Gay Marriage? Bush and Religious Friends Shout: “Amend!”

So President Bush wants a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. My first thought upon hearing this was that he and his friends on the “religious right” must feel awfully threatened by the prospect of homosexual matrimony to propose an amendment to the Constitution for only the 28th time in the country's history. The whole idea is ugly and ridiculous, of course, and for the life of me I’ve never understood how someone else’s sexual preference can endanger me in any way, but Bush’s announcement did spur me to ponder those things about which I feel quite threatened myself. Taking a cue from the president, I then devised some constitutional amendments of my own that I’d like to see enacted so I can feel safer...

I've been pretty concerned about my safety the last couple of years. No, not from "terrorists" the president constantly warns me we're in a war against, but from what is happening to my country in the name of this cause. Ever since the invasion of Iraq, I've been worried about how this misguided fiasco has diverted critical resources from tracking down America's real enemies, the ones who have been directly implicated in 9/11. Maybe al-Qaida is really some sort of homosexual terrorist front demanding worldwide matrimonial rights for gays, come hell or high water, and we just haven’t been let in on the secret yet. Barring that, though, I ponder the immense global goodwill that existed for America after 9/11 until Bush squandered it, and how it might have been put to good use to make the whole world safer. Now I fret that Bush’s surreal dismissal of longtime allies’ cooperation, a sort of bad global rendition of a Three Stooges fingers-in-the-eye routine (I can just picture Bush saying “Nyuck-nyuck-nyuck, woo-woo-woo-woo!”), and the continuing underfunding of homeland security (who the heck came up with “homeland”: Johann Aushcroft?), will leave America unnecessarily vulnerable to future violence. Perhaps a constitutional amendment is in order here, one that prohibits Congress from ceding to the president, by handing him a blank requisition slip to order major military operations at will, its sole constitutional authority for authorizing war.

Speaking of war-like things, apprehension grips me when I read another article these days about Bush’s contradictory policy regarding nuclear weapons. He says that terrorists want them, attacks a nation that doesn’t have them, pays scant attention to back alley deals that allow their proliferation, ignores “allies” who develop them, says the world needs fewer of them, and yet orders the production of more of them. He appears to have designated himself as the arbiter of who can have them and who can’t, which is an implicit acceptance of their continuing existence and a serious departure from the global doctrine of non-proliferation that has prevailed in recent years. Talk about threatening: Here’s a guy who waged war against a defenseless country for no justifiable reason, and he sees himself as a sort of global Judge Wapner presiding over the Nuclear People’s Court? No one’s ever plausibly explained, either, the logic behind Bush’s push for designing and manufacturing new “bunker buster” nuclear bombs, also known by their Dr. Strangelove-like moniker as “baby nukes.” Are there that many otherwise-impenetrable super-fortified caves full of terrorists worldwide that America has to spend billions it doesn’t have to restart a whole new arms race? And what do these alleged bunkers contain that they are so frightening anyway? Volumes of ledgers documenting business dealings between the Bush and bin Laden families? Huge cells of gays-only terrorists that must be destroyed at all costs lest they cut a wide swath across America, redecorating our homes while we’re at work? And isn’t the military capable of laying siege anymore when it has to? I propose an amendment that requires the U.S., if it plans on attacking another country to disarm it of purported weapons of mass destruction, to first disarm the nation that currently possesses the world’s largest stockpile of such armaments. Since that nation would invariably be America, perhaps this amendment would prompt a little more debate in Congress before we invade countries that pose zero danger to us, the type of discussion that was glaringly absent amongst our “leaders” during the run-up to the Iraq war.

Speaking of war-liking things, I find myself feeling insecure late at night about all of the money being made on the war by companies like Bechtel and Halliburton. If there were transparent, competitive bidding open to companies worldwide to reconstruct Iraq, then maybe the administration's claim that its overweening concern is for the Iraqi people's welfare rather than corporate cronies in whose ample laps these open-ended contracts always seem to land, might be a bit more believable. (I wonder: If Bush and his fundamentalist friends who supported the war had realized that millions of Iraqis are gay, would there still be such professed “compassion” regarding Iraqis’ well-being?) When I think of the billions of dollars already paid to these companies and others like them with little or no oversight, with billions more sure to follow, I think of how this money might be better applied here at home, to improve the sorry state of U.S. education or to help provide health insurance to the tens of millions of Americans who have little or none at all. Perhaps some of that money could even be used to pay for a few town hall seminars here and there on tolerance and acceptance, starting with one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It doesn't seem to be much of a stretch to say that anything that endangers the education or health of Americans endangers the general welfare of the country. How about an amendment that expressly prohibits war profiteering?

