Thursday, March 04, 2004

Dear Mr. President

Dear President Bush,

As a citizen, I am extremely concerned about what I perceive to be a lack of leadership and conviction on your part in dealing with the growing threat to the institution of marriage in the United States. It is incumbent on you, as our avatar of morality and freedom, essential principles upon which this republic was founded, to take swift and decisive action in this matter.

But as renegade mayors and county officials, bureaucrats and minor functionaries in cities such as San Francisco; Portland, Oregon; and some little backwater burg in New York state take it upon themselves to radically redefine marriage, you're just not doing as much as you could to address the crisis.

What have you done, Mr. President? You made a speech and said you would support an amendment to the Constitution, definitively describing marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. That's it.

Hey, it's the right idea, as far as it goes, but think about it. Do you have any idea how long it'll take to pass a Constitutional amendment? A long time! First you have to get big chunks of the Senate and House of Representatives to vote for it. That could take weeks. And then you've got to get a bunch of the states -- thirty-some, I think, but you've got a staff to look that up for you -- to approve it too. It could be well into September or October before that's all wrapped up.

But meanwhile, those little self-righteous peckerwoods like Gavin Newsom and Diane Linn are breaking the law right now, flouting the Defense of Marriage Act and holy scripture, permitting hundreds of gay and Lesbian couples to marry. And they're going to keep doing it! All the while, you dither and prattle on about a Constitutional amendment to stop them.

Months, Mr. President! You're looking at months before you can ram through an amendment and meanwhile, the institution of marriage is going to take one whale of a beating as more and more deviants get hitched. Divorce rates are already skyrocketing. Just a few hundred more queer marriages and who knows what sort of chaos could follow?! You've got to do something now.

You've got to send federal troops to California, Oregon, New York and anywhere else this insanity is going on and put a stop to it.

I'm serious. Marriage is in danger. The law is not being upheld. You must act with force and dispatch. And you can do it, too, if you just grow a pair and pick up the phone.

President Kennedy did it in 1963. He federalized the National Guard in Alabama to make damn sure the University there would let black folks attend classes. They weren't going to do it, you know, in clear violation of an order to desegregate. What they were doing was patently illegal and Kennedy sent those troops to uphold the law.

OK, sorry, that's probably a bad example. I know a bit about electoral politics and I'm nothing if not pragmatic. I guess you really can't be seen to be following the example of a beloved liberal icon like Kennedy, even in the cause of ensuring justice and the rule of law. And I know you aren't fond of working with the National Guard.

Look at President Eisenhower, then. He dispatched 1,000 troops from the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 to enforce desegregation at Central High School there, and he was a Republican. Heck, that's probably where President Kennedy got the idea in the first place.

So the idea of using the military to enforce the law, particularly in times of national strife, is a solid one. It's a historically proven one. It's even a Republican one. You have to do this, Mr. President. My faith in your leadership, my pride in my country and, most urgently, my decision about whether I can support you in the coming election, depend on it.

If I don't see tanks rolling up Market Street and bayonet-bearing boys in uniform breaking up gay marriages by, oh let's say Friday, I may be forced to conclude that you're not serious about defending what you've called a sacred institution. I may even infer that you're merely using the confusion and hysteria surrounding this issue to gain political ground.

That would disappoint me deeply, Mr. President. You took an oath to support and defend the Constitution and the uphold the laws of this great nation. If those laws are just, as you believe, and if marriage as we know it teeters on the brink of oblivion, as you say, you must act. If you're going to have a culture war, make it a war.

Send in the Marines. I can't wait to see the pictures.

Yours truly,
Brad L. Graham
American