Happy Hate Day!

Yes indeedy do, today the White House "celebrates" the opening of debate on the Federal Marriage Amendment with the help of a stable-full of invited fundies, conservatives, and terrified Democrats who have to know they're marching themselves to the electoral guillotine by playing along with the Bushies on this one. John at AmericaBlog has a nice action alert up, for those who like to listen to their representatives' staffers sputter on the phone. I haven't called McCain or Kyl yet, partially because I suspect it would serve no purpose other than to give me some personal vindication, partially because I'm actually pretty shy and tend to avoid verbal confrontation.

This has been blogged to death, and I don't know that I have any original takes to offer. The proposed amendment is sheer grandstanding; some of its most vocal proponents have contributed plenty to the diminution of "marriage" through their own divorces and extramarital affairs. Evangelicals have the highest divorce rate of any demographic in the country, but somehow lifelong committed relationships between two people with the same chromosome set are the biggest threat to societal stability the world has yet seen.

Christ admonished his followers that whatever they did to the least among them, so they did to Christ himself. The mean-spiritedness of this amendment, which not only forbids same-gender marriage but also any legal contract securing a similar set of rights and responsibilities, suggests that the "Christian" howler monkeys on the right would rather live in the world of Leviticus than the world of the Beatitudes. Self-righteous hate and oppression of the Other is so much easier, requires so much less reasoned thought than selfless love. So much easier to tick a category on a checklist and write off every member of that category than to recognize the inherent humanity--recognize yourself--in the individuals who comprise every group of people on earth outside your own.