Political Frenzy

Today the House passed a bill that would require that our combat troops withdrawal from Iraq by April 1, 2008. It is said that the House passed this to pressure the Senate to attach similar restrictions to the military policy bill they are deliberating….then what?

President Bush will veto this bill while still in the hands of the messenger boy.

This is the third bill passed this year that has to do with time tables and troop withdrawals. Drafting and passing bills takes a lot of time and effort. Why would Congress keep passing the same bill over and over, it is a waste of time. Mr. Bush has vetoed it, and will continue to veto it. How about they spend their time on passing bills that will actually cause change?

It is obvious that the public is fed up with how President Bush is handling the Iraq war. When Congress members go back home they want to be able to tell their constituents that they ‘tried.’ Where in reality they didn’t. Isn’t the definition of insanity ‘doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different result?’

By Congress passing this bill it make makes it obvious to me that they have no idea how to end the war.

Well Al Sharpton claimed that “those who really believe in God” will vote against Mormon and Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. And that sent the East Coast member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints (a rare critter indeed!) and Massachusetts Conservative (even rarer!) Romney into a tizzy. He claimed Sharpton was descriminating against his religion, a minority religion that some - even I - find hard to take seriously. (Joseph Smith read golden leaflets of God out of a hat!? A HAT!?)

But regardless of his silly religion, Romney has a damned good point! Sharpton, long a defender of Civil Rights including gay rights, has suddenly revealed something: it’s not okay to judge someone based on how they are created by God, but it is okay to judge someone on their beliefs.

Of all the nerve! To actually decide whether or not someone is a good candidate for President based on, you know, what he THINKS!

Let’s all get something straight here - for too long Religion has been considered “out of bounds”, somehow equivalent to race in the “things I can’t blame you for” category. But when you have a Church that has to retcon its own canon to fit United States Law (see: Mormon Polygamy) and considers dark skin to be a curse sent upon the wicked by God (see: 2 Ne. 5: 21; Alma 3: 6), then you have a faith, frankly, I’m allowed to make fun of. And if you actually believe that Joseph Smith, a terrible chauvinist, read gold tablets he found by the grace of an Israelite/American Angel, then you’re also sure to swallow the story of Lost 116 Pages. I’m not sure if I want someone like that running my country.

You know, here, I’ve said it. I’m a follower of a minority religion (for all you smegheads not paying attention, I’m a Zoroastrian, Mazdan in other vernaculars) and I’m not afraid of people trying to dismiss or depress me (see: 300, the most racist and hateful movie since Birth of a Nation).

But then we have the other hand. Al Sharpton, apparently self-appointed “Ambassador from all conceivable minorities”, has never been elected because he’s too much of a pompous windbag to shut up long enough to listen. No one voted for him when he ran for Senate three times, no one voted for him when he ran for Mayor of New York, and no one voted for him in the Democratic primaries. He’s never been elected to office, and we - the racial and religious minorities - never handed him the baton.

And now the fundamental flaws begin to show. Shouldering all of our consent, which we never consented to, a wily old man has pointed his silver tongue in the wrong direction. And all minority Civil Rights credibility may just go tumbling down with the Righteous Reverend if this continues much further.

How do such losers come to represent us?

Al Sharpton, Mitt Romney, Mormons, Mormonism, Church of Latter-Day Saints, LDS, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Right here in my home state of Washington gay rights are taking a step in the right direction. Governor and Democrat Christine Gregoire signed into law a bill to allow same-sex couples Domestic Partnership, which will allow two people of the same sex who have lived together for an extended period of time to be recognized as financially and medically responsible for each other, and give them joint custodial rights over a child.

I think this is wonderful.

Do I think, however, that the government should allow gays to be married? No.

But no one ever asks me if I think the government should allow straight people to be married. If you did, you’d get the same response.

Say WHAA?

Here’s how it breaks down. Marriage is an institution of faith, a contract between you, the person you love, and God. Nobody on Earth should be able to tell you who you can or cannot marry. Marriage licenses given out by the government is an insult to the sanctity of the institution. The leaders of your faith, or your own moral compass if you do not believe in organized religion, should preside over your marriage, and not the suits and ties of the District of Colombia. All the government should be handing out is the legal recognition of the financial union and shared responsibilities of two consenting adults, and that’s it.

I offer to you the example of the Church of Latter Day Saints. You cannot be married in a Mormon Church if you are not Mormon. In fact you cannot enter a Mormon Church without being a Mormon. This is exclusionary and effectively prohibits interfaith marriage for Mormons. If we truly believe that the State has any right to dictate our marriages, we should be clawing at the temples in Salt Lake City, because this is a blatant act of exclusion.

But it’s their faith, and we cannot take it from them. Marriage is a spiritual covenant, not a piece of paper handed to us from Capitol Hill. They have the right to exclude whomever they wish, just as any other church has the right to exclude or include whomever they wish.

I love the idea of Washington having domestic partnerships, mostly because of a wonderful article I read many months ago in Seattle’s own “The Stranger”, by Dan Savage, the internationally syndicated columnist and gay rights activist. In it he detailed the traumatic events where, out of state, he got very ill and had to be admitted to a hospital immediately. His partner was there to give the go-ahead, which Dan couldn’t do on his own as he was completely incapacitated, for an invasive surgery which ultimately saved Savage’s life. But, Savage notes, the doctors didn’t have to listen to his partner at all legally, and had they arrived in any other hospital Dan Savage may have lay dying while the hospital tried frantically to call one of his close relatives.

This law does more than grant titles to homosexuals, it saves lives - allowing men and women who now live only with one other person, their lover, to be guarded and secured by them. If one were to perish, a child who had been adopted would not be left to foster care or taken from their home, but left to mourn and grow and go on with the parent they still have. This law safeguards Washingtonians from the Olympic Peninsula to the Inland Empire, and paves the way for better and more fair rights for all - including silly straight vanilla boys like myself.

That’s my two cents.