Why Passing The Texas Marriage Amendment Was Important

Our northern neighbors are caught in the confluence of legalized same-sex marriage and "hate crimes" statutes. According to this recent story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, legalized alternative marriage in Canada has gone beyond inclusion to revolution.

[Bishop Frederick Henry said] "Children will have to be taught about homosexual acts in health class, as they now are about heterosexual acts. Books that promote same-sex marriage are being introduced in some elementary schools. In one action, complainants have demanded ‘positive queer role models’ across the whole curriculum. If parents complain, they’ll be branded as homophobes." Sound farfetched?

I don’t think it sounds far fetched at all. As I alluded to in earlier posts, homosexual activists are not aiming for allegedly equal rights but wholesale cultural transformation. Legal status for alternative forms of marriage will lead to public schools presenting these brave new marriages and hazardous sexual behavior as healthy, natural, and desirable. The passage of the Texas Marriage Amendment helps prevent this hideous state of alarm from happening in Texas. Schools are not the only battleground for homosexual activists.

"People who disagree with same-sex marriage risk charges of hate speech. In British Columbia, teacher Chris Kempling has been found guilty — and disciplined — for defending male-female marriage in newspaper opinion pieces. Henry himself has been hauled before the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal for promoting traditional marriage in his pastoral letters. "The human rights tribunals have become like thought police," he says. "In Canada, you can now use the coercive powers of the state to silence opposition."

If same sex marriage has the same legal status as traditional marriage, homosexual activists can then use the courts to harass and intimidate churches and others who stand against their cause, using hate crimes laws as a pretext. By strengthening the legal definition of marriage as one man and one woman, the Texas Marriage Amendment helps block this route of attack in Texas state courts.

Of course, Texas was just one (albeit significant) skirmish. The bigger battle is at the federal level. It only takes 5 judicial activists on the US Supreme Court to overthrow all the state defense of marriage laws and constitutional amendments. However, the overwhelming victory of prop. 2 in Texas during an off year election is another signal to Congress that there is a percolating desire among the American people to reign in the robe-clad tyranny and forestall the disaster that is befalling Canada. While we can enjoy a brief rest from our labors to pass the Texas Marriage Amendment, the final confrontation looms for the Federal Marriage Amendment, which will require an equal measure of vigilance.

Put on your Fisking caps, kids. This AP dispatch is just plain goofy:

The United States has detained more than 83,000 foreigners in the four years of the war on terror, enough to nearly fill the NFL’s largest stadium.

Split infinitive aside, what’s with that comparison? Why use a football stadium? Why not say "laid end to end, they would reach from New York to Mecca" or "Ground into a fine paste, they could pave 450 acres of parking lots?"

The number has steadily grown since the first CIA paramilitary officers touched down in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, setting up more than 20 facilities including the "Salt Pit," an abandoned factory outside Kabul used for CIA detention and interrogation.

What’s the matter, AP? You won’t give us the freakin’ address of the formerly-secret national security facility? And that’s just the beginning of this story, which apparently seeks to prove the monkey/typewriter hypothesis.

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Fellow Lone Star Times writers and readers, we have reached a milestone today. The “Mayor Whi-Fi” story was post number 2,000! It was only this past June that we marked 1,000 stories, so we have obviously been hard at work keeping you on the cutting edge of news and opinion. From panda sex to hurricanes, you read it all here, and we thank you for your patronage. Feel free to share your favorite LST moments in the comments section.

See you at 3,000!

(Reminder: Don’t forget, you can search for your favorite LST stories using our handy search box at the top of the page. Just enter a topic or keyword and fire away.)

If you were concerned about the United Nations taking over the internet, you can lay those fears to rest. At least for now.

Negotiators from more than 100 countries agreed late Tuesday to leave the United States in charge of the Internet’s addressing system, averting a U.S.-EU showdown at this week’s U.N. technology summit.

Wasn’t that generous of them? Ever wonder what UN oversight of the internet would be like? How about Communist, censoring China in charge of a UN committee overseeing internet activity? Or maybe the “bandwidth-for-food scandal?”

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James Taranto over at the Wall Street Journal’s “Opinionjournal.com” made a special note of the Chronicle’s horrible anti-Prop 2 editorial that ran yesterday:

Last week Texas became the latest state to pass a prophylactic measure against same-sex marriage. The ultraliberal Houston Chronicle is unhappy, which is hardly surprising, but we got a chuckle out of the editorial’s condescending comments about black voters:

Inner city black voters in Harris County, many of whom have long experience with the denial of civil rights, favored the marriage amendment by an even higher majority than the general Harris County voting population. Black discomfort with homosexual marriage is rooted less in conscious discrimination than in religious belief, but support for the amendment brought blacks into incongruous accord with members of the Ku Klux Klan, whose members rallied in Austin in support of Proposition 2.

So let’s see if we have this straight. If you’re a person of pallor and you oppose same-sex marriage, you’re guilty of “conscious discrimination,” whereas if you’re black, you’re following “religious belief” and presumably discriminating unconsciously. Oh, and does this mean people who favor same-sex marriage are religious unbelievers? Seems to us the Houston Chronicle has just managed to insult pretty much everybody.

Ah, but the Chronicle says that it is “neither liberal nor conservative” (although not with a straight face, I presume). It’s good to see the Chron getting attention for being “ultraliberal” from the national media, not to mention being boorish and self-defeating. What a pathetic paper we have.

[Hat tip: Bloghouston].

