Often I see people here in our community sitting on their posteriors, talking a lot of game, and criticizing everyone else in our community about their views, ideas, or questioning their liberalness.
The Federal Marriage Amendment may not be the most pressing issue confronting our nation, but to not speak out against it is so morally reprehensible I feel Dante couldn't have found hell's ring for those individuals.
Where as we may not all be directly affected by this bill, or not at all, since it will not pass the Senate, to say nothing should not be an option. I challenge you all to write your US Representatives in the House and Senate. I ask you to do this out of principle and love! We have family members and loved ones that are a target, some of our members here are targets too.
I thought I'd share my letter to my Senator, and hopefully urge you all to write your own letters!
Senator Warner,
I am appalled that this administration and the Senate Majority Leader Frist have brought discrimination back into debate in the hallowed halls of the United States Senate. The last time a discrimination issue was brought into the Senate for debate about amending the Constitution of the United States, it was to correct a wrong being done to millions of American citizens, this time it is being brought up for cheap political points, and in converse to the duties of our elected officials, it is an attempt to have the United State of America officially sanction discrimination against a minority of constituents.
I look to you as my Senator, and the only one of my two that acts in the best interest of Virginians, to speak out against this type of politics. The history of our state's tolerance runs deep into the fabrics of our grand nation. It was Virginia that started it all; the settlers at Jamestown, and the pilgrims at Plymouth. They immigrated here to escape their political fortunes. The Virginia Cavaliers fled to the new world from their enemies in parliament, and the pilgrims fleeing social rejection in protestant England, all came to what at those times were the boarders of Virginia. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, contrary to many simplified history accounts, we were one of the first states to being integration of African Americans into high schools, in Albemarle County. We also provided the nation with the first African American elected Governor; we are probably the southern state where minorities feel the least amount of discrimination today, or is often though of as "not really the South" because of our tolerance. Virginia's history is rich in its embracement of both social progress and tolerance.
I am not asking you sir to embrace the right to marry for gays and lesbians in our great state, but to remember that you represent them too. They may not all be Republicans, but more than a few I would imagine have returned you to office a number of times. This amendment proposal does a disservice to those constituents, and to the history of our state and your office. It is nothing more than a bill based from hate and bigotry, and it has no place in our United State Constitution, nor any legitimate place in our national debate (as a Constitutional amendment).
I would expect you to be bold and brave, like the Virginian that served our nation before you. Patrick Henry, my name sake, spoke out in the House of Burgesses famously, "Give me liberty or give me death," Thomas Jefferson spoke out with his indictment of the crown saying that "all men (individuals) are created equal" and endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty and happiness. These are the tenets our rebellious nation was founded on, and these tenets are under attack by the proposed amendment. You may not agree with gay marriage, but you must agree that such an amendment is unVirginian, and un-American. Your measured wisdom is well respected both among your colleagues and by the Washington media, your wisdom on this subject is needed, especially when the party with which you are aligned is legislating against a block of your constituents. I ask you to speak out Senator!
Respectfully,
D. Patrick Sprouse