Oh, Parental Notification is "settled". Abortions for minor girls is "normal". Government bureaucrats coming between parents and their underaged girls is just "dandy" – and one more example of The Left Press winding up! Next up – Gay Marriage! Another case of "Don’t waste your time….that’s already been voted on!".
Sorry, Mr. Joe Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign (a highly active gay group) – laws can be made, and laws can be unmade. Your say so is insufficient; from the Concord Monitor:
Legislature should move on; gay marriage fight isn’t worth it
In the wake of the new Republican majority in the New Hampshire Legislature, some social conservatives want to turn back the clock on same-sex marriage. What a waste of time in a country and a state more rightly focused on righting our economic ship.
According to exit polls last month, voters overwhelmingly care about jobs and the economy, followed by taxes, terrorism and health care. Same-sex marriage is not even near the bottom of this list; it is at the bottom. It’s hard to imagine that New Hampshire legislators would spend an ounce of time on a settled matter.
Really? Settled? How so? You and your backers sent how much money, sent so much human capital, and twisted so many arms to get what you wanted? Just as with the Parental Notification deniers (yeah, we can use that word as well, with these folks wishing to deny Parents their natural and God given right to responsibly parent their own children), he follows the same mantra:
1. We have economic challenges here in NH!
2. Why are legislators going to spend time on monkeying with a
woman’s reproductive rightsnullification of our right to redefine marriage? We are a pro-choicegay state!3. It’s already settled!
3. You need to work for all of us, and not just your own personal agendas!
What is this – sharing of the same playbook? Pick an issue, just changing the words a bit, and think that we’d go "oh, ok"? Hey, you Progressive folks have GOT to be a bit more creative than that! Add to it – your side didn’t exactly play nice; political hardball is just not forgotten around here. Yankees have a history of being rather independent minded – we don’t take kindly about being told what is right for us by some outsiders. Why should you expect us to simply take your word on this?
I will agree on one thing – I DO want our Republican super-majority legislature…
…(unlike the Democrats who showed us such horrendous fiscal stewardship and who you used to get your agenda passed) need to concentrate on getting Government out of the way so that our NH economic outlook will improve. Taxes need to be cut, onerous regulations retracted, overreach amputated, and spending cut back to at least levels comparable to that before 2006 – if not less. That comes first, second, third, and fourth. The economic ship has to be righted and the below waterline ruptures created by the former majority need to be patched.
That said, however, social issues are important. If homosexual marriage was worth fight for by your side, tell me, why shouldn’t we fight for traditional marriage on ours (that would be equal, right)? Why should the Left be allowed to redefine the language on their sole so-so (that’s not equal, right)? Your side man-handled the passage of a law – and there is nothing says that laws cannot be nullified. You really expect traditional marriage supporters to simply go limp-wristed, give up, and walk away on your say so?
Nonetheless, the Washington, D.C.-based National Organization for Marriage, the nation’s leading anti-gay organization, is lobbying the State House to support repeal legislation in January. NOM’s president has declared, after spending nearly $1 million in an unsuccessful push to defeat Gov. John Lynch, "We will now fight for a vote on a constitutional amendment and a repeal of same-sex marriage in New Hampshire."
"Leading anti-gay organization"? Right – this translates to "if you disagree with us politically, you are a HATER!". Pretty much, that sums it up – anyone that disagrees with your stances should be demonized and become the subject of ad hominem attacks; certainly, use Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals to achieve your ends. Only the end is justified – and any means to that end as well, sir?
I have no problem in joining with Maggie Gallagher (Chairman of N.O.M.) in this – public morality is defined by the laws on the books and the laws enforced. Sure, the public morality can change over time, but it can change the other way as well. And always remember, social issues always have a fiscal cost, so the fight can be joined on that issue as well.
…People are moving in the direction of basic equality, not away from it. More Catholics and political independents, says the Pew Research Center, approve of the freedom to marry than disapprove. Fifty-five percent of people in a University of New Hampshire survey support marriage equality.
Then put it to a vote by all the people. Oh, sorry, you wouldn’t dare do that, would you, even with those polls showing that you might win. You know the truth – everywhere it has been voted upon by the general public, you’ve lost (what, you’re 0 for 32 thus far??). And when you have lost big, like Proposition 8 in California, it is simply chalked up that the majority of Californians are simply homophobes, haters, and racists (great way to win friends,that).
…What is also telling about the mood here is that after Lynch signed the marriage bill into law, NOM tried to launch a grassroots repeal of it. According to Granite State Progress, 80 towns rejected NOM’s local ballot initiative, and 37 percent of New Hampshire towns didn’t even consider the petition. To us, that says let’s move on already.
Nice try at a whitewash (or is that too un-PC a word?). Let’s be clear – there is a difference between a town’s voters actually:
- voting to NOT vote on the petition warrant (we don’t have ballot initiatives here in NH)
- voting on the contents of the warrant (i.e., the petition warrant was approved with the initial wording unchanged)
- voting on the changed contents of the warrant (whose changed contents may or may not reflect the initial intent of the writers of the warrant, as town meeting folks can change it before voting on it).
If you actually look at the warrants voted upon with the original intent, the outcome is different than what you state; a majority of voters voted for traditional marriage – just like in all of the other States where the general public has been given the chance to make its will known. Just like with Proposition 8 in California – but it seems, in that case, you certainly decided that "settled" wasn’t "settled" in your eyes, hmm? There, the people voted against you by a large margin.
…There is always the slim possibility, however, that some will make this an issue. So brace yourself for the hollering coming from a tiny but vocal group claiming the gay couple in Cornish is somehow a danger to the Smith family down the street. Let’s remember that the fear spread around last time around didn’t ever pan out.
Yes, it will be an issue. Frankly, I hope that it will not be an issue until after the economic problems that the Progressives stuck us with are fixed and our economy has begun to recover. But remember, the way that the Gay Marriage issue was pushed (An active campaign issue? Promises broken that civil unions were sufficient? Naw, let’s bring it up AFTER we get elected, and claim that C.U.’s are unfair, then use special rules and breaking of rules to get it passed), the way that Gov. Lynch lied to the people of NH, pretty much guaranteed that it would become an issue.
And you only have yourselves to blame for it boomeranging back at you.
