Important Problems

Major U.S. Problems : education, healthcare, crime, unemployment, social security, poverty, the environment, immigration, corporate corruption, energy resources, human rights, the erosion of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, the homogenization of media sources, the integrity of voting mechanisms, State and Federal budget deficits, the economy, trade, foreign policy… the list goes on and on. Note that I didn’t even bring up Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Pakistan, Haiti, Cuba, North Korea,… etc.

The Bush Administration’s big target: Gay Marriage. The President declared Tuesday that “the preservation of marriage rises to the level of national importance.” And then he called for a federal action via Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

It seems a bit odd to me that the White House should pick that particular issue to focus on, since it’s not like there is a lack of problems we are currently facing (my list was by no means comprehensive). Vice President, Dick Cheney, has a daughter who is lesbian. I’d like to know how he and his party can in good conscience, deny her her civil rights, because what a Constitutional amendment would do is mandate that she is excluded from the full range of human experience and denied full protection under the laws designed to protect her from undue government incursion. Human procreation is not a requirement for marriage. People who have never consummated their marriages, and never plan to, are legally allowed to get married and stay married. Heterosexual intercourse is not necessary to validate a marriage in any state in the United States, as far as I know.

Homosexuality, like race, is not something people choose. Why would anyone choose to be part of a minority group subject to being beat up or killed, and picked on by every other social group? They wouldn’t. Homosexual orientation is one of many natural characteristics of human nature, and not only humans, but some animal species as well. That doesn’t make them any less human being than anyone else. Why should one group in society be granted fewer rights than other groups?

If that’s what it is to be a “compassionate” Conservative, to deny your own daughter of her civil rights, Mr. Cheney, perhaps you and your Party ought to look up the definition of the word “compassion.” I also think the White House can find something else, something more important, to occupy their time with. If they can’t think of anything, they can start with that list of problems at the beginning of this post.