Blunt and Bush both hope to ride gay coattails into office

[PinkTiger]

Thanks to Missouri’s Republican-controlled legislature, a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage has passed both houses and waits for the vote of the people.
This got me to thinking.
Back in my Noel sixth grade class, this is the way I learned about homosexuals: a menacing game was played by my classmates -- if you wore green on Thursday, you must be “queer.” I didn’t know what being “queer” meant, but by the snickers of my peers, it was obviously terrible.
The game had an important purpose: we learned that to be labeled “queer” was the worst thing that could happen if you wanted to be acceptable to the masses, grow up to have a normal life and be happy.
This was 1962, about the same time that the first broad Civil Rights laws were being prepared for enactment. But I and my classmates didn’t face desegregation or busing, because everyone in our school was white.
Today it is against the law to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion and national origin. Persons with disabilities are also protected from discrimination. But it is still OK in many states to discriminate against those who prefer same-sex relationships. Landlords can refuse to rent to homosexuals; employers can refuse to hire them, or can fire them outright. The military will probably discharge you if you join and later come out as openly homosexual. And this discrimination is all OK, because gays are not a protected class.
The media send mixed signals. TV shows like Will and Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy bring gays into our living rooms during prime time, and famous outed gays include Rosie O’Donnell, Ellen DeGeneres, Jim Nabors (Gomer Pyle) and Richard Chamberlain (TV’s Dr. Kildare in 1963).
But in middle America, homosexuals are still stared at, joked about, and discriminated against; it is not cool in the mainstream to be gay. And now we will get the opportunity to vote on a constitutional ban of gay marriage.
I wonder, what if we had put the 1964 Civil Rights Law to a vote of the people? If we had, blacks and whites would still be taught in separate schools, and Jim Crow would be the law of the land.
I believe we have to be taught to hate. The grade school taunts were meant to create hate and fear about homosexuality, just as the separate water fountains, restrooms and schools in the Jim Crow South were meant to keep the races apart and the Black person ‘way down, on the other side of the tracks.
But the real purpose of the vote for a ban on gay marriage may not be to deal gays another blow, only to encourage God-fearing, righteous conservatives to arrive at the polls in record numbers in November, thereby ensuring George Bush Missouri’s electoral votes and ushering Secretary of State Matt Blunt, a Republican, into the Governor’s chair.
A political disagreement between Blunt and Missouri’s Democratic governor, Bob Holden, will be decided soon by the Missouri Supreme Court. Holden, who is running for reelection, wants the issue to be on the August primary ballot. Blunt says he will not certify the vote for August because the Amendment didn’t reach his desk by the May 28 deadline. A Cole County, Mo. judge ruled in Blunt’s favor, and Holden appealed.
I find it ironic that both Matt Blunt and George Bush are counting on an electoral gay bashing to catapult them into office.
Surely neither thinks it would be a terrible thing if their gay neighbors were legally married, with all the rights and privileges reserved for us, the “normal” people. I doubt that they are afraid that once wed, gays might do unnatural things,such as sharing health insurance and receiving a tax break reserved for married heterosexuals.
I’m sure most of these good Republicans hope that if the gays truly want a tax break, they should suffer the penalty of being single and do as many of the wealthy already have: buy an SUV and declare it a business expense.
That is the American way.

[PinkTiger]

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