Lawmakers resort to gay bashing

How else can you explain the new effort, spearheaded by Republicans, to amend the state Constitution to ban same-sex marriage?

No need to check your calendar. It’s an election year. You can tell by the politicians’ efforts to distract your attention from the real issues with nonsense and bullflop and plain old stupidity.

And the state legislators up for re-election have to come up with something to distract a public that’s beginning to catch on to their acts.

The push to amend the Constitution to prevent gays from getting married or get the same benefits as heterosexual couples is nothing but cynical politics.

Oh, sure, our pols will give us shovels full of sanctimony about the sanctity of marriage and the pressing need to protect the institution.

There’s a word for that, and I’m not allowed to use it in the newspaper.

I’d like one of them to explain, clearly, how granting two guys or two women the same rights that married couples enjoy would harm the sanctity of marriage. I don’t understand. If your marriage is so shaky that letting Todd and Rod file a joint tax return would put the kibosh on it, I think you have some serious problems.
But that’s not even the issue here.

The issue is plain and simple.

It’s an election year so it’s time to bash the queers.

Forget about that whole pay-raise imbroglio and the Legislature’s inability to reform property taxes and its failure to fixschool funding and its answer to everything seems to be slot-machine parlors. Forget, for a moment, that just about every city in the state is going broke and all of our manufacturing jobs are heading to Third World places like Indonesia, China and South Carolina.

Forget about all of that.

Todd and Rod want to get hitched!

And some of our esteemed legislators — most of them — can use that to strike fear into the electorate, that they are the only folks standing between us and legions of married gays who want to move in next door and tastefully decorate their homes.

As usual when the state Legislature acts even dumber than normal, I checked in with perhaps the last sane man to work in Harrisburg, state Rep. Steve Nickol, R-Hanover.
Nickol is just about the only person in Harrisburg, that I’m aware of, you can call and ask a question and get a straight answer.

And even though this latest legislative excretion emerged from members of his party, he’s not a big fan. He’s one of three local Representatives not to sign on — the other two are Rep. Steve Stetler, D-York, and Rep. Stan Saylor, R-Windsor Township.

Nickol said the state already has a law on the books banning gay marriage and that the amendment, in that regard, is unnecessary. He also said the way it’s written now, the amendment would also deprive opposite-sex couples the rights they may enjoy under the law. He said if you look at U.S. Census figures, opposite-sex couples co-habitating far outnumber same-sex couples, so the amendment, as proposed, could have a far greater effect on heterosexuals than homosexuals.

And he says there’s the element of politics. The amendment would have to be passed by two consecutive Legislatures, meaning that it would not appear on the ballot until 2008.
What’s happening in 2008?

The Republican Party has used such ballot questions to get out the homophobic vote, most recently in 2004 in Ohio.

In a way, same-sex marriage is the same as flag-burning or the pledge of allegiance. It’s a non-issue intended to distract you, the voting public, from things that really matter. Remember back in 1988. George Bush The First ran on a platform of being opposed to flag burning and handily beat the Democrat that year. It didn’t hurt that the Democratic candidate — that goofy guy in the tank, remember? — had the charisma of a roadkill groundhog.

But same-sex marriage is a more dangerous non-issue. It plays on fear and prejudice and ignorance, and no politician who’s exploited those emotions has ever lived to regret it.
Look at George Wallace.

Interestingly, Wallace had a fairly liberal record as a lawyer and judge before running for governor of Alabama in 1958. He hedged on the race issue and lost to a segregationist. When he ran again in 1962, he didn’t make that same mistake. He re-invented himself as a fire-breathing bigot who wanted to keep the Negroes in their place. He won, and the rest is history.

In a great song about Wallace by the great Alabama band Drive By Truckers, the singer imagines that Wallace’s entry to heaven was blocked by a black man standing in the pearly gates, much like Wallace standing in the doorway at the University of Alabama to prevent black students from entering.

So, legislators, go ahead and sell out for cheap, ugly votes. One day, you may meet Elton John at the entrance to heaven.

Mike Argento, whose column appears Mondays and Thursdays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints, can be reached at 771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com.