I'm kind of nervous about the safety of my food. I worry, too, about air quality and the purity of my drinking water. After all, New Yorkers were told by the EPA that their air was safe to breathe a few days after 9/11, when in fact it wasn't. The USDA has essentially been annexed, with the government's blessing, as an advertising division of the meatpacking industry. The administration pushes as hard as it can to open federal lands to mining and clear-cutting; ditto to oil and gas drilling, damn the environmental consequences. If Bush's Orwellian-named Clean Skies Act ever goes through, tons of additional toxins will spew into the atmosphere. What's most threatening of all, though, is that as long as his administration is in power, there's no hope of an easing of this assault on our ecosystem. The Bush administration is riddled with former officials from the agribusiness, mining, chemical, and energy industries. I mean, just look at who’s vice president. (This is said mostly in a metaphorical sense, of course, since trying to catch a glimpse of Dick Cheney these days has become a sort of high-level political parlor game.) The government agencies that are supposed to protect our heritage are now stealth conduits for piping as much of the country's resources to as few of its wealthiest, dirtiest corporations as possible. I guess the only way Bush would remove some of the foxes he has currently guarding the henhouses is if he or his religious pals found out the foxes were gay. It’s incredibly strange how another’s homosexuality is Bush’s tripwire, when he is obviously quite at ease utilizing folks whose main talents are specializing in unmitigated greed, rampant dishonesty, and ignoring entirely the sort of filthy, destitute legacy they will be leaving for future Americans. Here's an amendment to the Constitution I'd like to see: No Cabinet position can be occupied by any current or former employee connected to any industry that the position oversees.

An awful lot of jobs have been lost while Bush has been president--about two and a half million, at last count. I was the recipient of a layoff notice in the past year myself. Thankfully, it was rescinded soon thereafter, but several of my co-workers had to suffer through the process for weeks before getting their white slips pulled. I remember how anxious I felt just the couple of days I possessed my notice; I can't imagine how scary it must feel to lose one’s job. But millions of my fellow citizens know the feeling, and what's more, the administration says "outsourcing" of American jobs is actually a good thing for the economy. (Maybe Bush and his evangelical benefactors pray that if enough gays are amongst the jobless that they’ll just ALL leave the country and go back to Gayvania, or wherever it is they’re from.) Now, I'm no economist, but it's hard to see how the permanent loss of decent jobs in this country can make it more stable, and I worry about those who can't pay their bills because they are out of work, especially when no new jobs are being created. Don't millions of permanently unemployed folks threaten the "American way of life"? This situation is even more galling in light of the fact that the ratio of CEO salaries to that of the average American worker is at an all-time high. I'd like to see a constitutional amendment requiring that if American jobs are to be outsourced, the position of CEO in each company considering such a move must be the first to go.

I'm haunted by this sense of impending doom regarding my upcoming golden years. Not only can I not fully count on my pension plan being solvent when I retire, in light of the recent, incessant corporate scandals that still haven't truly been safeguarded against, but the whole Social Security situation alarms me, too. When the all-powerful Chairman of the Fed Allan Greenspan intoned the other day that, for all intents and purposes, “significant structural adjustments” need to be made to the system, he was using Greenspan-speak to assert that Social Security’s minimum retirement age must go north while scheduled cost-of-living increases go south. This is a little hard to swallow: Just like millions of other Americans, my wife and I have paid into the fund for years with the understanding that we would receive certain benefits at a certain time, and have figured those monthly checks into our retirement calculations. Now, after working our entire adult lives, our retirement is threatened. This pill is not any easier to swallow when, according to The Brookings Institution (http://www.brook.edu), the cumulative effect of all of Bush’s tax cuts could, by 2014, add about $2 trillion to the already grossly bloated deficit. That same pill is also made extremely bitter when, according to Citizens for Tax Justice (http://www.ctj.org), the Bush tax cuts (if made permanent, a highly likely scenario) will, by 2010, fatten the wallet that year of each of the richest one percent of Americans by an average $85,000. (Amazingly, there appears to be no provision in the Bush tax cuts to allot less to gay, rich taxpayers-- probably an oversight). How fair is it to shovel billions in completely gratuitous tax refunds back to the already super-rich while telling the millions of America’s working stiffs that they’ll just have to work harder and longer to start collecting from a fund into which they’ve paid with good faith for decades? I want an amendment that rescinds the Bush tax cuts, restores the Social Security trust account to full financial health, and precludes any money from being used for anything but funding Social Security payments.

Gary* and Jim* are a gay couple who have lived next door to my wife Ann and me for about 9 years and as far as I can tell, have not once threatened our marriage. And if they ever decide to get married, I fail to see how that would endanger us, unless of course, they encase their marriage certificate in a heavy frame and one of them brains Ann or me with it. Their sexuality matters not and rarely enters my mind. I am far more interested in what kind of neighbors they are: Do they maintain their property, keep the noise down, take the trash out, watch out for our house when we're away? Are they pleasant when we converse? Do they not complain when I play my banjo (rather loudly and worse, poorly)? The answer to all of these is “yes.” I'd be much more concerned if they were drug dealers, car thieves, or heaven forbid, liable to vote for Bush--now THAT would scare me.

As I’ve said, there are plenty of things going on these days that threaten me and for which amending the Constitution might make some sort of sense. But gay marriage sure as hell isn’t one of them. And you know, I just thought of another amendment that might be worth pursuing: How about one that, if a president proposes a constitutional amendment to legalize second-class status for a group of Americans by denying them civil rights that all other Americans enjoy, requires an immediate sanity check of said president by a panel of certified professionals, followed promptly thereafter by the administration of a refresher course on the principles of the U.S. Constitution?


*Not their real names; they’re ideal neighbors and we don’t want anyone to entice them away from next door.