1. The “Marriage” Amendment is Not About Marriage

The so-called “Marriage Amendment is not about “marriage,” “the family,” or “children.” The Marriage Amendment is about you!

It makes no difference that you may have no intention to ever marry, adopt children, or make children.

It makes no difference that this is (for now) a largely symbolic gesture. Symbolic, not because it would have no effect on your life — it would, should you ever wish to be covered by your partner’s health benefits, or file a joint tax return, or have immediate-family status in a medical emergency: the amendment forbids not merely same-sex marriages but all “the legal incidents thereof,” like civil unions.

This is an empty, rhetorical gesture because the amendment has no hope of passing. Even if the House and Senate managed to get the necessary two-thirds majority, 38 states would still have to ratify the change.

2. The “Marriage” Amendment is About You!

What the Marriage Amendment is really about is bringing shame back into the public square — your shame. Its most hardcore supporters imagine they can slam the closet door shut again. To them homosexuality is not a naturally occurring state, but a contrived one — a choice, and a sinful one.

The Marriage Amendment is an attempt to codify a religiously based animus against gay men and women into Constitutional law. It is an animus that comes from a selective reading of a part of the Bible, Leviticus, which is concerned primarily with how animals should be prepared for sacrifice, as well as dietary and sanitary precautions that were last current in the 9th Century BCE. The eating of pork and shrimp, for instance, both judged “unclean,” is forbidden.

3. Marriage is Not the Issue. Congressional Careers Are

Beginning today the Republicans will stage what may become a week-long sideshow on the Senate floor. The “preservation of Western Civilization,” we will be told, is at risk. Two lesbians, legally married in Massachusetts, threaten truth, justice, and the American Way.

Not only will these two lesbians crush Western civilization by the weight of their union, but also “the family” and “children” — both maximum scare words tested in Republican focus groups.

Today — in a craven performance that will haunt them for the rest of their careers, that will reach into the future like those Life Magazine photos from 1963 showing black protesters being hosed down and chased by dogs in Birmingham — the good Senators of the Republic will grip their lapels and wring their hands. If these two lesbians are allowed to stay married, if they are not forcibly divorced by an amendment to the Constitution, all other marriages in America will become shams.

The hottest hot-button in this renewed debate is gay adoption. Christian radio stations and far-right call-in shows are echoing a particularly vile talking point about gay men wanting to adopt children to make them — and this is always the phrase — “sex slaves.”

That sort of corny rhetoric has Karl Rove’s thumbprints all over it. When not betraying CIA agents, Karl works on the worst fears and most backward bigotry of the lower reaches of the Republican base. He made a career suggesting that Democrat opponents were crypto-homosexuals, most notoriously in the case of Texas governor Ann Richards, effectively putting George W. Bush on the national stage. (Nice work, Karl — a recent Quinnipiac poll found that W. tops the list as the worst president in the post-World War II era.)

We do not expect the good and virtuous Senators to sully themselves by repeating this canard about “sex slaves” — that was fodder only for the most benighted of the base and intended to fly below the radar of serious debate. Instead they will tell us the sad story of Catholic Charities in Boston. Catholic Charities has refused to place children with gay couples, citing religious scruples. Thus, the organization lost its state funding and decided to close its doors.

Some contrarian from the other side of the aisle may point out that if a charity — Catholic or otherwise — is subsidized by tax-payer funds it can not offer its services to one group of citizens, but refuse another. That objection will be but a piffle against the nightmare scenario of an America devastated — not by suitcase A-bombs, lackadaisical disaster responses, or a three-billion-dollar-a-week war that is both optional and unwise. No, America is about to be decimated by those two lesbians who live down the lane.

And yet for all the bluster, even the Senators who fret and strut most furiously this particular hour upon the stage don’t really believe their own bullshit. They well know its all a cynical ploy to protect — not marriage — but their own Republican hides. A little bait and switch to swing the coming congressional elections by bringing out evangelical voters, lately as disenchanted with the Bush administration as everyone else.

The billboard, above, is a typical and telling gimmick — paid for by the Republican Party, of course.

4. Fight Back — Money Talks

The following is a list of the 17 anti-gay states that have already passed Constitutional state amendments against same-sex marriage. This means that state courts cannot rule marriage discrimination unconstitutional because the right to discriminate has been written into constitutional law — an iron-clad assurance that the federal Marriage Amendment people seek to impose on the nation.

If you live in one of these states, Nightcharm extends its condolences. The rest of us may want to avoid them this summer and spend our “pink dollars” elsewhere.

The states are: Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and Utah.

Yes, we find this list pretty shocking: Nevada … with Las Vegas! Louisiana … with New Orleans!

This is an eye-opener for those of us in the bluer states. The war against our equal citizenship has been going on — in earnest! — for quite a while now. We have arrived late to the battle — but we are here now.

And we are silent no more.

For more information, check Marriage Equality USA, as well as the National Conference of State Legislatures.

We invite our readers to add their suggestions.