President’s Radio Address calls for gay marriage amendment

The old wedge issue, is the new wedge issue. In the 2004 election Karl “The Architect” Rove employed a strategy of tabling certain topics that would push the voter’s buttons and get their blood boiling just long enough for them to cast a vote for Bush in the presidential election.

So nobody should be surprised that President Bush called for a national Constitutional (!) Ban on gay marriage in this morning’s Presidential Radio Address. It is an election year after all:

(…) Today, I want to explain why I support the Marriage Protection Amendment, and why I’m urging Congress to pass it and send it to the states for ratification.

Marriage is the most enduring and important human institution, honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith. Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and a wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society. Marriage cannot be cut off from its cultural, religious, and natural roots without weakening this good influence on society. Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all.

In our free society, people have the right to choose how they live their lives.

And in a free society, decisions about such a fundamental social institution as marriage should be made by the people — not by the courts. (…) White House transcript

There’s the Orwellian “War is Peace”-style name, but what bothers me more is the notion that marriage can be “protected” by not allowing gay people the same standards and rights that heterosexual couples have.

Let’s not kid ourselves here: Some may have a problem with two guys kissing in the street (While at the same time downloading lesbian porn at home) but the downfall of Enron destroyed more marriages than any “gay” influence.

There is also the tiny problem involving a president who has repeatedly shown the tendency to simply ignore laws whenever he felt necessary (FISA, Geneva Convention, ABM treaties, etc) pointing at ANY organization and saying they are not acting in the “will of the people.” (And remind me, who spend the past 5 years stacking the benches in their favor?)

But the most beautiful example of circular logic remains that the people deserve freedom and the best way to ensure that is to put the first Constitutional Amendment into the nation’’s most treasured legal document that would actually limit freedoms since the passing of a national ban on alcohol in 1919. And we all know how well that worked out.