Republican Mike Huckabee said Friday that marriage shouldn’t be treated as an “experiment,” responding to questions about whether he thinks Vice President Dick Cheney’s gay daughter should have the right to wed.
It's not an experiment; it's a basic human right being denied because you and others with your majority belief system prefer to suppress it. But who the hell am I, besides a guy who has been in a same-sex relationship for 17 years? I guess I'm a loud activist who doesn't feel the marriage option is just an "experiment."
“There are some very strong, loud activists who want to completely redefine marriage,” Huckabee said on July 6, 2004. “Many of us (amendment supporters) feel that it has become necessary to reaffirm the historical definition of marriage. It cannot be redefined to be something that culture wants it to be.”
This term "redefine" is becoming tiresome. How about simply "expanding" the definition of marriage?
“Whether or not our culture should accommodate persons of the same gender who wish to share hospital visitation rights, insurance benefits, and so forth is an entirely different discussion, but to call anything and everything a ’marriage’ is unacceptable because marriage means something specific — a permanent relationship between a man and woman for life.”
There he goes again with that "anything and everything" code talk intended to get his right-wing base all fired up with notions of men marrying goats. When will he and most other politicians begin having this "entirely different discussion" in which we would be granted such basic human rights as hospital visitation privileges? (Hint: Don't start your timers just yet -- it's gonna be awhile.)
I have another idea. If marriage is a "permanent relationship between a man and a woman for life" then let's try that experiment. Allow a man and a woman to get married. If the marriage fails, neither person should ever be allowed to marry again. Set up a separate but equal system for people who have failed at marriage but just don't call it marriage the 2nd (or 3rd, or 4th, or 5th) time around. And since it can't be called marriage, then gay couples can also have the same recognized union.
After about 15 or 20 years we'd have a vivid snapshot of just how sanctified marriage really is.
The link to the article in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette is by subscription only. I stumbled across this link with another bizarre quote from the presidential wanna be:
Huckabee, speaking earlier in the day at Daniel Webster College, warned audiences that the country is at war with a perversion of Islam and that any bending of U-S resolve will let the jihadists destroy America.
He said anything less than a resounding victory in Iraq and elsewhere would mean the end of US culture.
Great. Just what we need in the White House: another batshit purveyer of fear. God help us.
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