An Update on Love & Marriage in America

Bush, by the way, going to go on the warpath tonight. The stump speech is to be unveiled tonight, will take aim, political opponents in a speech signals a, quote, new period of engagement in response to the most vicious assault in years by a group of Democrats running for president. That’s what his reelection campaign said. Get a little preview of it this morning. There are a few sound bites from it is he spoke to the governors. But this was just a little bit of a preview. The big rah-rah is supposed to happen tonight. Anyway, last week Schwarzenegger told the attorney general, said all right, enough of this. You go into San Francisco, attorney general. You go in there and you stop this.

Well, the attorney general is a Democrat. Bill Lockyer is a Democrat. And as we all know the left has utter contempt for the rule of law and the wishes of the majority in this country, and so Bill Lockyer said [paraphrased], “Screw you. I’m not going in there. I’m not gonna wade into that cesspool. I’m not going to wade into that rice paddy. If you don’t like it, go do it yourself. He said the governor can direct the highway patrol, he can direct the next Terminator 4 movie if he chooses, but he can’t direct me in the way he’s attempted to do so.” He added that Schwarzenegger’s written directive was a statement designed for consumption at the Republican convention. Faxed on Friday note to the home of a Lockyer aide, governor wrote, “I hereby direct you to take immediate steps to obtain a definitive judicial resolution of this controversy.” The message also said that San Francisco’s actions to wed gay couples “present imminent risk to civil order.”

Now, at the same time, Schwarzenegger I think yesterday praised Gavin Newsom as a great mayor. You know, so Lockyer may have had a point. Lockyer called that statement preposterous, said, “It’s the kind of exaggerated hot rhetoric that risks stirring people up to commit hate crimes.” So, you know, we’re not going to have hate crimes. We can allow these crimes, these violations of law in San Francisco, those are perfectly fine, but we’re not going to have any hate crimes. We’re going to stop any hate crimes that might be associated with it. And what is a hate crime? Never forget what a hate crime is. A hate crime is a crime for what you think. They just tack on an extra penalty at your sentencing at your convention if you’ve had a certain thought or two or three about whatever it was that you did.

Lockyer said that he and Schwarzenegger have agreed all along that same-sex marriage is illegal under California law. He said it’s his duty to defend the state against a lawsuit by San Francisco that calls the state’s prohibition against same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Lockyer said his office has filed a response early next week. The city has taken the offensive here and sued the state because it’s an illegal law. And Lockyer said, Oh, yeah, we’ll respond to that. We’ll roll over for that. But go in there and stop it? You go stop it, Mr. Terminator. You go down there and stop it. I’m not setting foot in that city.

In the meantime the same-sex marriages that have drawn all this attention are continuing. On Sunday key elected officials used some of their strongest language yet to discuss whether Gavin Newsom overstepped. You know, by the way, I didn’t put two and two together. We all watch cable TV — and I don’t even think it’s MSNBC — I’m flipping around the past couple weeks, and they’ve got some new info babe on there whose name is Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom. It’s Gavin Newsom’s wife. Yeah, that’s right. Gavin Newsom’s wife is an MSNBC correspondent. (laughter) Thicker than water out there, folks.

Let’s see in Boston, Anthony Lewis, the former New York Times columnist is married and his wife is the chief presiding judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Isn’t all of this interesting. Anyway, in San Francisco they’re going to go appointment-only for marriage licenses, same-sex marriage licenses to stop the scene. What they don’t like in California is not the marriages; they don’t like the scene. They don’t like the long line. They don’t like the visual that it presents. So now you’ve got to call in and get an appointment and show up on time, but they don’t want there to be any line outside City Hall. So the heat is getting to ’em. They want to do this without it being obvious to the outside world that they’re doing this. From Boston in the midst of intense political debate on the issue of gay unions, opposition legalize same-sex marriage is mounting in Massachusetts. This according to a Boston Globe poll. About 53% of polled Massachusetts residents said they opposed legalizing marriage for gay couples. The paper reported also up ten percentage points, that’s up ten percentage points since a previous poll was conducted in November. So intolerance among Democrats and liberals in Massachusetts for the expansion of the lifestyle of marriage, of the “behavior,” whatever… The expansion of normalcy for certain people under the definitions of marriage.

