Republican senators push constitutional amendment

[question everything]

http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20954~1994880,00.html#

Los Angeles Daily News

By The New York Times

WASHINGTON -- Senate Republican leaders said Wednesday they would aggressively pursue a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages despite Democratic criticism that the proposal was divisive, unnecessary and a distraction from more pressing issues.

"It is becoming increasingly clear that Congress must act," Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, told members of a pro-traditional marriage group pushing for the amendment even as gay couples began marrying in Oregon. He said Congress would not let the courts "radically redefine what marriage is, and that is the union between a man and woman."

But the obstacles facing the amendment quickly became clear at a Senate hearing on the issue, the first since President Bush endorsed the concept of an amendment last week. Sharp partisan divisions emerged as Democrats accused Republicans of trying to generate momentum for the amendment by creating a false air of crisis.

"This is a divisive political exercise in an election year, plain and simple," said Sen. Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution. Republican authors of an amendment will need substantial Democratic support if they hope to move forward because it requires approval by two-thirds of the members of the House and Senate.

Witnesses testifying before the panel, which was meeting in a packed hearing room, also disagreed on the need for an amendment. Advocates argued that the institution of marriage needed to be protected, while opponents said an amendment was discriminatory and premature given that existing law on the subject had not been fully tested.

[FloridaPat]

1. Do you think maybe it's the water in DC? The air? Maybe anthrax

makes you mentally unfit and these guys snorted some.

[RichV]

2. Bring it on.

Let's vote on it. They're a good 20 votes shy of the 2/3 needed for Senate approval.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Frist has the Newt Gingrich syndrome...

fired up by power and righteousness-- he doesn't realize he doesn't have absolute power.

Methinks Frist is digging his grave too, and this amendment will go the way of Gingrich's Contract.

'specially if we have a Democrat in the White house who will force him to do something really, really, stupid.

[dae]

4. ummmmm

GOP a$$wipes?

[PurityOfEssence]

5. Suck as we may, Americans don't like deliberate hate legislation

It's one thing to shoot down hopeful legislation, and it's another to hold the line, but to specificically turn the spotlight on a specific group and directly deny them rights (whether held or not) isn't quite American fairlplay. We often forget much of the inherent toleration in our national makeup, seeing all the close-mindedness abounding and being caught in a backlash conservative phase, but it's there nonetheless.

Let's also not forget the dynamic of this: they'll have to fight like hell to get this through, and it'll still take forever just to get within striking distance. Every step of the way, they will be selling hate--hate gussied up with rectitude and platitutes about saving civilization and other slobbering imbecility, but hate pure and simple--and it's just not a good product unless the customer's in peril. It's one thing to sell hate against the swarthy non-christian hoard--they actually can be portrayed as trying to destroy us--but gays are everywhere, and most people have social contact with gay people; they're friends and business associates.

This could be a fine way for the right to waste endless energy and monies, just to confirm to one and all what skunks they really are.

Good. Let 'em try.

[Occulus]

6. Very well said.

I agree. I really don't want anything like this to actually be passed, but I also know it will not be swallowed today, here and now.
You're right; they'll paint themselves.

Badly.

[BR_Parkway]

7. And they are still blaming the courts

and "activist judges" - but the shift has been to the elected mayors, clerks and other government officials proceeding, not the courts. The only place the courts have acted so far is Mass, where they haven't started marrying yet!

It's a good line to keep the base fired up, but what do the normal masses think? Are they still buying that line - that this is being "forced on them by activist judges"?