Okay, Dems, What Went Wrong? And How Can We Fix It?

States Overwhelmingly Support Marriage Amendments

This year marriage has been a key issue across the states. FRC has worked diligently at the state and local level to ensure marriage remains the union of one man and one woman. We are proud to report today that the latest numbers indicate overwhelming support for the protection of traditional marriage.

The gay marriage deception

WASHINGTON
THE NEWS media have grossly misreported the contents of state referendum questions targeting Americans who are apparently seen as more dangerous to national security than John Kerry -- gay people.

Using unthinking shorthand that carries out the hidden agendas of the people who want gays banished to the fringes of society, the press has over and over again referred to these measures as banning gay marriage. In fact that is only accurate regarding three of the 11 initiatives passed last week.

In state after state -- most prominently in Ohio (which Bush barely won) and in Michigan (which he nearly did) -- these referendums went far beyond the question of who gets to be formally married. They also banned legal and other conventions incidental to marriage, which are central to the evolving institutions of civil unions and domestic partnerships.

For political reasons, it was central to the hidden agendas of the groups pushing these restrictions (the target is homosexuality, not relationships between homosexuals) that they not become the focus of the debate.

Therefore marriage was used as the cover for the far more consequential effort to strip contractual rights from gay couples who have formed hundreds of thousands of families in recent years across the United States.

That is why proponents described them repeatedly as efforts to ban gay or same-sex marriage, a formulation the press has mindlessly repeated. It reminds me of the success of groups who spent nearly a decade on behalf of banning a rare pregnancy procedure, the name for which was invented solely for political and shock-value purposes -- partial-birth abortion. Again, the press's lazy penchant for a catch phrase, unexamined for accuracy, led reporters and editors to mindlessly repeat the phrase.

The point about that phony campaign -- already rejected once by federal judges of all stripes, including the Supreme Court, and back in the courts now -- was to use the shock value of the procedure to create a ban written to cover all three trimesters of pregnancy without an exception to preserve a woman's health, in other words to challenge Roe v. Wade and abortion rights themselves.

Just for the record, the three states whose initiatives last week refer only to the granting of marriage licenses are Montana, Oregon (the one place where the vote was very close), and Mississippi. The states that used marriage as a cover to mount an assault on contractual relationships of all kinds were Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Utah.

In pivotal Ohio, for example, the voters may not have realized it but they voted to strip people of the right to contractually arrange distribution of assets, child custody, pensions, and other employment benefits. They most definitely were not "protecting" marriage; they were attacking gay people. That is why the political and business establishment there, including Republicans, opposed the measure.

The evidence is that the voters who approved it also opposed its actual contents. In the official exit poll Tuesday night, 27 percent of the voters said they support full marriage rights, 35 percent supported civil unions, and only 27 percent oppose any legal rights for same-sex couples. In other words, to underline the importance of artifice and deception in our sound-bite culture, the voters approved a measure opposed substantively by 62 percent of the very same voters.

President Bush embodies this incoherence while he manipulates the sentiments cynically. Just before the election he tried to say he supports the rights of states to have civil unions, though he would have opposed them as governor of Texas. He also supports a federal constitutional amendment that would both limit "marriage" to man-woman couples and permit states to ban civil unions.

The incoherence was tactical. Bush knew fair-minded supporters of civil unions were going to vote for him (according to the exit polls, up to half did); but he also knew he needed to keep his base of bigots happy, too -- hence his campaign's alliance with them at the grass roots in places like Ohio.

The irony is that a federal amendment is probably necessary for the pro-discrimination forces to succeed.

Many states have laws to keep groups from putting two issues in the same referendum, in order to avoid exactly the kind of deception that has occurred. In fact, injunctive relief on that ground has already been granted in states that passed such initiatives earlier. In addition, they directly challenge both the contract and the equal protection clauses of the US Constitution.

The federal amendment does not have the votes, even in the new Congress, and my hunch is that Bush doesn't have the stomach to truly fight for discrimination. He was, however, willing to benefit from the deception this year, and a lazy news media played right into the hands of those who would officially sanction discrimination.

