Guns &
Love:
Courage & Cowardice |
|
I'm not
quite sure what to make of the fact that more
Members of Congress have come out in
favor of same sex marriage than for gun control.
Trying to figure out why that is is likely to
lead to insanity. Of course, they are not
going to have to actually vote on same sex
marriage, that is currently up to the Supreme
Court; so it may explain their seeming righteous
courage.
After all,
talk is cheap; but votes cost money. Oh dear,
did I say that? What I mean, mostly, is
that campaign donors look at voting records to
rate their representatives. Politicians
who have been accused of having 'said' something
can always later say, "Well, yeah, I seem to
have said that but what I actually meant
was....[fill in your favorite bullshit]...."
But, when they have voted 'yes' or 'no' on
something, that is hard to pretend to have been
taken out of context. And so we now have
the simultaneous spectacle of some showing some
kind of courage, and a majority showing true
cowardice.
Over a
decade ago, in 1996, our craven Congress voted
to enact the Defense of Marriage Act, imposing
religious bigotry onto American civil law.
During this coming Pride Month, the Supreme
Court will rule on whether all or part of DOMA
is constitutional or not. For this nation,
that is supposed to be the beacon of liberty and
the leader of the free world, our enlightenment
will have come rather late if it comes at all.
In mid April the most remote country on Earth,
New Zealand, voted to allow same sex marriage.
Moments later, members of its Parliament rose to
sing a Maori love song. France legalized
same sex marriage on April 23rd, and Uruguay is due to
follow in the coming days or weeks. Other
nations that preceded us are Argentina, Belgium,
Canada, Denmark, Holland, Iceland (whose elected
Prime Minister happens to be a lesbian), Norway,
Portugal, South Africa, Spain, and Sweden.
Transgender politicians are running for office
in Pakistan; talk about courage!
But here,
for shame, some of our Neanderthal leaders would
rather vote to enable mass murder than love.
With passion, they pusillanimously extol the
right of every American to posses assault
weapons with enough firepower to kill dozens of
children within moments, with their mothers
weeping in the Senate Gallery; but are unable to
bring themselves to vote to enshrine the right of love
for every American. Such ignorance, such
cowardice!
Our LGBT
service members and veterans, who patriotically
volunteered to defend our nation's freedom, are
still denied equal benefits and rights because
of who we love. Due to DOMA there are two
categories for family benefits: everything and
nothing, depending on the gender of our partners
in life. We await the Supreme Court to
correct that national injustice.
As service
members and veterans, we were trained to use
weapons of war to defend freedom around the
world. For us, the freedom to have weapons
of war at home is insanity. We await
Congress to free us from that horror.