President Bush has announced that he plans to support a law that would define marriage as the union between a man and a woman, thus thwarting efforts to legalize gay marriage:
While Bush said people must be tolerant and “respect each individual,” that “does not mean that someone like me needs to compromise on the issue of marriage.”
Of all the stupid Bush quotes I’ve heard, that one’s one of the stupidest. Does Bush actually think that legalizing gay marriage would force him to divorce Laura and marry Dick Cheney?
This is a shining example of the problems that occur when governments try to play morals police and impose their religiously-derived code of morality on everyone. And is a main reason why, despite agreeing with them on many issues of foreign and economic policy, I could never vote for the right.
Gay marriage can’t be a “majority rules” decision, because the majority of us are straight. Put it to a popular vote and minorities usually get shafted. Instead, it’s time for us to recognize – as Canadian society is finally realizing – that we’re not abdicating any of our own rights by granting them to others. And that denying rights to minorities is something that history – and morality by any kind of secular definition – cannot tolerate or forgive.