Entries Tagged 'Politics' ↓

George Bush and John Kerry’s political campaigns both stopped in my hometown yesterday. Because it’s such an odd convergence, there have been quite a few news articles written about it. The Washington Post’s article was pretty interesting. It doesn’t give you a completely accurate feel for the area, but it’s close!

There was an insightful article in The Washington Post Magazine last Sunday, about the true meaning of the fable of My Pet Goat. Or maybe not insightful, just hilarious.

The U.S. Senate has scheduled a vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment for mid-July. The FMA is the constitutional amendment which would deny equal rights to gay Americans. It is designed to prevent gay people from getting married by the state, even in states which would otherwise allow them. By declaring gays to be second-class citizens, it also has the potential to provide constitutional justification for many other discriminatory laws.

It’s very important that our senators recongnize that this is a bad idea. To that end, it would be helpful if you could send letters to your senators expressing this viewpoint. Human Rights Campaign has made it really easy to do so. You can go to their website and fill out their online form in just a few seconds.

Every letter helps. It would mean a lot to me, and it will help show the Senate that discrimination does not make good politics. Thanks!

Roy “Ten Commandments” Moore is apparently considering a third-party bid for president. That would be fine with me…

Kenneth Marcus of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is on C-SPAN right now talking about the new option of allowing public school districts to offer single-sex education options. A number of options would be possible, including completely separate schools for boys and girls, or single-sex “school within a school” programs.

The Department of Education will allow schools to provide single-sex options if they can provide substantial academic justification for such separation. They want to offer educators a “diversity of options” in coming up with “creative solutions” that work for their communities.

So I’m wondering, if they truly believe that a diversity of options is best, why are they limiting this to gender? I’m sure people could come up with academic justification for separating races in the public schools. Perhaps students could concentrate better if there were no students of another race. Perhaps a community has more white students going to college than minority students. They could offer college prep classes to white students, and vocational education to minorities.

Of course this is a bad idea. You can come up with lots of rationales for separating people into subgroups. But it’s still better to integrate people, in any type of environment. It allows all subgroups to receive equal resources, equal attention and a more equal chance of success.

The Letter Writing Party was a success! We had 11 people show up at a local coffee house, to write letters to elected officials, letting them know of our opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment. Everybody had a good time, and most people stayed for an hour or two. All in all, we hand-wrote 34 letters to representatives and senators from around the country. Thanks to everyone who showed up for the event!

If you couldn’t make it, you can still write letters to your elected officials letting them know what you think of the proposed amendment. You can even do it all online.

Today’s Washington Post had a really good article about why the fight against a discriminatory constitutional amendment is so important to so many of us. If you’re on the fence about this important, divisive issue, you really should read this.

I’m hosting a Letter Writing Party on Sunday to help save our Constitution.

I, along with others around the nation, have volunteered to organize a group of friends to write letters opposing the so-called “Federal Marriage Amendment” to key members of Congress.

If you’re in the Washington area and are interested in helping out, email me for details.

Thanks for all the great responses to my gay marriage article. Keep ‘em coming!

I’ve been thinking a lot about the gay weddings in San Francisco over the last few days. To me, they’re an amazing victory. It’s one of the biggest instances of civil disobedience to happen here in the U.S. within my lifetime. Mayor Gavin Newsom won’t have the long-term relevance of Rosa Parks, but it’s still good to see someone standing up and challenging injustice with such force.
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