Dividing A Nation

But like so much else in contemporary politics, the Senate vote isn’t designed to produce a law; it’s intended to pick a fight. The White House and Senate GOP leadership are betting that a noisy confrontation over gay marriage will encourage turnout this November from conservative voters -- many of whom, polls show, are discouraged over President Bush’s second term.

That strategy may help Republicans in some red states this year. But it could also deepen the image of intolerance hurting the GOP in many white-collar suburbs outside the South. Either way, these near-term, tactical calculations don’t represent the most important political consequence: Both parties may pay a long-term price if manufactured cultural clashes such as the gay marriage amendment continue to control the spotlight. (source)

I told a friend at work last week that I’m tired of this fight. They have managed to wear me down to the point that the right to marry my partner is no longer worth the fight for me - not when there are so many more important issues facing this nation.

This is not easy for me to say. I call being able to be married a “right”, because there are over 1500 federal rights associated with it. That makes it more than just symbolic. So, people like me have a lot to lose when I give up on this fight.

But to people like President George W. Bush, it actually means less to him. It meant so much to him, that he used it in the last presidential election to get his conservative base to the polls to vote to reelect his sorry ass back into the presidency. It meant so much to him that after he was re-elected, he completely dropped the issue altogether - until now.

Tomorrow, he will give a speech on how we must protect marriage from the gays - the same sorry, warmed over argument, all over again. I say we completely ignore the fool. Let him and his party show their intolerance and hatred for what it is. And let us concentrate on the larger issues that are real to most people, and to us, since our president and Senator Frist are apparently unable to do that.

Will their tactic work again? Will it manage to drive the conservative base back to the polls even after they were betrayed last time? Well, nothing would surprise me. In this country, most people do not vote. And of those who do vote, 90% of them are not well read on the issues. They pull the lever without ever really knowing what they are voting for. They vote largely on what people have told them are “bad”. They do not vote on facts, they vote on emotions, and they certainly don’t stop to think about the unfortunate consequences about passing a state constitutional amendment banning all relationships in law, outside of “marriage”. They never stop to think that it may just effect them, and that would be “bad”, because they aren’t in the minority group du jour that is being bashed. Even some from conservative groups can see this for what it is.

GEORGE Bush is facing escalating crises in Iraq, an out-of-control budget deficit and a slumping approval rating down to about 30 per cent.

So this week the President is focusing the nation’s attention on the problem of greatest concern to his social conservative supporters -- many of whom are pathologically obsessed with the threat posed to American values by homosexuals. [...]

The debate will drag on for most of the week before it’s defeated in the Senate, with most senators wishing that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, with his 2008 presidential ambitions in mind, had not insisted on this debate.

Will this cynical and hopeless political exercise give Bush a boost with his conservative base? Joe Glover, president of the Family Policy Network, is an anti-gay marriage lobbyist who remains sceptical.

“I’m going to go and hear what he says, but we already know it’s a ruse,” Glover said. “We’re not buying it.” (source)

So it is in our country. The larger issue is not gay marriage. It is the idea that a group of people - any group - can be singled out and demonized for what is wrong with this country, thereby distracting people from the real cause of the problem.

The real cause of these problems stems from a President, and a Congress who would rather cause a distraction than admit that they are out of answers for our country.

They have no idea what to do about gas prices in this country. They have no idea what heating costs are going to be for Americans next winter or how to have any control over that. They have no idea what we will do if another natural disaster strikes. They have no idea what to do about Iraq. So they appeal back to their base with “flag burning” and “gay marriage”. It’s like standing in your house while it’s on fire. As the flames approach you, you are standing in your TV room trying to figure out why your video recorder isn’t working the way it should.

Meanwhile, our men and women in Iraq are doing their best with what they have. What they have to answer to is a government who puts such issues as gay marriage above that of them and their brothers in combat.

Disgraceful.

This is why I’ve decided to move on. I rarely look at the gay marriage debate anymore because I now see it for what it is - a tool to help religious fanatics that want control of this country. That will only work if people like me fight them. Without me, they will have nothing to fight. And at the end of the day, when the smoke clears, what we will see is a group of self-righteous bigots who care nothing for our country, or what is going on in the real world.

Hopefully, President George W. Bush, Senator Bill Frist, et. al., will be standing right there with the pathetic lot of them.