March to a Different Drummer

You don't need to be a lawyer to write a marriage amendment apparently, but you could use some common sense. A high school student could have written a better amendment than the proposed Virginia marriage amendment. And if it weren't so poorly written, this topic wouldn't be the subject of debate and discussion all across the Commonwealth. Just using words like "approximate" and "qualities . . . of marriage" for example --- these words mean something different to every one who reads them. At least, you will have to admit that for a constitutional amendment to our Bill of Rights, this language is far from ideal. And more importantly is not easily and consistently communicated to the general populace. But why tiptoe around this. Delegate Robert Marshall has admitted in interviews and debates that he seized onto this quest after Lawrence v. Texas and his homophobia and obsession with sodomy (overlooking that oral sex within heterosexual couples is sodom...

The Richmond Times Dispatch editorial in opposition of the marriage amendment was the most unenthusiastic, begrudging argument I’ve ever read. It’s almost as if they felt they could just not put together a credible and intellectually honest position to support this outrageous amendment no matter how hard they tried, and so reluctantly had their most junior and pathetic writer put together this drivel. No mention of the impact this will have on the ability of this state’s gay and lesbian citizens, in the light of the growing tolerance of young people and educated people, to revisit this subject in the future. No mention of the real threats to traditional marriage. No suggestion that homosexuality is now known by medicine and science to be a state of being and not a moral choice. No mention of the trend of giving gays equal civil rights in many western countries with the lack of any noticeable consequence other than an expansion of societal inclusion. So much for authentic conservati...

Here is a suggestion for an amendment for the next session of the Virginia legislature: "That only right-handedness may be handedness valid in or recognized by this Commonwealth and its political subdivisions. This Commonwealth and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for left-handedness that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effects of right-handedness. Nor shall this Commonwealth or its political subdivisions create or recognize another handedness to which is assigned the rights, benefits, obligations, qualities, or effects of right-handedness." Arguments are that being left-handed is immoral. That it will somehow threaten right-handedness. That children raised by left-handed persons may grow up to be left-handed. That society should not have to provide accommodation to those who are left handed. Sound ridiculous? Well it wasn’t too long ago in our history that being left-handed was considered immoral. Peo...

The fourth panel of Jefferson’s words at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington states: "I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." By engraving this legislation, the Marshall/Newman marriage amendment as an amendment to our Constitution, this does create a very formidable piece of legacy legislation that will prevent future Virginians from changing civic policy by normal legislation routes. And this is contrary to Jeffersonian democracy. Judge James Harvie Wilkinson, III, is a con...

Perhaps at some future Judgment Day, we will be called on to answer for our actions and perhaps then we will not be able to justify those actions as being the way we were taught or told – the clear message of unconditional love and non-judgmental behavior may overrule. Perhaps the ability God gave humans to independently think, reason, and question, is both a way we are related to God; and the use of that gift, the criteria on which we will be judged. We are privy to the lessons of history and to the evolution of civilizations – and the lessons we might learn about how peoples have been misled by religious zealots and fundamentalists are many. In a lifetime in America we have witnessed substantial change in attitudes about black Americans, about women, and about the mentally ill. And, much earlier in time, issues such as whether the Earth is flat, whether the Earth is the center of the universe, and whether scientifically proven evolution is to even be considered, have been dispute...

Vote for Jim Webb – Virginia deserves better – the problems require better. Vote NO on the Marriage Amendment – Virginians don’t care to write discrimination into our Bill of Rights.

The moot court room of the University of Richmond’s T. C. Williams Law School was filled to capacity last night as Delegate Robert Marshall, supporting the Virginia Marriage Amendment, debated Senator John Edwards. And I felt an apology was due to Delegate Marshall after all the eye rolling, audible sighs, looks of incredulity, and suppressed hissing that greeted his defense of his pet project – the proposed amendment to Virginia’s Bill of Rights to define marriage. More properly this measure might be called, after Marshall's opening statement, the amendment to stop the gay agenda. In fairness to Delegate Marshall, the crowd, as I looked around, was stacked against him – they tended to be educated and/or young – and coincidentally the educated and the young are far more tolerant of the homosexuality that Marshall obviously finds immoral. Certainly he would have been more comfortable among authoritatively controlled rural evangelical fundamentalists. He even explained how afte...

Remember that Nazi Germany was a Christian country, that the KKK was a Christian organization, that the Spanish Inquisition was Christian, that our Christian Congress failed in fifty successive attempts to give women suffrage, that it was Christian preachers in our country that supported segregation and fought against interracial marriage. Will the Christians of those times be able, before God, at their own judgment, be able to argue that they only did what they were told, what their leaders told them was defensible? The Nazis used their anti Semitic laws as a political ploy to play on the fears and prejudices of the German people. Today, in America, more subdued, but in a similar vein, politicians are using fear and underlying prejudice to tap into the psyche of the electorate to enact anti homosexual laws that are sweeping across our country. Just as Jews were held accountable for the failings in prewar Germany, homosexuals are today being blamed for the demise of marriage in Ameri...

Maybe I’m just a bit thick, but I don’t quite get this Foley hoopla. Not from the right, not from the left, not from the media. Of course the actions of Foley were inappropriate. But compared to what? Tell me, why does this so catch the American imagination? Why is this something, like the Michael Jackson trial, seemingly titillating and magnetic, while at the same time intuitively abhorrent? And why is this destined to become a footnote of history? It is a three to four week media feeding frenzy in the making. And it detracts from far more important actual real time news, such as: the war (both of them), illegal immigration, social security and tax reform, jobs, environment, health care and education. But how in our hypocritical national psyche are we immune to any of the other following real news events that also happened today – and just about every day? ➢ The barely nineteen year old American soldier in Iraq who is gunned down today by a 16 year old Sunni kid hiding behind a...