You guys were doing so well...

[khaosworks]

YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP!! DAMN YOU!!! GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!!!! By Mr. Terence Chua, Mad As Hell.

Gay marriage ban amendment passes
Georgia voters to decide issue in November
By JIM THARPE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/01/04

Conservatives celebrated and subdued gay rights supporters vowed to continue fighting Wednesday night after the Georgia Legislature gave final approval to a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

The proposal, one of the most divisive issues to confront Georgia lawmakers in years, now moves to the state's voters, who must approve it in a Nov. 2 referendum before it can become part of the state constitution.
 
After two hours of intense debate, the Democratic-controlled state House of Representatives narrowly endorsed the referendum, which passed the Republican-run Senate early in the legislative session.
 
"I feel very gratified that the House gave the people the right to have a voice," said Sadie Fields, executive director of the Christian Coalition of Georgia, a key supporter of the proposed ban. "They did the right thing. It's the fair thing to do."
 
But gay rights advocates said the passage of Senate Resolution 595 just clears the way to make "discrimination" part of the Georgia Constitution. Several opponents of the proposed ban hugged one another and wiped away tears outside the House chamber as they vowed to continue their battle at the ballot box.
 
"I think we fought the good fight," said state Rep. Karla Drenner (D-Avondale Estates), the state's only openly gay lawmaker. "The conservatives won, but gay people are not going away."

So much for the most liberal state in the South. So it's down to you Georgia voters in November.

So get moving, guys. Hand out flyers. Write to your newspapers. Get on the TV. Get your friends to write, and on the TV, even if they are gay or straight or black or white or any shade in between. Point out the irony of the state that hosted the Olympics being intolerant enough to want to add an amendment into a state constitution that takes rights instead of protecting them.

"We cannot let judges in Boston, or officials in San Francisco, define marriage for the people of Georgia," declared Rep. Bill Hembree (R-Douglasville). Hembree, a leading House spokesman for the amendment, said the ban will build a "wall of defense around the institution of marriage" and is needed to "protect the family structure that has existed for 6,000 years."
 
That argument apparently helped win over Black Caucus members Randal Mangham (D-Decatur), Sharon Beasley-Teague (D-Red Oak), Carl Von Epps (D-LaGrange) and LaNett Stanley-Turner (D-Atlanta). Those legislators did not vote Feb. 26 but supported the ban in Wednesday's vote.
 
"We shouldn't have to explain to 6-, 7- and 8-year-olds why men are kissing each other," said Mangham, whose vote was critical in Wednesday's passage. "I don't like having to explain that to my kids. I will continue to support their [homosexuals'] right to do what they do, but they will not have the sanctity of marriage."

No, Mr Mangham. What you don't want to explain is the next question your kids will have, which is, "Why are you scrunching up your face when you say that like you were chewing on a turd, Daddy?" because the answer would be, "Because I'm a bigot." Because, in the words of Dave Chapelle, "My blackness will not allow me to answer that question."

How do you explain why men are kissing each other? Because they love each other. What's so hard about that? Same reason why you're kissing the right wing's sphincter, isn't it?

So remind your friends and fellow voters. Remind them that an activist judiciary is what made the civil rights movement possible to begin with. Remind them that even if the legislators are paternalistic and patronizing enough to assume that the people want a constitutional amendment to reinforce an already existing law, just to lock it in in case the people change their minds, the people of Georgia don't need this kind of condescension. Remind them that equal means equal. And on top of all this, remind them that this is the kind of paranoia and bigotry that is endemic in the neoconservative right, exemplified in Bush, that has hijacked the Republican party and turned it from pragmatic conservatism to ideological demagoguery.

And in November, take back your country.

Comments

Re: the will of the people

[jost.livejournal.com]

No, but you are both confusing "right" with "the law". If we were to say that only things that are "right" can be "the law" then we would have to first find somebody to be arbiter of "right". I would vote to extend civil-issued marriage license to couples of the same gender, but if that didn't win then it wouldn't make me abandon the concept that everyone who can vote was allowed the chance to voice their opinion by voting and the majority of those that did vote chose opposite of me. If we start wanting to adopt our own singular or limited (in terms of population percentage) ideals as the governing laws in direct opposition to the majority-approved law then that cannot result in harmony or legitimate governance.

Re: the will of the people

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

In Georgia, the law already says same-sex marriage is illegale. Why then the need to enshrine in in the state constitution? Constitutions are traditionally enabling documents - they are there to establish principles of government and set up structures. They are generally not there to prohibit or remove rights, the semantic structure of the First Amendment consistiting of "Congress shall make no law" notwithstanding. There is simply no good reason for enshrining this amendment into the state constitution except for the express purpose of limiting the role of the judiciary. It is an end run around the possibility of change - which is of course the essence of conservatism. Nothing must change. Everything must stay comfortable.

What is right and what is the law is a tension that has existed for as long as the law has existed - one may have nothing to do with the other, but then again, if you wanted to stick to the law and the will of the people, then decisions like Brown v. Board of Education would never have been made, and especially not a decision like Miranda v. Arizona. Blind adherence to the law, right or wrong, is a recipe for stagnation, and a abdication of responsibility to the mob mentality.

The other tension that exists is what the role of a politician is - is he supposed to be the blind mouthpiece of the electorate, or a leader that is going to make his own decisions as to what is right? Is he a statesman or a pawn. The answer to this question is a lot harder. I suppose I might say that a real representative will be able to make changes if he sees a good reason for it.

There is no good reason, as far as I can tell, for defining marriage as between a man and a woman. None.

To address another issue: your "name one culture" question to browngirl was unfair and simplistic. There is no such culture as defined by you not because there hasn't been a culture that hasn't recognized same sex marriages, but because the distinction between civil and religious marriage did not exist in the legal system until the 19th to 20th Century. Before that, if you were married by a priest, that was the same as if you signed it in City Hall. In fact, in Australia, the law still is if you cohabit for seven years, even with no religious ceremony and no civil signing, you are assumed to have been married. "Common-law marriages" are still a concept that exists, and enjoy full legal protection in some jurisdictions.

So if you really want a culture that has recognized same sex gender licenses, then you have to find a culture that has issued any kind of marriage licenses prior to about 150 or years or so ago - and that just doesn't exist.

("Full legal rights" is equally a red herring because until the beginning of the last century, women didn't even have political voting rights in America, let alone equal legal protection and benefits from welfare due to their married status, which didn't exist until well into the last century - and where there was equal legal protection, in practice there really wasn't.)

But if you come down to not distinguishing between religious and civil marriage - a point of view which has existed for thousands of years - then you can point to the Christian church which did recognize a form of same sex union as early as the 8th Century and as late as the 18th Century. You can google it.

Re: the will of the people

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

If we allowed the voting majority to determine our laws, we would be living in a very different America. Most of the major changes in our country have not had majority support at the outset. Civil upheaval is never easy, nor is it often championed by the majority. After all, we are a people of inertia.

Social causes are initially advanced by a single person. I will never lose sight of that. I will also never lose sight of the fact that if we went by simple majorities, we would have a different president today.