Looks like the repugnican gay base is upset.
uk.gay.com
Gay Republican slams Bush
GAY.COM/PlanetOut.com Network
Tuesday 6 June, 2006 11:13
The head of the largest group of gay Republicans, along with other gay rights advocates, scolded President Bush on Monday for using a White House event to promote a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
"Today, you desecrate America's house by using the White House grounds to denigrate part of the American family," said Patrick Guerriero, president of the Log Cabin Republicans.
His remark was part of an open letter to the president circulated Monday in advance of the president's address in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building -- next to the West Wing of the White House -- to promote the Federal Marriage Amendment. The Senate is debating the measure this week.
Guerriero reminded the president that LGBT Americans pay taxes, serve in the military, contribute to community services and worship in the nation's churches.
"Your effort to codify discrimination against our families, including men and women in uniform while the nation is at war, is offensive and unworthy of the office of the Presidency," Guerriero said.
President Bush also touted the measure in his weekly radio address last Saturday.
"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," the president told radio listeners.
Several other groups have criticized the president's support for the measure as a political ploy.
"Surrounded by a group of extremists, President Bush showed today how enormously out of touch this administration is with the rest of America," said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese, who held a press conference on the Capitol with a group of like-minded citizens.
"President Bush and Senator Frist, the American people want you to stop playing divisive politics and lead on issues that matter," said Joann Elder, who flew in from Wisconsin to appear at Monday's event with her husband, Joe.
"Writing such discrimination into our national Constitution saddens me because our son is one of millions of wonderful Americans who would have no hope for equal civil rights of marriage."
The American Civil Liberties Union condemned the measure as "neither compassionate nor conservative."
"Lawmakers rightly rejected it in 2004, but election year politics and Republicans pandering to their base have resurrected this mean-spirited amendment," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington legislative office.
"Congress must -- and will -- reject this anti-family proposal again. Discrimination has no place in America, and certainly not in our founding document."
A vote on the Senate bill is expected this week. With all but one Senate Democrat -- Ben Nelson of Nebraska -- and some Republicans expected to vote in opposition, it does not have the two-thirds support needed to pass. |
