In all seriousness...

I have a confession to make. And a favor to ask.

I subscribe to a number of progressive mailing lists such as TrueMajority and MoveOn. I use them to keep abreast of certain events and issues at the state and national level so that, when there's something going on, I can e-mail or call my Senators and Representatives, or sign an internet petition. This does not make me an activist, but I do think that it makes me reasonably involved in the political process.

In spite of encouragements by the various groups who send me e-mails, I don't forward alerts to people or post about them. I figure anyone who wants to get alerts all the time is already on a mailing list or a feed or part of an activist group. If they aren't, then they certainly don't want to be bombarded with alerts from me - it would be political spam to them. I base this on my own distaste for forwarded messages of any kind.

I tell you this because today, I am breaking my self-imposed "political forwarding ban," and I want you to understand how significant that is for me. More precisely, I want you to comprehend the importance and urgency of the issue which I will now bring to your attention.

On June 5th, President Bush is going to hold a press conference in the White House's Rose Garden to reiterate his support for the Federal Marriage Protection Amendment. You know, the proposed Constitutional amendment that will make same-sex marriage illegal throughout the whole country. The Senate will vote on the proposed amendment on the 6th.

This amendment is just plain nasty for a number of reasons:

• It will add discriminatory provisions to the Constitution, which is unprecedented. The Bill of Rights states that all citizens, of whatever race, descent, religion, or sex, are equal. In practice, of course, people are treated unequally. But inequality should not be institutionalized, let alone written into the Constitution.




• This amendment, if passed, may very well set a precedent for further discriminatory action against gays and lesbians - maybe not in the very near future, but in the next couple of decades. Homosexuality used to be criminal: that could happen again, and it's a scary possibility.




• When a pastor, rabbi, priest or what have you conducts a marriage ceremony, he or she says "by the authority vested in me by the state of _____, I now pronounce you..." My problems with mixing government in religion aside, this indicates pretty clearly that marriage law is the prerogative of the states, not the federal government. Also, marriage laws often differ from state to state. Federal legislation of marriage - of any kind - will come at the expense of individual states' powers. The balance is too skewed towards the federal government as it is.




• Last but not least - wake up, people, this is a wag-the-dog scam. Bush and his supporters in Congress have seen their approval ratings go down the toilet in the last several months. With a congressional election coming up, they want to reinforce their ties to their core ultra-conservative voting bloc and win back the less radical conservatives and right-wingers who were disgusted with other scandals, cock-ups and cheap tricks by this administration and Congress. It's just a way of diverting attention from the real problems we're having, like, say, Iraq, the health insurance crisis, gas prices, the trade deficit, etc.

I hope you're still reading and that I've got you good and angry, because here's the favor I mentioned at the beginning of this post: I want you to call your Senators and tell them to vote no on the Federal Marriage Protection Amendment. If you don't have your Senators' phone numbers, look them up on the Senate website. As long as you're at the phone, send a call to the White House comment line at (202)-456-1111 and tell Bush that, for whatever reason, this is not what you want. And tell your friends and family to do the same. If you're pissed, say so - because if you don't speak now, you'll have no right to complain later.