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Unfortunately, as occasional victims of these lies, we are left to scream helplessly at the television, demanding for a correction or an apology -- which never comes. Today we want to address a particularly annoying lie that keeps recycling throughout debates over the Larry Craig debacle. Pundits and talking heads – most of them straight (at least publicly) males – are pontificating on the inescapable reality that the GOP is riddled with gay bashing hypocrites. Last week, on one particular segment of MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, he and Republican strategist, Pat Buchanan spent about 15 minutes agonizing over the potential negative impact Craig’s sordid tale would have on the Republican’s chances of winning the 2008 Presidential election. During their exchange, Matthews stated (and has since repeated) that it irks him to see self-hating gay bigots like Craig pushing for laws like Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT), the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and the Constitutional Amendment to ban equal marriage rights. Matthews is especially fired up over DADT, which he believes is a “legitimate” concern for “patriotic” LGBTQ Americans who want to serve their country (and implicit in his insistence that arguments against DADT are legitimate, is Matthews’ opinion that demands for marriage equality rights are not valid). During a Hardball ‘debate’ the other night, Matthews went head-to-head with Pat Buchanan over the Larry Craig fiasco. And during this debate, the validity of DADT and marriage equality were discussed. Matthews reiterated his views on DADT and Buchanan countered that the policy is a logical solution because it protects unsuspecting and vulnerable straight soldiers from being molested by gays as they sleep in their barracks. (What a bunch of hooey!) When the dueling conservatives got around to discussing marriage, blow-hard Buchanan bellowed that advocates for equal marriage rights are trying to force him to accept our marriages as legitimate – and that would be unfair to him: “You‘re—but see, the two homosexuals would be asking their—they‘re imposing something on me. They‘re saying, you must recognize my—our relationship as marriage. And I say, look, my values say no. I mean, if you‘re living in Dupont Circle, that‘s your business.” As usual and until now, Buchanan’s absurd statement went unchallenged. We will now offer the response we can only dream of hearing on the air some day:
The only problem we have with Buchanan’s marriage is that although we are American citizens and we pay taxes that support programs that are available to Buchanan and his wife, we are not able to enjoy the same rights and privileges granted by those programs. Want to know what is really unfair? That WE are the ones forced to accept Buchanan’s marriage while being denied the right to our own! If you want to add your voice to the growing chorus of American’s who are sick and tired of anti-marriage legislation, please sign our petition and we will pass it on to the President and your representatives in Congress.
http://www.rainbowlaw.com Rainbow Law is Elisia and Carrie Ross-Stone, lesbian civil rights activists, life partners and grandmothers. We own and operate Rainbow Law, an online service offering legal information and free and affordable legal documents for gay and lesbian families. We also publish RainbowZine (http://www.rainbowzine.com), a progressive LGBTQ newsletter and we Blog at http://RAINBOWbLAWg/.blogspot.com. In 2003 and 2004, we rode our bicycles across the country to advocate for marriage equality. Lesbian Grandmothers from Mars, a documentary about the ride, premiered at the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in San Francisco in 2005. And if all of that is not enoiugh to keep us busy, we are building our own house with our own hands out of recycled materials. The building project is online at http://www.BuiltfromTrash.com.
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