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Bush insults gays – and all Americans Among my many blessings, I count being a citizen and living inside the Beltway, the roadway that symbolically marks a sort of political land of Oz, where all the Technicolor sights and sounds serve as reminders that, No, Toto, this isn’t Kansas or Paris or Moscow. This is Washington, home of a divinely inspired form of government that each successive generation of Americans has cherished and protected. As a teen-ager, I drove down to the White House — maybe just to see that it was still there — when President Nixon resigned. As a journalist, I watched from the press gallery as members of Congress debated whether to impeach President Clinton. I’ve sat with pen and pad inside the Supreme Court as justices wrestled to define the rights of gay Americans. And as a runner, I’ve jogged by the White House, the Washington Monument, and the Jefferson, Lincoln and war memorials. Through it all, my admiration of our founding fathers’ wisdom deepened. They gave us the dream of equality and the road map for reaching it. As a result, we’ve progressed from being a country with slaves to one with a black Supreme Court justice. We’re a country where women not only vote but serve as governors, senators and Cabinet members. And we’re one where Congress tore down the physical barriers on every sidewalk and at every business that kept disabled Americans from working and playing with the rest of us. The founding fathers wisely left plenty of wiggle room to allow freedom to expand as the country left old fears behind. That’s why the Constitution, the rule book they gave us, is both flexible enough to end segregated drinking fountains and so difficult to revise that it has not become the plaything of mob rule. We, the American people, are taught to play by the Constitution’s rules. And when we disagree, the Constitution instructs us on how to peaceably settle our disputes, by turning to the courts or by winning elections. Yet President Bush announced on Feb. 25 that he is putting the full weight of his entrusted power behind a tyrannical push to write a discriminatory amendment into the Constitution for the first time in history. In doing so, he attacked not just gay Americans but everyone who believes in fairness. The president’s speech sugar-coated what amounted to a tantrum by a poor sport. The truth is plain: The argument in favor of gay marriage is so persuasive that once judges, lawmakers and the public really understand it, the only way Bush’s side can win is to whip lawmakers into such an un-American frenzy that they’ll toss constitutional guarantees into the garbage. Well, Mr. President, you’ve kicked sand in the face of our founding fathers. But the constitutional principles of liberty and equality are written on the hearts of the American people. And when the moment of truth comes, they aren’t going to write second-class citizenship into our most sacred national document. Mr. President, you seem to think this is just another pre-emptive strike against an opponent too weak to stop you. And you said that no one should get angry, implying that, hey, it’s nothing personal. Well, it is personal. Joyce and I married in Canada seven months ago. That’s my life you’re talking about. That’s my spouse you’re talking about. And that’s my Constitution you’re talking about. When you called for sullying the Constitution, you forged an alliance between gay Americans and everyone who reveres our form of government. This wrongheaded war against equal rights threatens not only the Constitution. It threatens to desecrate marriage itself, by turning it into an incendiary symbol of discrimination, yet another Confederate flag. A Constitution guaranteeing equality is the most valuable gift that Americans hand down from one generation to the next. If we lose that, every one of us has lost our most precious birthright. Deb Price writes for The Detroit News. You can reach her at (202) 906-8205 or dprice@detnews.com. Also published in the (NJ) Home News Tribune. |
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