A month ago in my column, “Protecting the Free States,” I talked about Bush’s State of the Union Address, in which he warned against permitting same-sex marriages. Recently, he has stated that he supports an amendment of the US Constitution that would define, for the entire nation, marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman.
In the past three weeks Republican sponsored legislation has come before the Iowa General Assembly that would begin the process of amending Iowa’s Constitution to further define marriage as Bush is proposing, as well as an accompanying resolution that would call on Congress to begin the process of amending the US Constitution. Since that column was published, marriage licenses have been issued in cities across the nation—San Francisco, CA, Bernalillo, NM, and New Paltz, NY.
In “Protecting the Free States” I mentioned inter-racial marriage and the societal angst that revolved around it. Speaking with interracial couples who were around back when the US Supreme Court ruled that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional, they described a nation almost as clearly divided as ours is now and, interestingly enough, along the same sort of fundamentalist religious lines.
I said it before, but it is worth repeating, we live in a nation that carries with it a freedom of religion—that has often been interpreted by Congress, the Presidency, the Supreme Court and the people as also being a freedom from religion. Frankly, I don’t care what anyone’s G-d or faith-tradition has to say about same-sex relationships. In America, it shouldn’t matter.
The same-sex marriage argument is controversial and can carry media attention for months if played properly and that is exactly what Bush hopes to do. Bush wants to further distract the population from the fact that his tax cuts for the rich had the effect of canceling the national surplus, sending the nation spiraling into it’s largest-ever deficit while also managing to force all 50 states into deficit spending. Just before Bush’s war 15 million people around the world were protesting him, mostly citing a lack of evidence that Iraq had any weapons of mass destruction or the capacity to manufacture them—turns out that they were right and that’s one very good reason that Bush needs to raise the waves on a domestic policy issue that will divide our nation.
The love of two people, the love they give their children and the love they receive from their families and their friends should not be an election year issue. To do so serves to trivialize these families and in the same breath also trivializes the deaths of innocent Iraqis and Americans who died and continue to die because Bush made the terrible decision to go to war. He must be held accountable—good thing we didn’t sign on to the International Criminal Court.
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by Addy Free, Columnist
The Cornellian vol. 124, issue 12
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