President Bush’s push for the constitutional amendment seems to have given all kind of people permission to discriminate against gays and lesbian. There’s the whole fiasco in Tennessee with Rhea County wanting to outlaw gays people, this regardless of what the recent Supreme Court says. Despite the county backpedalling (yeah, like we’re gonna believe you didn’t know what you were getting into, you twits), the state itself is trying to codify prejudice. At least some legislators are resisting the effort. And now President Bush’s Special Counsel has decided government employees who happen to be gay or lesbian don’t have protection in the workplace. Cripes. Whatever happened to Bush’s so-called diversity? Guess it’s only for God-fearing straights, huh?
With all this in mind, let me share with you something I mentioned last month: the letter I wrote to President Bush the week he called for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Not unlike this blog entry, it’s very much a “straw that broke the camel’s back” missive. And I haven’t change my mind one bit.
Dear Mr. President,
As a registered Republican who has long felt ignored by her own party, I have patiently accepted much of what I find troubling in our country. I supported the war in Iraq, despite its uncertainty and costs. I’ve accepted the huge deficit, believing that since we’ve paid it off once, we could do so again. As a former technologist, I’ve mourned the evaporation of the very jobs that define middle class prosperity – to the point where I’ve told my own children to forget collegiate technology majors because the entry-level jobs that use to follow graduation won’t exist in America when they graduate.
Finally, as a middle-class mother with a disabled teenage son, I’ve patiently accepted our family’s struggle to care for him, even
though increases in our health insurance premiums, co-pays, prescriptions, and ongoing medical bills take more and more of our disposal income each year. I’ve even patiently accepted your faith-based programs even though those very services have, when they’ve come into my home through state contracts, failed to respect our own faith and have openly proselytized to our son.But your decision today to support a ban on gay marriage is something I will not patiently accept. I find it abhorrent that any leader would support a constitutional amendment that would abridge the rights of a fellow American citizen. The constitution was fundamentally designed to preserve and protect the rights of Americans, and to correct injustice by allowing the extension of rights to those denied. It should never be used as a vehicle for codifying discrimination, and I can’t help but wonder: If the constitution can be used to deny gay and lesbian citizens access to the civil rights that I already have, what’s to prevent further erosions of equal access from occurring in the future?
I am sorry to tell you that your decision has lost you my vote in the next presidential election and while that might be disappointing, I’m not stopping there. As long as any amendment abridging marriage rights is active, I will not support any Connecticut legislator who would vote in its favor or support its ratification, nor will the Republican party see so much as a dime of contributions from me for any local, state, or national campaign. I cannot support this measure in any way, shape, or form. Therefore, I cannot support the Republican party.
I’ve found it increasingly difficult to blithly write about sex and culture when we have such blatant examples of homophobia running rampant. But I’ll be back with lite fare next entry.