Also from the Boston Globe, “While the mayor there in San Francisco began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, many in the gay rights movement nationwide cheered. But in Massachusetts, the sudden act of civil disobedience setting off deep concern among some leading gay advocates who worry that the move could undercut the push for same-sex marriage in Massachusetts.” And it is. Because the polling data is clear, an increasing number of Massachusetts citizens — and that’s liberal Democrats — oppose gay marriage and it’s because of the circus that’s taking place out in San Francisco. And in fact, it’s what I told you last week. We had some spirited discussions on this program last week, some of you disagreed with me, but we find ourselves in an election year. We’ve got Chicago wanting to do this. New Mexico is doing it, and the Democrats don’t want this. Barney Frank is running around there trying to get these people to stop, they’re not even listening to him. Barbara Boxer issued a statement in California, she’s up for reelection, You can’t do this! They’re begging the gay activists in all these places to wait till next year, wait till after the election. They’re going to lose this election so they’ll wait till next year and they’ll tarnish themselves in the 2006 mid-terms, is the way this is going to shape out if that happens. But I don’t think these gay activists are going to listen to these politicians and stop.
COMMERCIAL BREAK

RUSH: In the meantime here’s Jim in Medford, NJ. Welcome, sir, glad you held on.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: Hi.

CALLER: I wanted to touch on the gay marriage issue once more, if I may.

RUSH: Yeah, feel free. Go for it.

CALLER: Okay. I have several gay friends, and many of them are in very loving, committed relationships. And it just seems to me that — I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, and I’d like to know your thoughts on this — that the idea that marriage is an institution between a man and a woman is an idea that came about I guess Biblically and historically it’s been and [garbled cell call] that we can force that. How is that not a separation of church and state?

RUSH: All right, let me answer the question. I went through this in great detail last week. In the first place I don’t accept the premise of the question. The premise of your question is that since something comes from the Bible, and since the Bible is old and out of date, and the Bible has religious content, that whatever comes from it cannot be imposed by the government because of separation of church and state.
A: There is no separation of church and state. Separation of church and state has no relevance to your argument. There is no such thing as separation of church and state. All separation of church and state really means is that “the government shall not establish a religion.” It doesn’t say anything about what anybody else’s religion can be, who can have one, and where. In fact, the state is doing far more restricting religion than it is constitutionally empowered to do.

#2: Marriage. Biblical origins are irrelevant to me. Marriage has been time-tested and proven throughout decades, centuries, millennia of human civilization as the fundamental way of raising children. It has to do with organizing human beings into genealogically traceable families for the purposes of establishing identity, for the purposes of establishing tradition, and for the purposes of making sure that young human babies who don’t know diddlysquat when they’re born are raised properly.
A man and a woman, a mother and father in the same home. If it weren’t the case, we wouldn’t be so concerned about the divorce rate. The gay marriage crowd is using the divorce rate as ammo. In fact, the divorce rate is further ammo to prove the value of marriage. If we didn’t care about the divorce rate, why do we care about its effect on kids? We know that it doesn’t do kids any good. It provides yet more obstacles for kids who already have plenty. We also wouldn’t worry about the illegitimacy rate.
We don’t just make these things up. Illegitimacy — we may not use the term to describe kids because we don’t want to, you know, put a sort of a scarlet letter on a kid, but the real point of illegitimacy is, a child born out of wedlock, not born to a serious, committed relationship. Illegitimacy causes untold destruction in communities.
The illegitimacy rate in the African-American community at one time reached a high of 73%. It was caused by the federal government’s welfare policies, of promising more and more cash for each and each kid that someone had. It has been the women of these communities who have done the best in trying to civilize these various areas of our culture because they instinctively understand — well, everybody does — the importance of a solid marital unit. I mean, that’s the fundamental purpose of marriage.

Besides that, marriage has a definition. If you go look it up in the dictionary, marriage is the union, an official union of a man and a woman. Nobody stops anybody from getting married if they marry somebody from the opposite sex. If you want to marry somebody from the same sex, it isn’t marriage. And the only way it can become marriage is for the institution of marriage to be changed and weakened. The fact that this may or may not have Biblical origins is irrelevant.
It has been time tested, proven and honored over course of human civilization. The Ten Commandments which form the basis of our law, also come from the Old Testament. Nobody says we should throw them out simply because they came from the Bible. Now, some people do say we can’t post them in schools because we can’t impose religious views on people. “Thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not covet another man’s wife.” It doesn’t say “thou shalt not covet another man’s boyfriend.” Thou shalt not covet another man’s wife, and there are many, many more of them. And they are so simple it’s to be embarrassing when people want to throw them out. That’s my answer.
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