Why are we wasting our time debating an amendment that will never be passed? Oh... yeah. Election year, duh.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt! Wrong answer.
We are deabting this amendment because the issue was thrust upon the rest of the country by a plurality of one in an activist court in Massachusetts.
The Chief Justice stated, "marriage is an evolving paradigm".
We don't like the way its evolving and intend to do something about it.
You don't like it?
Too bad.
My, this has been an interesting thread! Usually my friends scripter and little jeremiah get involved in logic battles with me over this subject to make a thread this active.
Suffice it to say, there are libertarian conservatives, and social conservatives, and they will have differing opinions on whether or not an FMA is a good thing or not. I'd like to take up the topic of how this is playing in the liberal news media.
Zeroisanumber, you're right that this is for election year show. It is fun to watch Kerry, Edwards, and Daschle get their panties in a bunch over having to vote against the FMA. That has to be the prime reason Frist is putting this together at this time. But has anybody thought why the Rats have not filibustered this to death? They certainly have enough votes, especially if you add Northern state Republicans (Ok, RINOs, if you will), to kill this vote, but they want to let it go on.
They are depending on their friends in the liberal media to spin defeat of the FMA as the first "legislative" victory for the gay marriage issue. If the press could let Clinton crow about his "victory" with a 50-50 split on the obstruction of justice issue in his impeachment trial, they will run "Federal Marriage Amendment Soundly Defeated" headlines if the vote runs 66-44 in favor of it.
Now, I know that some of you hope these headlines will firm up the base, and you've got a point. Anybody who really doesn't want to see gay marriage might just get in line behind Republican candidates this November, and would probably forgive the President on his immigration proposal, and that's a good thing. But has anyone considered what would happen on this issue if the FMA fails to get even fifty votes? Not only will you see the "Soundly Defeated" headlines (with added hyperbole), but it might just take some of the gas out of the pending marriage amendment efforts at the state level. I realize, most of them will pass in November, but the media will seize on any state that fails to, again, as a "victory". For them, its the 1960's all over again, and no matter how many times Martin Luther King was thrown in jail, the press of that time always celebrated the marches that he was NOT jailed.
For those of you out there who think that 67 votes will magically appear from heaven, or shame, or political expediency, I think you'll be quite disappointed come Wednesday. Liberals hoping to use their stand on that vote in the future are counting on seeing this as an early victory, when the day comes that we're not wrangling about gay rights.