Gay Marriage Ban Does Not Equal A Minimum Wage

Posted on June 7, 2006 in Class Journalists & Pundits

Some reporters downplayed the seriousness of changing the U.S. Constitution by suggesting that the Republicans’ proposed amendment was a routine political ploy of the sort both parties engage in. As National Public Radio political editor Ken Rudin put it on CNN (6/5/06): “It’s politics, not politics in a bad way, but it’s politics. Democrats have done the same thing. They’ll insist on a vote on raising the minimum wage, not that they’ll have it or not, but to put Republicans in the uncomfortable position of having to vote for and against it. A tactic that’s been used since the dawn of creation.”

One might point out that there’s a significant legal and qualitative distinction between a constitutional amendment limiting the civil rights of Americans and a legislative attempt to give poor workers a raise.

Norman Solomons, FAIR

The Usurper is far too hungry for adulation and a Congress that will wreak his will. He has screwed the country over, gaining for himself the dishonor of being known as the worst and most corrupt president in American history. We cannot be sure that his legacy will be undone in our lifetime. It will take a great president and a united American people to reverse corporate power’s hold on our government. We must have the courage to take it back.

The issues are twofold: the limiting of civil rights and redirection of resources. It’s bad enough that a minority of Americans support institutionalized homophobia. I oppose it now and I will oppose it because the government — not the People — must be limited in what it can do. No matter how many housewives complain about how they can’t imagine themselves in bed with a woman or how a man can take another man to wife those housewives have no business changing the law of their land towards this end. Diversity is about getting along with others. Diversity is Democracy.

Isn’t the gap between the richest and the poorest in this country an entirely different matter? Where the Republicans champion a measure which will only entangle us in bureaucratized homophobia, the Democrats offer a plan which will improve the quality of life of the working poor and do a small bit to lessen the gap between the rich and the poor. There’s a big difference between these and I protest the oversimplication.

The gay marriage ban is nothing more than a maneuver by corporate America to swell the number of conservative voters going to the polls, shore up the base of a disastrous chief executive, and prevent working Americans from empowering themselves. I shall not be fooled and neither should you.