you can thank Bush locogrinBLOW and longnSHORT wiener
Gay marriage would not have come about so quickly without the assistance of George Bush. He didn’t mean to do it, of course. Bush had that peculiar blindness that comes with being one of the one percent. He was born on third base and thought he had hit a triple. So when he was reelected by the narrowest of margins, he thought he could do anything he wanted because–well, because he was George Bush!
So in his inaugural address, while all Washington looked on, he told the nation he was going to pass an amendment outlawing gay marriage. He didn’t realize there would be a mayor in the audience from a small town out west–San Francisco–where most folk didn’t agree with him. He also didn’t realize that most Americans root for the underdogs and hate the bullies.
The Democratic mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, was so incensed by comments made by Bush sympathizers about “homosexuals” and the “gay agenda”, that he decided to do whatever he could to counteract Bush’s hateful intent. Newsom determined to start performing gay marriages right away. So Bush started the ball rolling.
The bullies didn’t give up without a fight. They were certain if they got the issue into the Supreme Court, the conservative justices there would put a stop to gay marriage forever. The Mormon and Catholic Churches spent millions of dollars of their members’ money to pass an anti-gay initiative in California, on the fake assumption that, somehow, if gays were allowed equal rights, that would be bad for everyone else. The initiative passed. Bigots rejoiced.
But then something strange happened. The courts sided with the oppressed minority. Federal judges decided that the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed “equal protection of the laws”, meant exactly what it said. This decision was astonishing to the rabid right because they were sure they had everything going their way.
Public opinion began to swing away from the right-wing bigots as well. The American love for the underdog came out in full force. President Obama, who MotherJones.com said had actually supported gay marriage in private in 1996, finally gave it his public support. A new pope was elected, Francis, who said he would shift emphasis away from “abortion, gay marriage, and birth control” toward poverty and global warming–I presume this means the Catholic church won’t be supporting any more anti-LGBTQ referendums!
On Friday, the Supreme Court finally agreed that the Fourteenth Amendment is the law of the land. This was 147 years after it became the law of the land and 146 years since people started to ignore it. But this amazing victory for LGBTQ rights would not have been possible without the short-sightedness and partisanship of Republican President Bush and the courage and heroism of Democratic Mayor Gavin Newsom. |
