As a Black, right wing Conservative, Christian Fundamentalist I have heretofore opposed gay marriage, but the arguments of Ted Olsen, who ALLEGEDLY is as right wing and conservative as I am, has convinced me otherwise.
It will not harm ME or any other heterosexual if gays marry (of course it won’t hurt ME if my neighbor beats his wife, drowns in his pool, or suffocates on his own puke, but I digress) and a state’s constitution should not exclude a group based on it’s sexual orientation. Of course, a Supreme Court ruling which would affirm the unconstitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 will mean not only that gays may marry in ANY state, but also that gays who marry in one state are entitled to the same privileges and benefits of traditional marriage in EVERY state. That situation could result in unintended benefits (and some problems) for all Americans. The constitution’s equal protection clause should also be applied to the following situations, the results of which will cause no harm to any citizen under the federal court’s guidelines.
1. If a prostitute or casino owner wants to move operations to Georgia or any other state, they should be allowed to do so.
2. A man who wants to marry half a dozen women, men or combination thereof in one state should be allowed to do so. If the constitution cannot regulate whom you can marry, where does it get the authority to regulate how many spouses you may have?
3. It should be made illegal to force one class of people (the rich) to pay more as a condition on citizenship than another class (everybody else). People should not be taxed on the basis of how much money they earn unless they are given tax advantages for the number of people they hire or the amount of money they invest. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates should receive the same amount of money in their social Security check as Joe the plumber.
4. A person who is collecting unemployment insurance payments should be able to do so in ANY state regardless of the state of his or her past employment unless such person was excluded from paying federal employment taxes. In addition, benefits should be paid only from proceeds of such unemployment taxes until such funds are depleted. This would mean that benefits would be similar in amount throughout the country and would be available as long as the funds were available, thus negating the need to constantly “extend” benefits.
5. Pot, alcohol and other drugs would not only have their “sin tax” removed, but would be legal in all states.
6. The legal citizens of the District of Columbia would be entitled to full House and Senate representation just as Delaware and California. It makes no sense that D.C. residents may vote in presidential elections but not in senatorial or house elections.
7. While under our constitution a woman may not be required to become a mother, there is no such protection for a man. If a woman becomes pregnant and decides NOT to murder her child in the womb, she in effect forces a man to become a parent. For equal protection, if her decision is to carry the child to term, no man should be forced to support her choice, neither financially nor emotionally.
I can see and I recognize there would be tremendous negative results included in the application of these principles, but such is the case now. Besides, in the mind of the liberal, the law is the law and justice should be blind. In the mind of the conservative, justice should be totally unrelated to law.
I can see no reason the above propositions are not incorporated into our system except that I realize it would take a monumental effort to overcome the hypocrisy of the American people, who are predisposed to cherry picking which laws they would support and which they consider “unconstitutional”.
In the American way of doing things, doing the right thing only applies to OTHER PEOPLE.
Of course some people might say that my proposals are just rants, that I bark at the moon, that I would prefer that a person should only be allowed to vote in the jurisdiction in which they pay INCOME taxes or own property, and that my true intent is to DESTROY the constitution in order to start fresh with a NEW constitution more in tune with my personal beliefs.
To all of this I say: I do NOT bark at the moon.
Tags: black conservative, black conservative right wing Christian Fundamentlist wacko, right wing
