Morning thoughts

It's a bit overwhelming at times. There's so much happening in the news. I'm ticked off at those driving a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage because I don't want to be regarded as a second-class citizen. That's not too much to ask is it? The proponents of this amendment know the original wording has little chance of going anywhere, so yesterday (see previous post), they put out a version that is "unambiguous".

You know, they can window dress this legislative piece of shit anyway they want to. In the end, it is always going to be the same thing; to deny a specific group of citizens equal rights to other citizens. We need to keep this crap out of OUR Constitution. What makes me sad is that so many people in power have so little regard for the document.

It's not that the issue of gay marriage is all the Bush Administration has to worry about. I've said ever since we went to war with Iraq that we had lost the focus of what we should be going after. We went into Iraq in the quest to find Osama bin Laden, and we stayed. We stayed long after we knew that he had left the country. That told me right there that this was never about Osama bin Laden; it was always about an old score that GW Bush wanted to finish because of the humiliation his father suffered when we went into Iraq in the first place.

And what do we have to show for it? Osama bin Laden is gone and no one really knows where. Sadam Hussein is gone, but there are no weapons of mass destruction. This is what we have to show for our arrogance: 679 coalition deaths, 579 Americans, 59 Britons, five Bulgarians, one Dane, one Estonian, 17 Italians, two Poles, 10 Spaniards, two Thai and three Ukrainian, in the war as of March 22, 2004.

President George Walker Bush is a president without integrity or honor. The brave men and women who died in this war did so with honor, but gave their lives up based on a lie.

And then there's the scathing review of events from Richard Clarke, President Bush’s former top terrorism advisor, in his book Against All Enemies.

"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this," Clarke said in a television interview Sunday night.

Yet, with all of this going on, our President still has time to endorse second-class citizenry against gay and lesbian Americans. What else does he have left? Only a legacy built on lies and deception.

Young People Clearly Spilt On Gay Marriage Issue
"It's ironic now because my family does not, in any way, condone gays or gay marriage,'' the 22-year-old senior says. "Yet it was my parents and their church that taught me to love people different than me.''

Bigotry toward gays dulls Atlanta's shine

The forces that oppose a more open, inclusive and tolerant society now focus on a new target -- gay and lesbian Americans. They would have us believe that same-sex relationships somehow threaten the very institution of heterosexual marriage, and that constitutional amendments both at the state and federal level are required to save civilization as we know it.

This thinking is wrapped in religious rhetoric, just as efforts to maintain slavery in the 19th century, efforts to justify segregation and Jim Crow laws in the middle of the 20th century, and efforts even today to marginalize women are supported with purposefully selected biblical references. - Ben F. Johnson IIIm managing partner of Alston and Bird law firm in Atlanta

Abercrombie T-shirt 'Offensive', says Governor

Youth-oriented apparel retailer Abercrombie & Fitch has again courted controversy with a T-shirt bearing a tongue-in-cheek reference to incest.

The men’s T-shirts, which carry the slogan ‘It’s all relative in West Virginia’ superimposed over a map of the American state, were “offensive” and “inaccurate” according to Governor Bob Wise.

In a letter to Abercrombie CEO Michael Jeffries, Wise asked that the Ohio-based retailer drop the T-shirt from its range.

"I write to you today to demand that you immediately remove this item from your stores and your print and online catalogues," he wrote.