One of the more "enlightened" aspects of politics here in Arizona are voter initatives, wherein the public gets to petition to put stuff on the ballot. In the windup for the November elections, the streets are already crawling with petitioners wanting to get the necessary quota of signatures to get their particular fixation on the ballot.
This year, we have the Protect Marriage Arizona ammendment to the state constitution which is actually being spearheded by the Center for Arizona Policy, a right-wing, conservative Christian group that also (in 2004) supported teaching ID in AZ schools. As Bethany Lewis (at the time, CAP legislative analyst) stated, CAP
wants Arizona teachers to be directed to "test, modify or refute the evolution theory." "We are Christians. We believe in God and believe there is a designer behind the natural world we look at," said Lewis, who fears some people want to replace religion with science. Lewis said her organization is not asking the state to teach creationism. It wants teachers to engage students in discussion of "intelligent design."
Ms Lewis has since gone on to ASU's law school, thus beginning her trip on the Casey Luskin fasttrack to ID fame.
In any case, the PMA states:
To preserve and protect marriage in this state, only a union between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage by this state or its political subdivisions and no legal status for unmarried persons shall be created or recognized by this state or its political subdivisions that is similar to that of marriage.
As opponents have pointed out, not only does this seek to outlaw same-sex marriages, but also would prevent benefits being made available to unmarried partners.
So why is this ammendment necessary? As we all know "[m]arriage is under attack. Determined activists are using the courts to redefine marriage in America. If we do not act to protect marriage, activist judges will redefine marriage forever." Just last week I was walking down the street and realized that my marriage of eleven years was being threatened by those sinning gays. And let's not forget those gay activist judges! It's just a slippery slope, isn't it? I mean, "[i]f we allow the courts to redefine the institution of marriage, where does it stop? What prevents further redefinition of marriage to include polygamy, group marriages, etc.? If marriage is redefined it loses all meaning." I mean, will someone please think of the children? "Children do best when they have a mom and a dad."
The temptation to go home and divorce my wife and abandon my daughter was almost overwhelming, but thankfully I overcame it.
What's sad is that people actually believe this crap. If marriage has lost any meaning, it is because of the ease by which people get out of it via divorce. And guess what? Polls have shown that divorce rates are higher among Conservative Christians (CAP supporters?) than any other faith group (including atheists and agnostics). Someone needs to clean out their own stable before mucking about in mine.
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The Center for Arizona Policy was formed by local religious right nutcase Len Munsil, an ASU alumnus and former editor of the State Press newspaper. He has a long record of advocating something close to theocracy, with a particular emphasis on making or keeping many kinds of consensual adult sexual activity illegal. His group was the main one that opposed the repeal of Arizona's laws against sodomy, oral sex, and cohabitation which were repealed on May 8, 2001 by a female Republican governor, Jane Dee Hull.
I describe a personal encounter I had with Len Munsil when he was editor of the State Press refusing to print a letter-to-the-editor from me here:
http://lippard.blogspot.com/2005/12/best-argument-for-supporting-goldwa…
I hope that Munsil is still somewhat out of the Republican mainstream in Arizona--I know that when I attended a Federalist Society lunch meeting a few years ago, at least the attorneys at the table I sat with seemed to consider him something of a buffoon. Of course, that was back before the "war on terror," and since then it seems that many of the libertarian-leaning conservative individuals and groups have lost their dedication to liberty (or perhaps it was just lip service all along).
It gets better ... apparently he intends running for govenor against Nepolitano. We're in for an interesting few months here in the desert!
Interesting. Up here in the Great White North (Canada to you), "gay marriage" is not the explosive issue that it appears to be in parts of the US, but it's there as a concern for some. Most often, it manifests itself through a desire to name an "equivalent to marriage" arrangement for same-sex couples something like "civil union."
In other words, it's pretty well down to a labeling issue. The concern continues to be that "redefinition" of the term marriage would be damaging. Having discussed this with a few people who are in favour of this approach, it's interesting that I've not yet been given any example of what this damage might be. I've also not seen any examples in the considerable number of US and Canadian articles I've read on the subject.
"Damage" for which examples cannot be given doesn't seem like something to lose sleep over.
According to "The Arizona Republic" as of 30 March, CAP was having difficulty getting the signatures they need to get this measure on the ballot http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0330marriage033…
CAP is also supporting a bill in the Arizona Legislature (SB 1153) which would prohibit, "public postsecondary institutions from denying recognition, access, rights, benefits or privileges to a student organization on the basis that the organization advocates religious, political or philosophical beliefs or perspectives or on the basis that the group determines its membership in accordance with those beliefs." The bill would not require that an organization be recognized that "engages in discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin or sex." http://www.azleg.gov/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/legtext/47leg/2r/summary…
Sounds pretty harmless until you take into account the policy the Arizona Board of Regents already has in place which prohibits, "engaging in discriminatory activities, whether unlawful or whether prohibited by university policy, on the basis of age, ethnicity, gender, disability, color, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status." http://www.abor.asu.edu/1%5Fthe%5Fregents/policymanual/chap5/chapter_v…
Clearly, if the bill becomes law, certain groups would lose the protection they now have under the ABOR policy. What really "has my knickers in a twist" is that CAP claims this bill is all about free speech when what they're really advocating is free speech for some instead of free speech for all.