The Marriage Protection Amendment: R.I.P., 6-6-6

The Marriage Protection Amendment: R.I.P., 6-6-6

May 26 2006
Counterbias.com
MEL SEESHOLTZ


The Marriage Protection Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is scheduled for a vote in the Senate on June 6, 2006. That’s 6-6-6, an appropriate date indeed.

Forget the disaster in Iraq. Forget the enormous – and still growing – deficit. Forget that the federal government is spying on private citizens. Forget the Abramoff scandal (that involved prominent figures in the Christian Right). Forget that public schools are failing and sex education is governed by political ideology. Forget that 43 million Americans have no health insurance. Forget the homeless. Forget the poor. Forget working Americans. Forget that every program of the “values voters’” president has failed miserably.

Continue.. http://www.counterbias.com/655.html

a minority group of Americans....people starving..homeless...jobless...national security. They the Repugs can't seem to fight a war over there so they are bringing a war over here on Americans....

I am glad that there are churches starting to unite and fight these radicals....

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS THE PARTY OF HATE!!
(saturate the country with it)
Hell, that's what Republicans do when they want shit to stick.

that's another idiotic thing that will have to be fixed in 2007 (or maybe 2009).

their entire agenda consists of gay marriage, abortion, immigration, and flag burning . . .

(most of which (immigration possibly excepted) Americans disagree with them on, btw) . . .

needed for passage. But this wedge issue is getting stale, it hardly helped the Republicans in 2004 (only 48 votes for it; the goal was to force Kerry and Edwards to vote for gay marriage but Kerry and Edwards had other things to do than vote that day). I think voters will have other pressing issues on their minds this fall than gay marriage, which opinion polls show is becoming less and less of an issue with the public. (In Massachusetts, opposition to gay marriage has pretty much collapsed.)

The so-called "Marriage Protection Amendment" doesn't do a thing to "protect marriage", it just excludes some people from it. A real effort as protecting marriage and helping families might involve real "hot-button" issues like, uh, health care, living wage bills, er, um, things that could help people economically hold their households together. But the cynical stupidity of it is to get people in office to publically vote up or down on the issue, so they can point to that come election time. And damnit, there's a small group of small-minded people who will fall for it. But I'd like to think that pool is shrinking. Maybe if we could just popularize the words "wedge issue" until people recognize stuff like this, and "flag-burning amendments" and whatnot, as the waste-of-time junk they are.

here is where I think they are better off focusing their energy:

1) Putting more teeth in Family Medical Leave Act
2) Adequate health and dental care for all families
3) Stop diluting workers compensation requirements
4) Let OSHA, EPA, and FDA do their jobs in protetcing people and the environment
5) Mandate a livable minimum wage

Surely other DUers have some other suggestions. The bottom line is we have social problems far more severe than the genders of the couples who are marrying.