On the heels of the California Supreme Court hearing arguments on Proposition 8, a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, our own state lawmakers couldn’t help but make sure California’s problems do not come any farther east. In a political climate where the Republican Party is about as popular and likable as the loud,drunk uncle at family reunions,they are desperately trying once again to appeal to the religious right wing of their party by rolling out the tried and true whipping boy: same-sex marriage.
This year will make the sixth such attempt by the North Carolina legislature to push discrimination through and write it into our state’s constitution with language denying same-sex couples basic rights.
I can only hope that this attempt suffers the same failure as the first five. Not because I have disillusions about the buckle of the Bible belt ever loosening enough to actually afford the GLBT community equal rights, but because such an amendment, whether you agree with homosexuality or not, is completely unnecessary. The social environment is already hostile enough towards the GLBT community, and rights are already being wrongfully denied them even without an amendment featuring language so broad that it would even allow companies to deny basic domestic partner benefits to same-sex couples. Behind the beat of a party’s drum that claims high moral ground on issues like this, is a deeper, older and perhaps more important issue. It is an issue that plagued our nation from the start – the separation of church and state.
If I hear the phrase "founded as a Christian nation" too many more times I may have to light my hair on fire and run screaming into the ocean. I’ll spare the world the smell of over-processed hair and risk of lighter fluid shortage by simply stating
that whoever makes such a statement couldn’t be more wrong.
It may stop the presses at FOX News and The Wall Street Journal to find that our forefathers painstakingly went out of their way to keep our government
as secular as possible. The list of founding fathers included religious and Christian minds, but also featured men who had witnessed a corrupt system of
interlocked church and state in England; where to question government
was to question God. Given these facts there is little wonder why the Bill of Rights
states, "Congress should make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The language contained in the Treaty
of Tripoli also clarified any question about the Bill of Rights by saying, "The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian
religion." The treaty was supported by John Adams and was passed unanimously by the
Senate. It was only the third unanimous vote to that point after almost 400 votes on previous bills. No debate on the issue was ever recorded. The North Carolina state legislature would do well to take a look at history. The right wing of the legislature would even better to take a less biased look at history and see that the
framers of our Constitution sought to avoid religions involvement in Government.
With their actions on same-sex marriage, legislators who support this amendment are allowing religion to directly influence their decision. Every time the debate over
right for same-sex couples is rekindled it is done so by those who use their religion to justify writing discriminatory language into a document which was penned by men who sought freedom from that very discrimination. Each time amendments
like this are proposed they seek to threaten a separation that was vigorously sought for. I do not think any less of someone whose religious views would have them believe that homosexuality is a choice and that marriage between same-sex
couples is sinful. I disagree with each of those assertions strongly, but could never think any less of their opinion. Those arguments, however, belong
within the walls of the church from which they are spawned. I take issue when that discrimination is brought outside the religious institutions in the form of
discrimination and lack of open mindedness written into the constitution. I recall constitutions being for all people, not just the religious right wing. All of this begs the question of why when government involves itself with issues that conservatives disagree, their involvement its labeled as socialism, but when they need government to interfere on issues which may compromise the sanctity of their religion, its necessary.
Somewhere along the line the double standard needs to be resolved. The only right resolution is to keep matters of church and faith inside the church and
keep matters of government contained within our legislatures. While our forefathers are spinning in their graves at the foundation of separation of church and state being violated we are continuing down a dangerous path. It is a path of straight and narrow mindedness that the men who formed our government took great steps to
avoid. It is a path that we do not have to follow if those who are ready to fight for the equal rights of North Carolinians and Americans will stand up and fight. North Carolina may be the heart of the Bible belt and the fertile crescent of the religious right, but there is room at the table for everyone; its time those who have been denied a seat for so long got theirs – even if wedding cake isn’t on
the menu.
The real marriage we should be concerned about is the marriage of church and state; a union of strange bedfellows
Monday, April 26, 2010
Friday, April 9, 2010
Political Profanity: Republicans and their F-Bombs
No one will deny Vice President Joe Biden’s gift of gab. Sometimes though, that gab ends with him choking on his own foot.
That was no doubt the case some two weeks ago as President Obama signed the health care reform bill into law. Biden was so excited that he dropped the “f bomb” to describe what a big deal passage of such reform really was..."a big fucking deal"
Joe Biden was right; it was a big deal, and why not use a well-timed explicative to explain just how big of a deal it really was. Profanity is a part of real world human interaction. Even William Shakespeare, the greatest writer of the English language, wrote ornate sex jokes for the Queen of England.
The real shame is not our Vice President’s lapses in decorum, I think as a country we are all mature enough to realize that even our leaders at the highest level don’t have pristine vocabularies.
It is a shame however, that it had to be such a big deal; that the Republicans were allowed to control the debate so much and for so long that Joe Biden’s now infamous “f-bomb” was not the only dirty word in Washington.
The truth is that the G.O.P. has made a habit out of being the party of no and have in turn been allowed to turn innocent words and upstanding policies into political profanity. For an example, one need look no further than health care reform bill.
America is the only first-world country that all of its citizens are not insured. Health care seems like an inherent right, something that all legal citizens should be afforded. It makes sense that no one should die because they cannot afford health coverage. Yet the Republicans turned health care reform into the proverbial f-word.
