Conservatives are losing on gay rights

Just more evidence that bigotry in this country against gay and lesbian citizens isn’t working any longer for self-righteous bigots who want to win votes from bigotry.

After the Senate’s rejection of the Marriage Protection Amendment Wednesday, supporters tried to portray it as nothing more than a temporary setback. “We are making progress,” announced Kansas Republican Sam Brownback, noting that since the last vote two years ago, 14 states have approved bans on same-sex marriage.

If this is progress, it’s on the order of a shipwreck survivor swimming toward the nearest island, 500 miles away: going in the right direction, but with no chance of getting there. All the leading indicators suggest that the smartest thing the amendment’s supporters could do is pack it in. [...]

Start with public attitudes, which are growing more and more favorable to gays and gay rights. The hard right thinks the citizenry absolutely detests “activist judges,” but when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stunning decision overturning state laws against sodomy in 2003, the public barely blinked.

In fact, 74 percent favored striking down such statutes. If Brownback and his allies think the public is with them on gay issues, where is the federal anti-sodomy amendment?

And finally, to me, the most telling of all...

Growing tolerance presents a huge obstacle to another cause of social conservatives. Earlier this year, they were trumpeting a multistate push to ban adoption by same-sex couples--to prevent homosexuals from “experimenting on children through gay adoption,” in the words of Russell Johnson, head of the Ohio Restoration Project.

It seemed a shrewd and logical follow-up to the state-by-state offensive against gay marriage. Since Florida was alone in explicitly outlawing adoptions by same-sex couples, the opponents of gay adoption thought they had a target-rich environment--not to mention a winning issue with voters.

But they had a little problem launching the campaign. Kent Markus, director of the National Center for Adoption Law and Policy at Capital University Law School in Ohio, says that in state after state, “it peeked above the surface and got knocked right back down. Nothing has gained any momentum anywhere in the United States.” (source)

I think what is the saddest and most pathetic concept in all of this is the need of the conservatives’ failure to understand us as people. They are more interested in getting the vote at all cost. And if that means they have to alienate a segment of the population from the rest and divide this nation on issues of equality, they seem to be very willing to do that.

The problem is, when everything is said and done, we have all lost. And eventually, these damaging laws that only serve to hurt people emotionally, psychologically, and patriotically (it’s hard to feel good about a country who thinks you are scum and at the center for the problem with our children and marriage today).

They point to the “gay agenda”. Our agenda is a simple one - equality. It always has been. Their agenda will not stop with marriage. They want it all, right down to the denial of adoption rights. At the heart of this debate are people, just like you and I. I recently read of a gay male couple who was able to be foster parents for a child who was born HIV positive. There were able to care for the child as foster parents because the child was “unplaceable” because of his HIV status. So, this gay couple were good enough to be foster parents to the child. They kept the child for nine years. Then the unbelievable happened. The child turned HIV negative. His body was able after years of medication and care, to rid itself of any detectable traces of the virus. Suddenly, the state wanted to take possession of the child again because he was now “placeable” in a “normal” home.

The only problem was that he had bonded with these two men and thought of them as his parents. They tried to adopt him to protect their family, and are still fighting. This happened in a state that had no laws against gay couples from adopting. However, because of this case, a bill was introduced in that state to prevent gay adoptions.

This is what the article referenced above addresses. Make no mistake about it - there is an agenda. Ours is one of equality and fairness. Their agenda is quite a bit less than that, and they know it. The question is, will straight Americans buy into it.

I guess we will see what happens in November.