Our buddies at the Chronicle have coverage of Mayor White’s latest and greatest idea: city-wide Wi-Fi internet access. The proposal is for the city to coax a broadband provider to install downtown Houston Wi-Fi internet access, which can be used at no cost to city government. This “starter network,” reminiscent of Metro’s “starter rail line,” would eventually be expanded to cover the entire 620 square miles of the city.

The Mayor estimates a $1 million price tag to cover downtown, with under $100 million required to expand that coverage city-wide. Who pays for it? The Chron gives some nuts and bolts:

White said no tax dollars would be used to create a broadband wireless network. Instead, the city will issue a request for proposals seeking a company to build and operate it.
In turn, city government would have free access to a variety of broadband applications, like enhanced communications, a high-tech parking meter system and increased telecommuting for city workers. It could also mean increased Internet access for low-income residents. The company using Houston’s many easements and right of ways for WiFi antennas and other equipment would then be able to sell its airtime to residents and businesses.

Shouldn’t that be “rights of way” Chron? That aside, it appears that the citizens of Houston would be subsidizing our government’s Wi-Fi access. The installing company would have to find paying customers in the downtown business district to fund the starter network’s maintenance and recover the installation costs. If that were successful, the company would then have to foot the bill for expansion while the city accesses the system free the whole time. The Chron also points to Philadelphia for another benefit to government, where Earthlink has installed a city-wide system that is for the low-income children!

Residents [of Philadelphia] are expected to pay about $20 a month to have access to the high-speed network. Low-income residents will pay around $10.

Obviously this is a win-win for Houston politicians. City government gets free internet access, a reduced-cost goodie to hand out to the poor, (for the children!) and it pulls in the geek vote. Is there a dark side to any of this? One word of warning: (made out of two) SafeClear. Houstonians may be forgiven a little skepticism.

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Here ya’ go, with a random pic from the LST archives to kick things off; reader captions welcomed.

My property tax appraisal went up how much?!?!

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Mark the date down: November 15, 2005.

If we loose the war on terror, this will quite possibly be the day it turned in favor of the Islamofacist.

Why??

Because our Senate… Let me start again, our Republican leadership in the U.S. Senate, put up a Bill today that in essence cut the legs out from under our brave servicemen and spit in President Bush’s eye WHILE HE WAS OUT OF THE COUNTRY!!!

And it passed!!

This is what happened. (I hope you bear with me because this is real inside baseball stuff Benzion usually does a lot better job explaining this stuff).

As you well know, the Senate Democrats have been trying to get the President to answer to THEM.  They have been pandering to their base and put up a bill that set out deadlines for the troops to be withdrawn and for the Whitehouse to report to the Senate any "progress" (which is already being done).  It was a sharp rebuke, driven by politics.  It had nothing to do with winning the war.  It had everything to do with winning politics.

The Republican leaders decided to offer up their own version of the bill, as an alternative, instead of growing a spine and telling the Democrats to go suck an egg.  It was essentially the same bill, but with out the dates and temper tantrum.

Do you remember the old saying, "he’s too smart by half"?  Well, look it up in the dictionary now, and it will have a picture of Sen. Frist. He went the wrong way because he tried to play politics instead of trying to win! Oh and by the way, so did a bunch of Republicans…….

That would include both Texas Senators Hutchison and Cornyn.

Let me repeat this: Senators Hutchison and Cornyn voted to publicly rebuke President Bush on the conduct of the war and to require more information (which by the way, is being supplied anyway).

At this point, I don’t know if this was their intention.  In the speed of politics they lost common sense….. and they voted wrong.

But let me be clear: In my humble opinion THIS IS A DISASTER.

Why? Because the biggest problem we have as a nation is the notion we "cut and run".

• Osama Bin Laden said from the beginning that the Americans would cut and run and used the Sudan "Black Hawk Down" incident as an example (Quote: Do you wish to be with a strong horse or a weak horse?);
• Vietnam: we cut and run and left thousands of our friends and allies to die at the hand of the communist;
• After the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon, we left (a/k/a: "cut and run");
• We quit fighting Iraq before we got to Baghdad in Gulf War I and left the Shite’s to die in Saddam Hussien’s killing fields (a/k/a: "cut and run");

One of the reasons we have had to fight so hard in Iraq now is because the Iraqi people have been afraid we will cut and run again and THEY DO NOT WANT TO TAKE A CHANCE OF BEING LEFT BEHIND AND LEFT UP TO THE TENDER MERCIES OF THE TERRORISTS!!!!!

Our enemies in Iraq, also know as "The Terrorists", believed because of our history, that all they have to do to win is to outlast our collective will to fight.  This vote is an indication to them, that they ("The Terrorists") are approaching that goal.

Right now the Blogsphere is reacting swiftly and strongly.

The lefties are ecstatic.  Senator Kerry is sending out a letter that will make you want to scream.

On the other side, the right side blogs are searing white hot mad. 

That doesn’t even start with the Mainstream Media (MSM).  This New York Times article could only be described (by me) as "Pukalicious".

What make me the sickest is we were really hitting a turning point against the terrorist because of the horrible bombing in Jordan of fellow Muslims at the three hotels.

So look around and make up your own mind.

Further References:

• This War is for Real by Major General Vernon, Chong, USAF, ret. October 1, 2005
• Tigerhawk on Considering Dissent and Limited War
• The Psychology behind Bush Derangement Syndrome (by a real Psychologist)
• Christopher Hitchens goes after the Democrats (too bad more Republicans haven’t read it)

Further Note: I just heard the "spin" on what Senator Warner and the other voting Republicans wanted: They wanted to get across to the Iraqi people the need to get it together and take responsibility for their own country. Right. Do these morons realize that it may be motivating the wrong side?