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04/20/2005: "Stop the Republican Gay Bashing"
This commentary appeared in the April 20th issue of the Pulse of the TwinCities
Why do the Republicans and the Radical Right care so much about Gay marriage? The answer is they don’t, not really. Just as George Bush, the man who, as governor of Texas, signed more death warrants than any other man in history, didn’t really care about a brain dead woman in Florida he had never met. The important thing to understand about the Republicans is that although they look like they are crazy, they are really crazy like a fox.
The most prominent Republican analysis of the Presidential election, and the current state of the electorate, is that the public can be led around the nose with the ring of moral values. That is, give people gay marriage, a dying woman, a mangled fetus, or a little nostalgia about the way it never was, and they will vote for people who will send their kids off to war, give their money to billionaires, take away their health care, drive them into debt, and remove their ability to declare bankruptcy.
The only way to fight this is to prove them wrong.
Hitler’s first campaign after taking power was to attack and eventually emasculate the Courts. This is an important part of the Right’s plan. The Federal Courts have the potential to be the last bastion to protect you and I (and the republican working class electorate) from the worst of abuses. Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, DeLay and their ilk do not take their recent defeats by the Federal Courts lightly. No I don’t mean Terry Shaivo, I mean the ruling that the prisoners at Guantanamo have the right to be charged with crimes and have trials, that they cannot just make up crimes in New York State if they say call it terrorism, and that even Muslims have a right to cross examine their accusers. This is the real reason for the attack on the Federal Courts. This is a campaign for support for the new Bush appointees, and to set the stage to discredit, and yes possibly impeach the worst (best) of the Federal Judiciary.
Don’t be fooled, we are in the middle of a political campaign, not a moral campaign. They wanted the Federal court to let Terry Shaivo die, it gives them outrage to market.
The Gay marriage thing is a perfect issue for the Right. They can use it to attack judges and at the same time, they can put it on the ballot and use it as a toboggan to slide down the electoral hill towards a political victory.
In Minnesota (as in many other states) they want to put a measure on the ballot to “Define Marriage”. Anyone who is opposed to it, obviously doesn’t want people to be able to vote. When the incredibly principled and dignified Karen Clark tried to tell them of the actual harm they are causing to real people (like herself), she was accused of bashing them?!
But what is really behind this, in addition to the attack on the Judiciary? There are several State House politicos who have told me that Bachman’s plan is to use this to take over the rest of State Government, and the Minnesota congressional delegation. They have cleverly maneuvered this vote to be on the ballot in November 2006. Yes that’s right, not next November, seven plus months from now, but a year from then over 19 months from now. Why?
Well then we will be electing our State government, our Congressional Delegation (for which Bachman will be a candidate), and an open US Senate seat. Yes my friends, it is the worst kept secret at the Capitol that this is the real reason for this effort. They believe that Minnesotans will come to the polls to “protect the sanctity of marriage from the gays” and oh, by the way will vote for Republicans against those immoral, Gay loving, Woman killing, terrorist loving, culture killing Democrats and Greens.
Other candidates will be trying to talk about Health Care, Trade Policy, Bankruptcy Law, Human and Civil rights, foreign policy, and the public will only care about the made up moral issues of the right.
We can’t allow this to succeed. We need to fight their effort to put this on the ballot, and if it is on the ballot, we have to do a better job than the Republicans at being human and real. I know the citizens of Minnesota, and most of them are not bigoted, most of them are not stupid, and most of them are not millionaires. The citizens of Minnesota should be on our side. We need to talk to our friends and relatives, especially those that do not live in the city of Minneapolis, and we need to be as out as we can be.
Talk about the Transgender, Gay or queer people in your life to your friends, family and co-workers. 7% of the people in our state are, in one way or another, not straight. These are our doctors, our lawyers, our carpenters, our bus drivers, our teachers and our co-workers. They cook and serve our food, build our houses, design our bridges, run our businesses and fix our computers. They are no different from you and me. I believe that the good people of Minnesota will only not take rights to be taken away from their friends relatives and neighbors.
During World War 2, the Danes, all put on Jewish Stars, when the invading Germans required all the Jews to do so. This was risky for them, especially for the first to do it, but I like to believe that they understood what they said. That to allow rights to be taken from one of us, lays the foundation for rights to be taken from all of us.
This is my country, this is my state, this is my community. I stand with the queers, I stand with the people I love. I hope I am standing with you.