006 7:04 PM
"the half dozen or so gays/lesbians I know could not care less..."
That's because we're all classic Hegelians at heart, and we know that the current antagonisms between the pro- and anti-gay marriage forces will be exacerbated to the point where they can no longer coexist, eventually precipitating a crisis in which the contrary elements are reabsorbed into a higher and qualitatively different unity, the synthesis.
Any questions?
Lena "Theory Whore" Cuisina at June 6, 2006 9:39 PM
I got some!
Are we to read this comment as arguing that that political pressure, devoid of any moral reflection or logical calculation, is the engine of righteous human progress?
Because, if so, things are looking up for the 'fundanutters'
Crid at June 8, 2006 12:07 AM
Translation: Over time, the types of people who generally support or oppose same-sex marriage will get increasingly diverse. More people on the right will support same-sex marriage (in the spirit of libertarianism or something like that), and more people on the left will oppose it (in the spirit of "cultural resistance" or something like that). Comfortably homosexual people will continue popping up in all walks of life, on all points of the political spectrum, and it will become increasingly obvious that homosexual desire is neither evil nor particularly interesting. In the long run, no one will give a shit whether same-sex couples can marry. (Aren't you there already? I am.) And then we'll be able to marry.
Lena at June 8, 2006 8:09 AM
As always, we must note that you ARE able to marry, just not each other. And -
> homosexual desire is neither evil
> nor particularly interesting.
is begging the question.
Even if people agree with you in the broadest terms, there's sloppy langauge all over this issue, and it looks like the product of sloppy thinking.
The word "discrimination" appears all over the Log Cabin letter, as if it were a bad thing in itself. See also Deja, who thinks that congress should only be expanding rights, as if that would make the world better.
Sheesh.
Crid at June 8, 2006 1:31 PM
"there's sloppy langauge all over this issue"
Sloppy spelling too.
Lena at June 8, 2006 2:21 PM
You forgot a comma, Pilgrim.
Crid at June 8, 2006 3:49 PM
Nope. I was talkin' fast.
Lena at June 8, 2006 5:17 PM
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