When All Else Fails, Stir Hate

Why is the gay marriage issue suddenly so important to the Bush administration? Simple: he has reached bottom. Poll numbers have been consistently dropping for so long, he must reach out to the lowest of the low to find support. Let's hear a round of cheers for the right to pretend gay people are not worthy of full citizenship. Deny spousal benefits to couples that have been married for years. Void health care, social services, and family visitation rights. Take away our children, deny us the right to adopt our spouse’s children, void the very foundation of what it means to be an American. After all, it has been done before.

We have been here before. Democrat George Wallace standing on the steps proclaiming: "Segregation Today! Segregation Tomorrow! Segregation Forever!" in his inaugural address. For him, the change of heart took being shot and years of watching the ugliness unfold. It took those 'activist judges' on the Supreme Court to point out that separate but equal was a lie. It took thousands rioting in the streets and countless deaths to begin the slow process of change. Who knows when, or if, African-Americans will ever succeed at regaining the equality stolen from under their feet?

We have been here before. Behind sealed court records and platitudes of ending poverty, Americans created programs of forced sterilization. The 'public good' made a nice mask for eugenic attacks on the poor, mostly the non-white poor. It makes for good political fodder when politicians have nothing of worth to offer. It makes such wonderful-sounding policy while it wrecks lives.

We have been here before. Legislatures across the nation claimed that women's suffrage was not a natural right of citizenship and that it was unjust to force the "unnatural desire of a few women" on the electorate. Churches argued that voting was only a small part of government, and the duties of governing were against the will of God for women. Heaven help us when the churches become the political battleground dedicated to suppressing human rights. Even today, the Equal Rights Amendment cannot get through Congress.

We have been here before. We have seen the forced assimilation into our society of Native American Tribes. Two hundred years of history give witness to genocide, the forced conversion to Christianity, to children being ripped from their families and sent to the missionary schools. It was not enough to uproot entire civilizations from their lands: we had to destroy a culture as well. Without the actions of the courts, Native Americans would have no way of seeking redress.

The political positioning never ends. As long as there is room to point a finger at another human being and say "I am better, I deserve more than you", the tools of hate will use God and country to promote their self-serving agendas. The real question is not why President Bush is pushing an agenda of hate, but how long you will let him get away with it.