Using unthinking shorthand that carries out the hidden agendas of the people who want gays banished to the fringes of society, the press has over and over again referred to these measures as banning gay marriage. In fact that is only accurate regarding three of the 11 initiatives passed last week.

In state after state -- most prominently in Ohio (which Bush barely won) and in Michigan (which he nearly did) -- these referendums went far beyond the question of who gets to be formally married. They also banned legal and other conventions incidental to marriage, which are central to the evolving institutions of civil unions and domestic partnerships.

"Only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this state and its political subdivisions. This state and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage."

I dunno, Thomas, segregation is but one measure.

What I'm saying is that the stats above are not enough to conclude, as you have, that there's more racial discrimination or racism in the Southern States vs. the Northern ones.

So are you suggesting that there's less racial prejudice in the red states as opposed to the blue ones?

The Committee of Committees


There has been some question as to why the battle over the Senate Judiciary Committee chairmanship is so important for social conservatives. It comes down to the simple fact that the chairman of a committee controls the schedule, staff, and philosophy of the committee. The Judiciary Committee is of critical importance because it is there that federal judges, nominees to the Supreme Court, and nominees for the position of attorney general are vetted and given or denied a vote before the full Senate. The chairman, in setting the schedule and agenda for the committee, can also stop legislation from moving to the full Senate.

The prospect of Chairman Specter in the Judiciary Committee is a real and present threat to pro-life judges and to pivotal legislation like the marriage amendment. A constitutional amendment on marriage is best served by going through the Senate Judiciary Committee, and a Chairman Specter could wield enough power to obstruct its passage or significantly help its passage. We know Arlen Specter is hostile to pro-life judges, and he has said that he would have voted against the marriage amendment earlier this year if given the opportunity. The committee is simply too important for the issues that won elections last week to put in Specter's control. Let the committee know you want a different chairman.


Additional Resources
Let the Battle Begin
http://www.frc.org/index.cfm?i=AL04K01&f=WU04K09&t=e

Promoting Covenant Marriage


This week, Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas is flying around his state inviting 1,000 couples to enter into covenant marriage during a mass ceremony on Valentine's Day. The Governor and his wife will convert their 30-year marriage to a covenant marriage at the event. Huckabee said he doesn't mind using state money to promote this event, because "we're spending an enormous amount of money dealing with the consequences of marriages that don't work out."

We applaud Gov. Huckabee's efforts to promote covenant marriage, because no-fault divorce has weakened the institution of marriage and devastated millions of families. No-fault divorce laws allow a spouse to file for or obtain a divorce for any reason without obtaining the consent of the other spouse, rendering powerless the spouse who wants to preserve the marriage. When I was a Louisiana state representative, I authored the first covenant marriage law, which gives couples a choice between two types of marriage licenses: the standard marriage license and the covenant marriage license. The standard marriage license allows no-fault divorce for any reason, while covenant marriage requires premarital counseling and longer waiting periods or proof of fault before divorce. We need more covenant marriage laws to help protect marriage.

Take Action - Let the Battle Begin!

Senator Arlen Specter, the man set to become the head of the Judiciary Committee, has warned Pres. Bush against nominating pro-life judges. His comments are especially troubling since they come on the heels of an election that overwhelmingly affirmed pro-life candidates, and Pres. Bush has also repeatedly affirmed his commitment to a culture of life.

The Senate must not allow Sen. Specter to determine the makeup of our courts. He should not become the next Judiciary Committee chairman.

Take Action! Follow this link to send an email and get a list of important phone numbers to call.

The Ohio measure is spearheaded by Citizens for Community Values, a pro-family group, and is supported by a host of similar organizations. Ohio's measure is more far-reaching than others because it would also bar public institutions such as universities from providing benefits to domestic partners. (see page two)

To be honest, I'm not quite sure what to think, and I'm not suggesting anything at this point. But when I see something that conflicts with my preconceptions, I conclude that my preconceptions are probably wrong. In this case, I saw credible data that Northerners avoid living on the same block as someone of a different race to a much higher degree than Southerners do, and I conclude that my preconceptions of Southerners as racist conservatives and Northerners as openminded liberals was probably wrong.

Play by the necessary rules and refer to them always as 'conservative right' 'or radical conservatives'