Austin & Victoria Papers Against Prop 2
By Karl-Thomas Musselman
Today the principal papers of Austin and Victoria came out against Constitutional Amendment 2, joining the Houston Chronicle in endorsing a No vote.
The Statesman was very eloquant in it's editorial, one of the best I've read...
Over the past five years in Texas, about 635,000 divorce cases have been filed in state and county courts to end a marriage between a man and woman. But Texans are being told that on Nov. 8, in a statewide election, they can defend the institution of marriage — not by banning divorce, or making it more difficult to marry in the first place, but by voting for a constitutional amendment to ban marriage between people of the same sex.
A ban on gay marriage would do nothing — nothing at all — to protect or enhance traditional marriage. We urge Texans to vote against Proposition 2, the proposed amendment, because it's true purpose is to discriminate against gay Texans.
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In short, there's no pressing legal reason to pass Proposition 2. In fact, its passage would be a step backward for Texas.
Texas and the nation have made enormous progress in the past half-century in knocking down laws and social practices that excluded people from all the benefits of citizenship in a free society because they were the wrong color, the wrong sex, had physical disabilities or were gay.
But Proposition 2 would anchor in the constitution a prejudice that same-sex couples — citizens who work, pay taxes and obey the law like everyone else — are not entitled to official recognition of their intimate, committed relationships to each other. And it would make it as difficult as possible to ever obtain such recognition from the Legislature, even if a majority came to support it.
It remains a terrific irony that, even as gay Texas citizens who want to marry cannot, "straight" Texans who can marry file some 120,000 divorce actions a year. And yet voters are told that the way to "protect" marriage is to pass a constitutional amendment attacking gay Texans.
It's not needed to defend marriage, and voters should reject Proposition 2.
The Victoria Advocate...
If the 79th Texas Legislature had shown that it genuinely cares about Texas families by reforming how the state funds its highest priority, public education, we might be inclined to take more seriously lawmakers' claims that their concern for the future of Texas families is why they sent Proposition 2 to voters, even though such a constitutional amendment is not needed and could do harm.
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Because 79th Legislature wasted time on this proposal that it should have spent on important matters, because the proposed constitutional amendment is unnecessary and because it could do real harm to some of our fellow Texans, including families, the Victoria Advocate recommends voting AGAINST Proposition 2.
Posted by Karl-Thomas Musselman at October 10, 2005 12:44 AM
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More show, how sad, what a joke, "two guys doing each other", its sad, but what isn't in the land of nuts.
stop prison rape, and start to think of the coming war. the show must go on, and on, and on. sad,sad, world.
Pity...you could have taken some of that sarcastic energy and applied it to your creative efforts. To answer your question though, we would simply say "not Madam and Calinda." Besides, who ever said a good slogan had to be factually meaningful anyway? Darwin proved that wrong with the title of his best seller...and let's be honest, there were plenty of good slogans on both side of the election campaign last year that had no factual basis whatsoever. We all have the right to vote on this one, so do it and let the results speak.
