President Bush will promote a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage on Monday, the eve of a scheduled Senate vote on the cause that is dear to his conservative backers.Read story here.
The amendment would prohibit states from recognizing same-sex marriages. To become law, the proposal would need two-thirds support in the Senate and House, and then be ratified by at least 38 state legislatures.
Personally, I don't care one way or the other whether homosexuals can get legally married or not. What I do find troubling, however, is the main argument being employed against gay marriage. Namely, marriage is supposed to be between a man and a woman. Marriage as a civil institution remains unmentioned in the U.S. constitution and so, in essence, this claim remains a moral, not a legal one.
I become very uncomfortable whenever someone claims some kind of special moral insight into another’s life, and further, attempts to introduce this moral prerogative into the law of the land. A democracy, in order to be sustainable, must deal strictly with the will of the people and can never defer to any religious scripture or subjective morality.
If we allow the Christian right to push scripture-inspired legislation through, are we any better than Iran, Saudi Arabia or any of the other theocratic dictatorships, which we so instinctively berate as insults to humanity’s natural right to freedom?
This amendment has a zero chance of passing, and what's more, the politicians all know this. The gay marriage ban proposal is nothing more than an attempt to energize the GOP’s base for the coming midterm elections in November. Americans should be outraged at this frivolous pandering, which is taking precious time and money away from much more important issues such as the war in Iraq and the urgent need to develop alternate fuels.
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