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

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

How many cultures have even differentiated religious marriage and legal marriage? That's a nice deck-stacking, to specify thus.

Be that as it may. Canada does, and its society hasn't crumbled yet.

[jost.livejournal.com]

You'll note that I never once implied that society will crumble if such a statute is passed into law. I would further note that an attempt to "stack the deck" would be to limit you to answers that only appeal to me yet I was attempting to clarify my inquisition as to the initial point, not to potentially non-germane cultures that might have at one time acknowledged religious constructs between same-gender couples. Granted, I know of no such cultures but then I would not have posed a query had I known for certain that none had existed.