Do you think "Gay Pollution" would get some attention from the Neo-con Republicans
Jacquielynn Floyd:
Doesn't Legislature have enough to do?
09:05 PM CDT on Monday, May 23, 2005
Great news from Austin: Texas legislators are apparently working much harder than we ever expected!
Our elected officials must be too modest to say so, but it seems that late last week, in a burst of unprecedented industry, they fixed all the state's thorniest and least tractable problems. They must have devised brilliant, 11th-hour solutions and compromises on taxes, the budget, protective services, school financing. They must have fixed everything!
Those things must all surely be squared away, because on Saturday, they had the leisure to wander off into the ideological canebrake and confront the nonexistent bugaboo of gay marriage.
If, by chance, all those other real and pressing problems weren't solved, it's hard to imagine why the state Senate would waste precious time wheezing on about the need for an amendment to our state's constitution to protect the so-called "sanctity of marriage."
"I believe we should protect the institution of marriage," intoned Sen. Todd Staples, R-Palestine, the bill's sponsor. "We should hold that up higher than any other relationship."
He refers to the sacrosanct covenant into which the infamous Mary Kay Letourneau entered over the weekend with her schoolboy sweetheart ( Entertainment Tonight had exclusive rights).
He means the institution from which nearly 2 million Americans seek legal exit every year. He means the holy rite that couples celebrate and hold dear until one of them becomes besotted with a friend or a neighbor or somebody at the office. He's talking about that deep and abiding bond that so often peters out amid vicious bickering about who gets the house or the kids or the vacuum cleaner.
If pressed for a position on this issue, I have to say that with a track record like that, I just don't see how straight people have any business telling gay people that, sorry, marriage is just too important and sanctified for you.
How much worse could they screw it up? I say, if two people named Otis and Beauregard want to get hitched, it doesn't have much to do with me, unless I'm invited and have to shop for a gift.
But even if you don't agree that this right should be extended – and I understand that many people have reservations about what they view as a dramatic change to our social tradition – I just don't see why the Legislature saw a need to bring everything else to a screeching halt while they jawboned about it.
They behaved as if an army of scary muscular men in leather thongs was bearing down on the Capitol, as if some peril were ringing the alarm so persistently that the Constitution required immediate adjustment.
In short, they neatly managed to create contention and paranoia over an issue that wasn't posing any particular threat. From here on out, the noisiest and most outrageous gay-rights activists will get all the sound bites, which in turn will frighten and galvanize their most intolerant and alarmist counterparts.
Ordinary chumps (me) who saw no problem with the way things already were will be trampled in the stampede.
So now we have a scheduled item on the statewide ballot next November, a big, divisive, headline-grabbing issue that will drown out the prosaic workaday stuff with which we ought to be occupied.
Who has time for transportation, education, jobs, economic development, environmental quality or any of 1,000 other tough, complicated worker-bee problems when we can scream and flail and shoot the finger at each other across the great cultural abyss?
Maybe our elected officials, who I have just learned on closer examination did not fix everything that needs attention in Texas over the weekend, were just bored.
Hard problems without easy answers can grind you down. In politics, it's sometimes more rewarding to retreat to the rhetorical bunker and gird for battle.
It's a little like students who nurture their outrage and cherish every opportunity to protest – partly, I suspect, because that sort of activity is so much more exciting than going to class.
But it's a lousy excuse for neglecting the business that you're there for.
Grandstand if you want to – but do it on your own time.
E-mail jfloyd@dallasnews.com
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/localnews/columnists/jfloyd/stories/052405dnmetfloyd.d93486cc.html
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Note from Steve: The groups in Midlothian who are needing help from the "Neo Con Republicans" ( In Bed with Corporate America ! ) in Austin and Washington have missed a golden opportunity to some how attach the gay issue with their pollution issues in Ellis and Dallas Counties. They should have pitched their issue as a "Gay Pollution" issue (Bush's Karl Rove tactics) by claiming that the pollution coming from the stacks of the plants is the fault of gays and lesbians and thus is a threat to their families ! Dr James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, David Barton, James Williamson, Bill Frist, Joe Barton, Tom Delay, Hal Lindsey and all the other "Neo'con Republicans" would have beaten a path to Midlothian and rescue the community from the "Gay Pollution" being spewed from the stacks !
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See our post "Dirty Dancing" Republican Style
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