| Want to know, as BMG regular Michael Forbes Wilcox asks, "why the left is losing"? Just read The Phoenix's editorial on the anti-marriage amendment scheduled to come up in this week's Constitutional Convention.
Basically, the editorialists at the Phoenix are really really mad at everyone who's against gay marriage. And because the editorialists have decided what the answer should be, and they're really really mad at people who disagree with them, that ought to be enough for everyone else in the state. Honest to God, can they possibly think they are going to convince anyone of anything, or advance their cause even a teensy bit, with crap like this?
Here's the bottom line of the editorial:
[T]his talk of the people needing a voice, of the legislature needing to act, is vile hypocrisy.
Ummmm, let's see, how shall I describe that? Oh, I know: BULLSHIT. Let's recall, shall we, the words of Article 48 of the state Constitution:
A proposal for an amendment to the constitution introduced by initiative petition shall be voted upon in the form in which it was introduced, unless such amendment is amended by vote of three-fourths of the members voting thereon in joint session, which vote shall be taken by call of the yeas and nays if called for by any member.
Folks, a vote on a constitutional amendment that is properly before the legislature - like this one - is not optional. It is constitutionally required, and anyone advocating parliamentary maneuvers to avoid a vote is advocating nothing less than open, flagrant defiance of a constitutional imperative. Sorry, but those are the facts.
One of the editorial's targets is AG Tom Reilly, whose position is that "the legislature should vote, but I'd vote no if I were a legislator." The Phoenix's pathetically hilarious (or is it hilariously pathetic?) response to that position? "Those are weasel words," proclaim the pious editorialists. Hmm. I guess the words of the state Constitution are "weasel words" too, since that's what they require. Of course, the editorial doesn't actually mention the constitutional requirement for a vote, probably because however clever the editorialists may be - and if you ask them, they're very clever indeed, no doubt - they're not clever enough to find a way around the plain language of Article 48.
Unfortunately, the editorial goes beyond willful ignorance of the words of the Constitution. It gets personal:
Where would the civil-rights movement have been if Tom Reilly had been in the fight? It’s a safe bet that the schools of Little Rock, Arkansas, still would be segregated....
Reilly and O’Malley are latter-day Jim Crows: Reilly because of his political desire to have it both ways, and O’Malley because he is promoting redneck theology as a public practice.
I'm putting aside for present purposes the unnecessarily vitriolic criticism of Cardinal O'Malley (and Mitt Romney, who gets much of the same), since at least those guys are wrong on the merits of the issue. But to call Tom Reilly a "latter-day Jim Crow" and an apologist for segregation just because he wants the legislature to carry out its constitutionally-mandated obligation to vote?
That is a disgrace. |
