Vote Against the FMA: URGENT

[Locksley_Hall]

Hi guys

I apologise if this is too off-topic - or if I'm not posting it in the right place. But since I'm assuming everyone here is either gay or gay friendly  , and since there are probably a fair few Americans on this board, I just wanted to remind everyone that Congress has an upcoming vote scheduled on the FMA or Federal Marriage Amendment, which seeks to write it into the Constitution that gay marriage AND civil unions should be banned across the United States forever.

We all know why they're doing this: Bush is in trouble, support amongst his conservative base is weakening, the mid-term elections are coming up in November, the Bush administration wants an issue to rally the troops. And they are perfectly happy to use gay and lesbian citizens as their punching bag, as they have done in the past. The sad thing is that it works: nothing gets the fundies excited like the idea of banning same-sex marriage, and organisations like the American Family Association, Focus on the Family etc are already telling their members to flood their Congress representatives with emails saying they support the FMA.

SO - we need to fight back. The vote on the FMA is currently scheduled for June 5. If you go here:

http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/campaign/fma_postcards

you can have a postcard automatically sent to your Congress representatives telling them you OPPOSE the Amendment. There's also a box you can tick to get email updates on how you can continue to fight against it. If anyone has any other good ideas for how to effectively demonstrate opposition, I would love to hear them: I just thought I'd post this here since it's something simple and quick that everyone can do. Please, if you've got a moment, do take the time (and forward the link on to anyone you know who would be supportive) - the sad fact is that the social conservatives in this country are often the ones who get their way because they are ones who are committed enough to lobby in huge numbers and harrass their representatives. We need to be doing the same!

OK *gets off soapbox* have a lovely day everyone, thanks for listening

[TJ]

Locksley_Hall,

Thanks for posting this. I am on the HRC's email list and I get the same information.

My Oklahoma Congressmen, both US Senators and the House Representative, are right-wing Republicans. Representative John Sullivan has people to screen his emails, snail mails, phone calls so that all he has to read is communication which supports his agenda. I know that for a fact.

I have sent written communication to Sullivan and what I got back which supposedly was a response to what I had written did not even have an answer to what I had asked in the first place.

[Daniel]

I have spoken with many intelligent family members about this issue, and while I understand there is a large conservative holding within the United States, this presents a more severe issue (which our nation has faced before and which resulted in civil war): States' rights.

It seems to me that the reason that this is being introduced as a Constitutional Amendment is to override the current laws and policies of individual states. Up until now, the only federal laws that I am aware of which deal specifically with an institution of marriage were those regarding income tax. Until now, marriage laws have always been the sacred domain of individual states, where many state supreme courts have viewed the institutions of marriage as religious in nature and beyond the scope of legalistic motives.

This is what is of more particular concern: that the federal government (an expansive beauracracy which has minimal concern in local civic or economic statutes) is attempting to alter a federally binding document to create specific changes in local civic and economic statutes. For this reason alone, it should be voted against.

[ednbarby]

Ironic, isn't it, Daniel?  I thought Republicans were supposed to be all about smaller government, states' rights, and preserving individual freedoms.

 

I wrote all my congresspeople and I signed every petition I could get my hands on, even though I knew it was all a political power play - they're smart enough to know that it had very little to no chance of actually making it through the Senate.

I did that because it pisses me off to no conceivable end that those bastards are deliberately and calculatingly using homophobia, once again, to further their agenda just as they used it in Ohio in November of 2004 to steal another Presidency.  It pisses me off and it literally makes me sick.

[Giancarlo]

I actually was once a smaller government republican, but I disassociated myself with the party and shifted towards libertarianism (now that's true small government advocacy). That was some years ago. That was before Bush was even president...