So all the hoopla today comes down to a dictionary definition. Never mind the chaos in Iraq, foreign ownership of the national debt, American jobs flooding out of the country, the global warming crisis, and the crumbling status of our constitutional rights. Never mind those things. Shhhh! The Republicans are busy legislating Merriam-Webster!
Let's spend a brief moment with the Republicans who support the Marriage Protection Amendment and who are divorced. The most destructive thing that can happen to a marriage is the ending of a marriage, no? Rush Limbaugh has been divorced, what? Like 20 times? Here's some senators who have been divorced yet support the sanctity of marriage atrocity (via AmericaBLOG):
Allen, George (R-VA) - Divorced
Bond, Christopher S. (R-MO) - Divorced
Hutchison, Kay Bailey (R-TX) - Divorced
McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) - Divorced
Self-righteous bastards. All of them, divorced or not. Senator Dole, who supports the amendment, is infertile. So when Bob Dole brings the pain with the help of Viagra, they're clearly not doing it in order to procreate are they? I mean, religion and Senator Santorum teaches us that sex and marriage are for the purpose of procreation, no?
Back to definitions.
-At one time, doctors thought a sperm cell contained a homunculus -- a fully formed yet miniature human being.
-Here's a crazy one straight from God's mouth. According to Leviticus 19:20, if you have sex with a slave woman while she's engaged to be married to a slave man, she shouldn't be put to death. Just scourged. Not you. Her. Scourged. Not a word about the immorality of slavery, by the way.
-The Bible also says that wives who lose their virginity prior to marriage should be put to death. Stoned, in fact. Check Deuteronomy 22:13-21.
-At one time, people suffering from epilepsy were defined as being possessed by demons.
-The U.S. Constitution, the document that defines our nation, defines black people as 3/5 of a person.
I think you get it. Why is it so hard to understand that we grow and evolve as a species? As we do, words and definitions change as our understanding of nature matures. If it didn't, we'd be forced to believe that the president's jaw twitch is caused by leprechauns and fairies trying to take control of his mouth. And if there's room in America for an acceptable and legal definition of divorce, surely there's room for a more inclusive definition of marriage.
What's really strange is that many of the politicians and pundits who support the amendment also support civil unions in some shape or form. In other words, the union of a man and another man is okay, but calling it a "marriage" is bad.
But what happens if a same-sex couple is joined in a legally sanctioned civil union? Can they tell people they're married? Sure they can. So why push this pathetic amendment if same-sex couples can still freely define their relationship as being married? The whole notion of a marriage definition amendment is semantically, constitutionally, and morally weak. Historians, sociologists, and civil libertarians of the future are going to have a blast laughing at this one. They'll shake their heads with the same disdain we feel when considering that women couldn't vote in America until 1920.
For now, though, it serves as a nice wubby for little Senator Santorum and his ilk who are simply incapable of wrapping their lizard brains around the idea that a man can love another man with the same love heterosexual couples possess.
But none of that matters because this political dog and pony show has little to do with legislating the archaic morality of the radical right. I'm not breaking news by saying that the radical right is being used and manipulated for votes. This amendment will never pass and everyone knows it, including Senator Allen's Fisher-Price homunculi.
Today is one of those awful days in American history when political theater has made a go at trampling civil rights -- a day when the rights of taxpaying American citizens are thrown into the gaping maw of zealots whose hypocritical moral compasses are granted temporary lip service and nothing else.
And we're all paying for it. I want a tax refund for my cut of the president's salary, his staff's salary, and the salaries of every congressman and senator who wasted an entire day on this contemptible maneuver. Who's with me?
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CORRECTION: The title of the amendment has been corrected.
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