Marriage Equality CA on Bush statement

PRESIDENT BUSH OUT OF STEP WITH AMERICANS' GROWING SUPPORT FOR SAME-SEX
COUPLES' EQUALITY UNDER THE LAW


Marriage Equality California (MECA) denounces George Bush's attempt to
undermine the Constitutional principles of freedom, democracy and equal
protections by banning same-sex couples from the fundamental right to
marry in order to appease his ultra-right wing supporters.



"I wonder how Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, feels about President
Bush's support of a Constitutional Amendment to effectively ensure that
his openly lesbian daughter, Mary and families like hers are
Constitutionally barred from the protections afforded all other American
families?" said Molly McKay, Executive Director of Marriage Equality
California. "The President is effectively attempting to carve gay and
lesbian people out of the promise of equal protection under the law for
his own political gain. He is violating the separation of church and
state and attempting to impose his personal religious beliefs on the
entire country. The polls show Americans are almost evenly divided on
this issue. It is time for more discussion and debate in the state
legislatures and courts across the land, not an Amendment to our U.S.
Constitution that would effective impose a gag order against the
democratic process intended to impede the natural progression towards
the legal recognition of gay and lesbian civil rights in this country."




"President Bush's comments are particularly ugly in light of the U.S.
Supreme Court's ruling in the Lawrence decision that recognized the
Constitutional promise of liberty, love and equality for gay and lesbian
people," said McKay. "Instead, President Bush is pushing an agenda of
homophobia, divisiveness, and fundamental unfairness. He is out of step
with the ever increasing number of fair-minded Americans who are
supportive of full marriage equality for all people. Just as history
now shows Strom Thurmond's pro-segregation rhetoric to be abhorrent to
the fundamentals of America today, so too will President Bush's attempt
to exclude gay and lesbian people from the rights of citizenship be
judged in the future. I further predict it will ring as hollow and
hypocritical too."



"How could anyone with a heart not be moved to support this issue after
watching same-sex couples getting married, in San Francisco, after
decades together, with their children celebrating with them, after
standing in the rain and the cold for hours. The reverence for which
these same-sex couples enter into their civil marriage, should stand as
a reminder to other Americans of what the sanctity of marriage is all
about. A good marriage doesn't need defending. The only people who can
threaten a marriage are the two people in that marriage. Why doesn't
President Bush come visit San Francisco and speak with the thousands of
couples who have been married and judge for himself first-hand? I want
him to look into the eyes of a child who cheered as his moms were
married and tell them that they aren't a family. His position is cruel
and profoundly un-American."



Marriage Equality California is a grassroots organization solely devoted
to securing marriage for same-sex couples.





For more information on marriage equality, please visit
http://www.marriageequalityca.org <http://www.marriageequalityca.org/> .


Press Contact:

Molly McKay, Northern California Executive Director, 415-875-3204,
mmckay [at] marriageequalityca.org