Florida4Marriage sounds like the worst boy band of all time, but it turns out it's not. It's a Republican front group, run by a personal injury lawyer, to lure gay-hating boobs into the voting booths next November.
Florida4Marriage, and its chairman, John Stemberger (a recognized leader in rental car accident law) are the people behind Florida's new Marriage Protection Amendment, and yesterday they finally got the signatures they need to put it on the 2008 ballot.
So come on down! And while you're in there, marking the magic X that proves you're not a homo -- and that your life wasn't a squalid waste of everyone's time, because at least you got yerself hitched -- why not also vote for a Republican president?
Something for you. Something for the GOP. It's a get-out-the-vote win/win.
Anti-gay amendments are the Happy Meal toy of Republican politics.
This new one reads:
"Inasmuch as marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized."
(Yes, the dependent clause could be read to invalidate a few centuries of common law marriages between straight people, but don't worry. That's just because it was written by a lawyer whose field of expertise is suing the Orlando Hertz if you accidentally slam your dick in the door. Besides, it's not meant to be a practical. It's just a con.)
Now I know what you're thinking: Why doesn't a nice place like Florida already have a law making sure that lesbians know they're not as good as women who get fucked with penises, and that they never forget it? Well, it does. It's already illegal for gay people to get married in Florida.
And there's also the Federal Defense of Marriage Act. It applies to Florida too, just like all the other Federal statutes, not including the ones about counting all the votes.
What Florida doesn't have is a constitutional amendment. And until they get one, there's nothing standing between those damn gays and the sweetest fruit of all -- a lifelong monogamous bond with one other person. Forever. And ever. Always the same. Until you're dead.
When they should be in a men's room in Titusville, letting state Rep. Robert "Bob" Allen (R-Merritt) suck them off.
The last thing I want to be is partisan, so it's probably a little unfair to suggest that this whole thing is just a political loss leader for the Republican presidential candidate to get the hateful simpleton vote. I only think that because I'm an old cynic, and John Stemberger is the former political director of the state party, and the party provided the majority of the funding ($300,000) for Florida4Marriage.
In the spirit of fairness, here's Jesse Phillips of Metro Life Church:
"My friend John Stemberger's efforts to save marriage is closing in on an important milestone. They are only 13,000 ballots away from the required 611,000+ needed to put a marriage ammendment (sic) on the ballot for the 2008 elections.
The amendment would change Florida's constitution to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman, so that marriage cannot be defined in ways that the Bible forbids, and so that marriages and families can be protected by state law.
If you are a Florida resident and have not signed a ballot, please go to www.Florida4Marriage.org and find out what you can do to help these last minute efforts to get the ballot past." (sic)
The Bible forbids? Why didn't you just say that in first place?
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Why does Florida need the amendment now? Because John Stemberger knows gays are infernally clever. He's met Mitch McConnell. His amendment is pre-emptive; it isn't about taking away their rights, it's about taking away their rights to take away your rights, by potentially challenging those other laws in the future.
As Stemberger explains:
"They should not be granted special rights to fundamentally redefine this basic human institution and then force that definition upon the rest of society through unelected, activist judges."
At, you know, some point, in the future, like.
It's sort of like Iran's nukes. Just because there isn't a threat doesn't mean there's no reason to panic.