US Constitutional Amendment Efforts
To Ban Same Sex Marriage Happening Again
On Wednesday, the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights voted, narrowly -- 5 to 4, in favor of moving the "Marriage Protection Amendment" on to the next committee.
Senator Arlen Spector. a Republican, had said earlier in the week that he did not favor this amendment but would support it moving along through the committees and along to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he chairs. "I do not think it ought to be bottled up in subcommittee or committee," he said, according to 365Gay.com Washington Bureau Chief, Paul Johnson.
Given his stance, it certainly seems worth asking if politicians from both sides of the aisle are happy to move this along so as to register political points with their constituents, while also knowing that this amendment stands a good chance of once again falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to be enacted.
Even so, I don't exactly feel "comfortable" with assurances like this. Each time a leader is empowered to take a discriminatory stance and have it entertained by other leaders, a group gets singled out as unworthy of equal rights and is then set up to be seen as an "other" -- even if the law doesn't pass.
Political actions like these seem only to give those who are prejudiced more reason to remain in their comfort zones at the expense of another group of Americans. How is this fair? Or, more specifically, how is this just in a society that prides itself on its "justice for all"?
It's one thing (a bad thing, mind you) to ignore a group, it's another thing (a worse thing!) to actively discriminate against a group.
What would happen if a senator with presidential hopes (like the Amendment's sponsor, Sen. Brownback) proposed an amendment to limit the rights of persons who are disabled? Or persons of color? Or persons of a particular religious faith?
I wager that his presidential chances would be dead in the water.
But, push your agenda on the backs of the gay community and still be taken seriously as a viable candidate?
To me, that seems downright un-American.
I hope that our democratic process stops this proposed amendment dead in its tracks. And quickly.
But, more than that, I hope that the collective American conscience will tell other politicians who, in the future, propose discriminatory amendments like this -- at the local, state & federal level -- that they are morally wrong to do so and that trying a stunt like this is the fastest way to lose credibility as a leader.
As Senator Chuck Robb said several years ago when he voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, and I paraphrase:
History will judge us all and I want to be on the right side of history.
Posted by kathryn on November 11, 2005 03:37 PM
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