Campaign 2004 agenda: fear
Opinion by Pat Murphy
When the Cold War stalemate between the
Soviets and United States petered out, there was an agonizing moment when
political brain trusts that devise presidential campaign strategies worried
there’d be no villains for future elections.
You remember those days: Candidate A was
tougher at standing up to the Russkies and would build more nuclear weapons than
Candidate B.
There also was a secondary issue:
Democrats were bankrupting the country. Republicans would balance the budget and
have a surplus.
No worry. Not only does Campaign 2004 have
the vague threat—"credible" threat, that is—about terrorists roaming the world
and planning an Election Day attack on the United States, but the Bush-Cheney
team has found an even more powerful fear to spread that should strike dread and
foreboding into the hearts of millions of gullible Americans—the certainty that
gays and lesbians will destroy the Sacred Institution of Marriage with same-sex
wedlock.
They must be stopped—stopped, do you hear!
(Forget balanced budgets and surpluses as GOP virtues: Republicans now favor
deficits and debt.)
Chicken Little of "The Sky is Falling"
fame would be proud of this scare mongering.
Fear of same-sex marriage gets plenty of
panicky attention and keeps followers in line. Those who think for themselves
will conclude that gays can’t destroy marriage any more than rock ‘n’ roll could
destroy classical music and obliterate the works of Gershwin or Tchaikovsky.
And the potential number of gay same-sex
marriages is less than the number of heterosexual divorces every year.
The proposed constitutional amendment
banning same-sex marriages, if it survives in the Senate, would need
ratification by 38 states and could take years for an up or down vote. By then,
same-sex marriages would have continued—as well as heterosexual nuptials that
Chicken Littles of the right claim would be destroyed.
(The same sort of trumped up fear is at
work in the proposed flag desecration amendment to ban abuse of Old Glory: if a
few flag burners aren’t stopped—stopped, do you hear!—American patriotism will
be destroyed.)
What’s so stunning about this drumbeat of
fear and trepidation out of the bowels of the Republican camp is this: the party
that champions less and less government control on business is Hell-bent on
using fear to concoct more government police powers to control personal behavior
and speech.
There were plenty of early warnings that
were ignored. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s Patriot Act was passed in fear of
terrorists—but has been used to badger Americans. Americans wouldn’t have
approved of attacking Iraq if the truth were told—they were callously panicked
into believing in an imminent doomsday threat (phony) to the United States.
For Americans who don’t like what’s
happening to their country, Vice President Cheney will tell you what you can do
about it.