Here’s an astonishing result. The Christian Broadcasting Network has an unscientific online poll on the religious right amendment. The result? As of my checking in late last night, a 61 percent against amending the constitution, with 38 percent for. maybe I should stop referring to this amendment as one sponsored by the religious right. Even they don’t want it.
UGLY AND INTEMPERATE? James Taranto argues that the following passages from my blog are ugly and intemperate:
The religious fanatics of 9/11 despise the American Constitution exactly because it guarantees equality under the law, freedom of conscience and separation of church and state. The war I have supported is a war, ultimately, in defense of that Constitution. .-.-. The sanctity of the Constitution is what we are fighting for. We’re not fighting just to defend ourselves. We are fighting to defend a way of life: pluralism, freedom, equality under the law. You cannot defend the Constitution abroad while undermining it at home. .-.-.
It’s the president who has to answer to the charge that in wartime, he chose to divide this country over the most profound symbol there can be: the Constitution itself. I refuse, in short, to be put in a position where I have to pick between a vital war and fundamental civil equality. The two are inextricable. They are the same war. And this time, the president has picked the wrong side. He will live to be ashamed that he did.
One question: how? The context of these remarks is my attempt to argue against the notion that I should support the president because the war on terror is more important than the president’s support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay citizens from civil marriage. My point is that I consider the fight for civil rights indistinguishable in my eyes from the fight for freedom abroad. And I consider the way in which the president has chosen to raise the stakes over civil marriage to a national, constitutional level – where it does not and need not belong – to be recklessly divisive while we are at war. How is that ugly? Dennis Prager equated gay couples seeking civil marriage with terrorists. I simply bemoan the fact that a president I have loyally supported during a vital war should decide to endorse profound discrimination against a group of Americans. I fail to see any comparison. And I fail to see the slightest ugliness or intemperance. Except in Taranto’s ugly and intemperate remarks.
The Dish 