Today's Religious Right is completely out of touch with the thinking of our esteemed "Founding Fathers" and with the nature of our Constitution, which "was written and ratified by a coalition of Enlightenment rationalists and evangelical Christians equally fearful of entanglements between religion and government... the men of faith who helped frame the Constitution were confident enough of the strength of their religion that they did not feel obliged to enlist the aid of government to promote their personal beliefs." [Apparently today's evangelical Christians are less confident in the strength of their religion to hold its own without the benefit of unconstitutional government support!]

My comments: The RR always likes to believe that the Founding Fathers were a group of pious traditional Christians, which is so much bull-dookey: they included Deists, Unitarians, and other "unorthodox" types. Most importantly they were not interested in creating a theocracy: far from it! They were products of the Enlightenment, and they were champions of the separation of Church and State.

8:37:22 PM  |  This is Post #155  |  Permanent URL:   |  

Mike Keefe, The Denver Post

"President Bush's endorsement of this mean-spirited amendment shows that he is neither compassionate nor concerned with the rights of all Americans," said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. "Gays and lesbians are our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends. They serve as firefighters, police, doctors and professional athletes. They laugh at the same jokes and worry about car payments and credit card debt. Amending the constitution to deny them the same rights we all take for granted just isn't very American."

Learn More about the Proposed Amendment

Some good news from the ACLU: "In response to a public outcry, the Justice Department has decided to quash a series of grand jury subpoenas issued to anti-war protestors in Des Moines, Iowa. However, the ACLU still has serious concerns about why the subpoenas were issued in the first place and the broad scope of the Justice Department's inquiry."

Read More about this Investigation

It's definitely time to renew my ACLU membership, because Bush and his facist buddies sure have been keeping it busy trying to safeguard our civil rights!!

7:47:42 PM  |  This is Post #154  |  Permanent URL:   |  

My comments: There's another opinion piece in this Pasadena paper that I think also merits reading, and I think it forces one to consider that it's not necessarily in our best interests (as supporters of the freedom to marry) to "go for broke" at all costs. If civil unions are the best we can do at this time, I think there worth going for, because they're a hell of a lot better than nothing! I think we have to be practical. I think some people are afraid that if we settle for civil unions, same-sex couples will never get true marriages, but I think it's more likely to be that once people get more used to the idea, once hundreds of thousands of couples have civil unions, once a new generation of live-and-let-live minded people comes into more political power, I think it will be easy to say: why shouldn't they have marriage like everyone else?!, and make that change then. If we can get marriages, then all the better, but I don't think we should reject civil unions out of hand.

This second opinion piece is written by a moderate sort of person calling for all of the rhetoric to simmer down and people to calm down and think about this issue for a bit, and I can see her point. While it seems only common sense to us "enlightened" types that same-sex couples should have the same rights as opposite-sex ones, it's a lot for many "old-fashioned" types to swallow! And of course the religious right wants to push the issue because they're losing ground every decade and are pretty much right in thinking that it's now or never to enshrine their anti-gay ideology in federal and/or state law. Anyway, it's a funny piece, that uses humor to cushion the issue a bit, and I think it's pretty clever, albeit ultimately too moderate for my taste! The writer is Kathleen Parker, an Orlando Sentinel columnist:

My comments: Of course it's all sort of caricature of the situation that fails to recognize the practical seriousness of the situation for couples who simply want to enter into the same civil relationship their peers are allowed, in order to have such necessities as health care coverage and hospital visitation, child custody, and inheritance rights. But I still think she makes some points worth taking into consideration. I think especially it highlights the need for education, for making sure that Joe and Jane American have easy access to explanations as to why this is important, why it's much more than a Hollywood spectacle like Britney's absurd "marriage", how it affects the lives of their neighbors, fellow parents, co-workers, etc., how, contrary to r.r. rhetoric, it isn't any kind of "threat" to their marriages and isn't going to make "everyone turn gay"!

7:24:40 PM  |  This is Post #153  |  Permanent URL:   |