Thursday, July 31, 2003

Golly, every time I pick up a newspaper I remember why I generally don't. I suppose one ought to keep track of what one's crazy leaders are doing, though.

What I read today is that Bush is looking at legislation to define marriage as between a man and a woman only. Now I admit that I don't know the details of any existing laws about gay rights, but reading Bush's comments was just scary. First off, he says "I believe a marriage is between a man and a woman. And I think we ought to codify that one way or the other." Apparently freedom of belief means that the president is free to make his personal beliefs into a law. Maybe he's hoping that the rest of us just happen to freely believe the same thing. Later on, apparently trying to make it look like he's not being discriminatory, he says "I think it's very important for our society to respect each individual, to welcome those with good hearts, to be a welcoming country. On the other hand, that does not mean that somebody like me needs to compromise on issues such as marriage." So while his own marriage will probably not be affected in the least regardless of how this turns out, he feels like he can deny all homosexual couples the right to any marriage at all, just so his values won't be compromised. Two people who want to get married and aren't allowed to may have to compromise all over the place, but apparently that doesn't count because they aren't "somebody like" Bush. It sounds so absolutely ridiculous to me that I'm not even sure how I would argue with him if I had him right here in the room. We differ in some assumption so basic that I'd have to think for a while before I could figure out how to get underneath it.

Anyway, sorry for that somewhat out of character post. That article just really annoyed me. Like I said, I don't really have any good knowledge on what the current state of things is for homosexual couples, but regardless, it's just frightening to see how our president thinks sometimes. Sheesh.

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