They have done it with others too. Socialism is a word that will send Conservatives into a mad rage; it will set Glenn Beck and his magical chalkboard on fire.
What they fail to realize is that Socialism is all around them in the form of Police, Fire Departments, EMT, trash services, public schools and libraries are all things that we pay for through taxes but do not all necessarily use. Is that not Socialism in its most basic form?
It begs the question as to whether or not Republicans would be averse to a Paramedic saving their lives, would let their trash pile up, or avoid their public library because they were all spawns of Socialism.
Their habit turning good words into dirty ones doesn’t stop there. They have successfully turned gay marriage into an abomination in some 30 states that have made love literally against the law if it happens between two men or two women.
They have turned pro-choice into murder, despite Roe v. Wade being decided law that gives government no authority over a woman and her body.
Republicans win elections by fear and hate mongering. They tout their own vocabulary of dirty words like terrorism, death panels, Armageddon, Marxism and Communist. Used to incite fear into the sheep that vote them into office, the Republican’s words are what get them there, certainly not their ideas.
Sarah Palin campaigned in 2008 by using an almost flawless disguise. She swooped in on a snowmobile touting her transparent and successful record as Governor of our second largest state. She had us all fooled, even me. She was propped up in a place of potential power to do nothing but throw red meat to the masses and did so quite well.
She could not tell us what magazines and newspapers she read but she did have the people who cast their vote for her convinced that an Obama White House would be filled with terrorists, Bill Ayers, and activism from Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
None of what she or any other Republican said about what an Obama Administration would look like has turned out to be true at all. Their words have proven to be empty as they have so many other times in the past.
Despite what the Republicans would have you believe, the words that they have made dirty are not that way at all and the Obama White House has been one filled with proven leaders, great political minds and has been a pragmatic and transparent administration.
Given the deep political divide and the Tea Party’s seemingly amoral crusade against the Obama administration it seems that Joe Biden’s F-bomb should be the least of our worries.
What should be at the forefront of our minds as a politically expedient nation is that we cannot allow a small, misinformed group of closed minded people turn good policy into political profanity.
That was no doubt the case some two weeks ago as President Obama signed the health care reform bill into law. Biden was so excited that he dropped the “f bomb” to describe what a big deal passage of such reform really was..."a big fucking deal"
Joe Biden was right; it was a big deal, and why not use a well-timed explicative to explain just how big of a deal it really was. Profanity is a part of real world human interaction. Even William Shakespeare, the greatest writer of the English language, wrote ornate sex jokes for the Queen of England.
The real shame is not our Vice President’s lapses in decorum, I think as a country we are all mature enough to realize that even our leaders at the highest level don’t have pristine vocabularies.
It is a shame however, that it had to be such a big deal; that the Republicans were allowed to control the debate so much and for so long that Joe Biden’s now infamous “f-bomb” was not the only dirty word in Washington.
The truth is that the G.O.P. has made a habit out of being the party of no and have in turn been allowed to turn innocent words and upstanding policies into political profanity. For an example, one need look no further than health care reform bill.
America is the only first-world country that all of its citizens are not insured. Health care seems like an inherent right, something that all legal citizens should be afforded. It makes sense that no one should die because they cannot afford health coverage. Yet the Republicans turned health care reform into the proverbial f-word.
They have done it with others too. Socialism is a word that will send Conservatives into a mad rage; it will set Glenn Beck and his magical chalkboard on fire.
What they fail to realize is that Socialism is all around them in the form of Police, Fire Departments, EMT, trash services, public schools and libraries are all things that we pay for through taxes but do not all necessarily use. Is that not Socialism in its most basic form?
It begs the question as to whether or not Republicans would be averse to a Paramedic saving their lives, would let their trash pile up, or avoid their public library because they were all spawns of Socialism.
Their habit turning good words into dirty ones doesn’t stop there. They have successfully turned gay marriage into an abomination in some 30 states that have made love literally against the law if it happens between two men or two women.
They have turned pro-choice into murder, despite Roe v. Wade being decided law that gives government no authority over a woman and her body.
Republicans win elections by fear and hate mongering. They tout their own vocabulary of dirty words like terrorism, death panels, Armageddon, Marxism and Communist. Used to incite fear into the sheep that vote them into office, the Republican’s words are what get them there, certainly not their ideas.
Sarah Palin campaigned in 2008 by using an almost flawless disguise. She swooped in on a snowmobile touting her transparent and successful record as Governor of our second largest state. She had us all fooled, even me. She was propped up in a place of potential power to do nothing but throw red meat to the masses and did so quite well.
She could not tell us what magazines and newspapers she read but she did have the people who cast their vote for her convinced that an Obama White House would be filled with terrorists, Bill Ayers, and activism from Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
None of what she or any other Republican said about what an Obama Administration would look like has turned out to be true at all. Their words have proven to be empty as they have so many other times in the past.
Despite what the Republicans would have you believe, the words that they have made dirty are not that way at all and the Obama White House has been one filled with proven leaders, great political minds and has been a pragmatic and transparent administration.
Given the deep political divide and the Tea Party’s seemingly amoral crusade against the Obama administration it seems that Joe Biden’s F-bomb should be the least of our worries.
What should be at the forefront of our minds as a politically expedient nation is that we cannot allow a small, misinformed group of closed minded people turn good policy into political profanity.
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