At the Polls

Now most of the time I try to run a civil blog here, not call anyone a ninny, or stupid, or anything insulting. I even decided to leave James Dobson's name (and some of the others that I think protest too much) off the previous post, since I don't have any real evidence that they are anything but what they state, and while they might be ideological supporters of Ted Haggard, they may have nothing else in common with him at all except the protesting too much, which we can all see and hear. They may be protesting for honest and upright reasons, and just feel that homosexual people are hurting them in some way. I have to say that none of the ones I know prevented my getting married and having babies, and they haven't hurt my marriage any way that I can tell so far.

Actually I sort of worry about Ted Haggard. Somebody should tell him that if he looked in the phone book he might be able to find a counselor who doesn't think he is a pervert who is going to hell. I am not so worried about Foley. He is, after all, getting counseling for the alcoholism, not to cure his being gay. As long as he can stay in counseling, he may be able to avoid prosecution for doing things he wanted other people prosecuted for. I think he should be prosecuted. Notice I would send him to prison, not hell. So I still think that is pretty civil of me. I support prison libraries and oppose the death penalty and torture, so in my mind there is still a difference between prison and hell.

Anyway, I worked at the polls today handing out sample ballots for the Democrats, who represent both the conservative and the liberal viewpoints in this election, and opposing the authoritarian ideologues who are calling themselves Republicans. They aren't Republicans. Some of the good people voting for them are, which still mystifies me. How you can stick a cartoon of an elephant on a photograph of a racist bigot and make people believe he is a pillar of the commonwealth escapes me somehow. If people don't read, surely they can watch TV, and if they can't parse grammar or understand complex sentences, surely they can see actual events that happen before them. How do they get a driver's license? It takes the same skill set to get a driver's license that it takes to understand most of the issues before the voters today. Didn't I see them drive up?

The first question by a reasonable person ought to be why Virginia would propose a constitutional amendment that is redundant with existing law. In this case, the reason is obvious. The amendment was a smoke screen (no fire anywhere, folks, just the smoke of an issue) so that George Allen would have an issue to run on. He had no record to run on, and with the Iraq war showing so badly in opinion polls, he had no issue either. And he kept insulting people and pleading ignorance, so people started to see him as ignorant. So the way it played in Virginia was that Allen's campaign could at least point to one reason that people had to vote for him: to make same-sex marriage illegal in Virginia. No matter that it already was. Same-sex marriage was a get-out-the-vote Republican issue, and "vote yes" signs appeared all over the place.

These comments about the amendment are from a GOP supporter passing out sample ballots:

• "I wish they would write this in plain English. That first one was written in such a confusing way that I voted opposite to what I wanted to vote." Apparently the question she expected was "Do you want to let gays and lesbians get married, move into your house, pet your cat, paint your windows black, and rearrange your furniture?"


• "If people are just dating, they are on their own. The government can't take care of everybody." -- a response to a comment that the marriage amendment in Virginia is too broad, and would put dating couples outside the protection of domestic violence laws.


• "We have just let people go too far in this country just living however they want to live."


• "The Constitution has served us well for many years, and I don't see any reason to change it now." When I suggested that a "yes" to the amendment quesiton would be a change, she disagreed.


• "I know there is already a law, but laws can be changed and this would be in the Constitution and could not be changed." I did not point out that this ballot question was about an amendment to the Constitution, and if constitutions could not be changed, we probably wouldn't be voting on an amendment.

I don't think people are ordinarily that stupid. Really, I don't. But I do wonder what the Bushites have been putting in the punch.

Posted by sarahwilliams at November 7, 2006 02:42 PM