Candidates take truly subbrilliant positions
by Pilot X (pilotx@subbrilliant.com)
Reason once again flies out the window as politicians grapple to manipulate the public over gay marriage. What’s at issue here is which group of people the politicians can fool into emotionally bonding with them.
George W. Bush takes the tactic that civilisation is threatened if gays marry. This plays to the emotions of religious conservatives who fear homosexuality. It also deftly sidesteps those who try just as cynically to make a charge of intolerance stick to Bush.
John Kerry has exactly the same position as Bush but has no hope of pleasing conservatives, so casts his position as at odds. Notice he charges Bush with avoiding the issues and calls the constitutional ban unnecessary. This way HE deftly sidesteps fundamentalists who would like to make a charge of rabid liberalism stick.
Both men seem to think gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed but civil unions should. That’s unreasonable because allowing civil unions is tantamount to allowing gay marriages even if it just makes it easier to swallow at the expense of equal rights.
Allow civil unions and within 50-100 years everyone will get quite comfortable with it and wonder why there are two definitions of marriage. What’s at issue seems to be wheteher America can admit that homosexuals are normal people like you and me or if they need a buffer between the old repression of gays and a date in future when sexual orientation like being Irish is no longer an issue.
The only politicians approaching brilliance here is San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom and the judges of Massachusetts and California. They are interpreting the consitution objectively and forcing the debate into the arena it should exist in.
The most abhorrent move is Bush’s denigrating the judiciary as if their interpretation of the law was somehow less valid than his or congress. Need we remind Mr. Bush that he had no issue with judges ruling on law when they awarded him the presidency on constitutional grounds despite losing the popular vote.
