Weasels

This week, we had good news about gay marriage in America, and soon, gay marriage will be legal in all 50 states.  The minute one state made gay marriage legal, the Federal Government was bound by that state's decision, mainly for tax purposes.  Many states don't need the feds to come tell them what is right or wrong.  These Supreme Court rulings are more for the ignorant and stubborn ones.  History is full of these quirks; a small decision besets change on a grand scale.  What was the federal government to do when someone moved from a state which recognized gay marriage and needed to file tax returns in their new state which didn't?  It's a shame the Supreme Court has decided to do the 50 step method of enlightenment, as opposed to issue one ruling.  It makes me wonder if judges on the court are doing that to allow conservatives to either try to find a legal foothold which allows them to revisit the issue, or get used to the inevitability of gay marriage being legal without a feeling of jack booted thugs kicking open doors to make them tolerant.

But lest us not forget...

In the 90's, the right was in trouble.  They had lost the blue collar and union workers who, mysteriously, liked Reagan, and the failure of H.W. Bush to win re-election against the Democrats was hard.  What is lost today is how quickly things turned on the Republicans.  There was a SNL skit (I think it was the 91-92 season) where the joke was how no one wanted to be the Democratic nominee for President for the 92 election, and I don't believe Clinton was even a character in the "debate."  The Republican Shangri-La came crashing down.  I have a theory; all the money and support which was helping H.W. Bush maintain his popularity was diverted into resurrecting the image of Reagan, which had suffered in the years since he left office.  The right thought H.W. Bush didn't need their help, as he was the president when the Berlin Wall came down.  Then came Clinton, and history.

It was in the years after that election, while the people behind Reagan and H.W. Bush licked their wounds, watching Bob Dole get trounced in 96, they came up with a plan.  It involved a multi faceted strategy. First, embrace the extreme far right:  extreme Christians, gun nuts, militias and racists who'd supported the Republicans by proxy but had always been kept at arms length.  By welcoming in those groups, they replenished some of their foot soldiers.

The second phase was more complicated, but necessary.  The GOP's platform was becoming unpopular with a majority of Americans, but they still wanted to vanquish the unions, undo workers rights, kill beloved social programs, go after certain countries and international organizations, and create a corporate and ultra wealthy tax haven.  To do so, they had to get past the United States election system.  They started to take over states, not just Governor and Legislative offices, but the Secretary of State, Attorney General, and state Auditor positions, positions which help mold elections.  If they could mutilate elections in a few toss up states, and disenfranchise a lot of voters who traditionally vote Democrat, they would be able to hold enough power to reach their goals.  It ended up working like a charm.  Purging voter roles, limiting voting hours, creating hoops to jump through and gerrymandering took care of the voting process, and loosening the money rules, voter intimidation, creating voter disinterest and other unethical practices tilted the voter turnout in their favor, and Republicans rode back into the White House.  After 9/11, they played America's emotions, and fine tuned their modus operendi to gain full control of the Federal government, and the majority of state governments.

Since Republicans will never make abortion completely illegal (A - they didn't want to lose a loyal voting block, or their donations, B - they didn't want the religious people reading the rest of the bible, a majority of which supports liberal policies, and C - abortion will always be legal for the wealthy in the US.  They might describe the procedure with a different name, but it would still be an abortion, done in a high income neighborhood, designer clinic for people with platinum credit cards), the GOP needed another issue to get the Christian right and the "ugly" right (racists, anti-semites, homophobes) to the polls.  This is where the Rovian politics got truly evil.  They threw the gay community under the bus.

Republicans started pushing for anti gay marriage ballot initiatives in major election years.  They insisted they needed to defend traditional marriage by writing hatred and discrimination into state constitutions, a myth their followers could wrap themselves in.  They targeted swing states and important senate districts, and succeeded.  They wouldn't tout these ballot initiatives during the odd year elections, just the big ones to help Bush and the Conservative majority, which it did.  Eventually, the right couldn't convince people to vote for them any longer, regardless of ballot initiatives, they lost the House and Senate in 06 and the White House in 08, but the ballot initiatives continued.

They put anti-gay marriage laws and amendments in place knowing they would eventually be overturned, knowing they were on the wrong side of history.  They knew it would cost states millions of dollars in legal fees to fail defending them.  They knew they were bastardizing a religion, Christianity, and turning it from a loving, cherishing institution into a politicized mantra, bent on hatred and bigotry, wrapped in a laughable religious freedom argument.  The politicians who made it all happen, the neo-cons and Karl Rove are now long gone.  Their mission was accomplished.  They got their guy another four years, and when they realized they couldn't repeal the social policies of this country, they tried to bankrupt the system, creating a mess they hope will facilitate throwing the entire system out.

In Minnesota, if they'd had put the anti gay marriage amendment on the ballot in 2011, they probably would have won, but the Republicans wanted nothing to do with that year's election.  They got big eyes waiting for 2012, but they also got their trousers handed to them, when, for the first time, a state voted them down.

The politicians, outside of the most weak minded of opportunists, have started move away from the hatred they fanned the flames of, and are trying desperately to white wash their records.  The only ones left are the feeble minded Christian zealots and right wing ideologues who bought into the false flag excuses used to enact these laws, insisting their repeal are the result of a decaying America or a war on religion.

We need to remember how truly evil the right was under the Bush umbrella.  They took religion, rewrote it and edited it for their political purposes, and then used it as a weapon to openly discriminate against millions of Americans, preaching hate and second class citizenry.  Karl Rove, the neo-cons and the Republican party decided to trample on the rights of millions of Americas for political gain.  I will do everything in my power to make sure there legacy is always remembered.