Proposed Florida Marriage Amendment Targets More Than Gays

As was the case in Virginia, the proposed marriage amendment that Christianists are working to get on the Florida ballot this November would impact many more people than just gay couples. Yet its proponents disingenuously emphasize only that it will ban gay marriage - the same ploy they used in Virginia. This should come as no surprise since, if one studies the Christianists' true long term agenda, they want EVERYONE to have to live by their religious dictates: only married heterosexual couples will have recognized rights; sodomy laws will be re-enacted, abortion will be banned under all circumstances; contrception will be banned - they continually complain about the Supreme Court's decision in Griswold v. Connecticut finding a right to privacy - and homosexuals are driven out of sight and unmentionable in public schools.

Anyone who doubts this need only start monitoring sites like AFA, FRC, CWFA, etc., on a regular basis. Fortunately, some groups have awakened to this reality. Hopefully, they will be able to educate enough voters to defeat the proposed amendment as occurred in Arizona. Of course the fact that the amendment is underconsideration shows how far the USA has fallen from being the "land of the free" when a nation like Cuba is considering sweeping gay rights legislation (see the prior post). Here are highlights on the debate in Florida (http://tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080327/CAPITOLNEWS/803280310):

The main sponsor of a proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage said Wednesday all "aberrant forms of marriage" might become legal unless Florida voters adopt his proposal at the polls next November. But the former head of the National Organization for Women argued that the state already has laws recognizing only heterosexual unions — and warned that the pending change would jeopardize rights of tens of thousands of unmarried couples, gay and straight.

John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, and Miami attorney Patricia Ireland, representing anti-amendment group Florida Red and Blue, debated Amendment 2 at a luncheon of the Capital Tiger Bay Club. Stemberger's Florida4Marriage.org group succeeded Feb. 1 in getting more than 600,000 voter signatures to qualify the gay-marriage ban for a statewide referendum.

Ireland noted that Stemberger's amendment bans any "other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof." Ireland said no one knows what "substantial equivalent" means.

"We do know that if Amendment 2 passes, someone is going to be down the next day at the courthouse, filing a lawsuit saying domestic-partner benefits are treating people who receive them as if they were married, in terms of sharing their health care, or retirement benefits or making medical decisions," she said.

After the hour-long debate, a straw ballot of the audience indicated 45 listeners opposed to putting the gay-marriage ban in the constitution, 12 favored it and two checked "could go either way" on the issue.