fourwhitefeet

Not for Bush and Rove. They don’t care that much about gays one way or the other. They consciously fueled prejudice to divide the population and win reelection. Kerry could have thrown us to the dogs and supported gay bans. That is what former president Clinton advised. Kerry refused. Kerry could have gone the other way and made it an issue for his side by having more vocal support for gays. That may have helped him in the election, but it would have only increased the bitterness of those people whose background or religion has instilled in them intolerance. Instead, Kerry encouraged acceptance and understanding.

It’s clear that Bush Co., doesn’t care about this nation or its people only about winning power and promoting their extreme agenda. Kerry, on this issue at least, put his compassion and values above politics. And I can’t help believing that great leaders are uniters not dividers, peace makers not hate mongers.

…Mr. Bush, is not the press, but you. Your rhetoric, your policies, your religious fanaticism are the stone in the shoe of United States and the World. As long as you hold office, there will be no coming together. You have acted unilaterally, believing you are divinely ordained, and in the process have alienated half the population. A lucid example is your desire for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. You support writing discrimination into the Constitution; a document depended upon by this country’s citizens to guarantee personal freedom and privacy. By doing so, you segment gay persons as not deserving equal protection of the law. How can you hope for anything but animosity from this rejected and condemned group, their friends and family and any other person that believes in the basic value of every human being? At the same time your stance inflames and entrenches and condones the hatred, prejudice and ignorance of your supporters. Mr. Bush, until you remove the log from your own eye, you will never see why this country is so bitterly divided.

In the midst of this depressing morning, facing the likelihood of another 4 more years of Bush and the personal hatred most gays and lesbians are feeling from over half the electorate, there is a bit of good news, my mother, strongly republican, voted against banning spousal rights for gays in her state and convinced several of her friends to do the same.

A news commentator mentioned this morning that in previous elections people voted against their economic interests because of racial issues, that basically, southern whites’ hatred of blacks led them to vote for candidates that negatively affected their daily lives. Today it looks to homosexuals that many U.S. voters made similar choices because of their hatred for gays.

I wonder how many million non-voters will look at the results today and reassure themselves, “I knew my vote wouldn’t make a difference.” They are right. Individually nobody’s vote makes a difference. However, voter turnout was about 5 million short of the hoped for 120 million. Five million additional voters could certainly have made a difference.

While we ponder the apathetic, we can say goodbye to the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, goodbye to women’s personal rights, goodbye to more of our privacy rights and due process, and goodbye to healthcare for the teachers in my district whose entire salary does not cover the group medical coverage they are offered. We can say hello to greater instability in the mideast, increasing threats from terrorists and most sadly, deeper and wider division between those in power and the disenfranchised. Who can guess what will happen as this large percentage of the U.S. population becomes increasingly alienated, angry and hopeless.