Wes and Kirkpatrick Kissing In a Tree...

A couple of days ago fellow "editor" Michele "I'm Back and I'm Bossy!" Marchand suggested that I write about that film City Without a Home that Adam Holdorf reviewed last issue. I saw City Without a Home myself (I like to call it Film Without a Clue) and Michele and I are in absolute agreement that it would be a good thing if I derided the film in a civil and thoughtful manner.

Unfortunately, in order to do that up right I would have to recap for you all what the film is about. I would have to tell how the filmmakers lived at Tent City 3 for eight days and interviewed a bunch of residents there. Then I would have to get all detailed and picky about why I thought the treatment was biased beyond belief. This would entail my remembering that fact to myself and raising my blood pressure.

I've done that too much lately. My whole last column was written in a pissy fit. I need to talk about something that amuses me. So, let's talk about recent constitutional amendment proposals!

One constitutional amendment proposal was recently in the news as California Governor Schwarzenegger backed the movement to allow foreign-born people to be president. Now, I'm all in favor of such an amendment, in spite of the fact that if it had passed in 1963 it would have allowed Barry Goldwater (who was born in the Gadsen Purchase) to have become president and I might not have enjoyed that. But if Schwarzenegger really wants the amendment to be passed, shouldn't he lie low about it? Does it really advance his cause to scare everyone with the prospect of a President Schwarzenegger?

I say let's annex Austria BEFORE we let that happen, OK?

But the amusing amendment for all time has got to be the one you knew I was going to bring up. That would be the amendment, currently being discussed in the House, intended to ban same-sex marriages. That would be the amendment of which arch-conservative James J. Kilpatrick has said, "This mean-spirited and bigoted resolution spits in the face of freedom." Me and James are in bed together on this one, ready to pick out a ring. OK, Anitra, just kidding. But seriously, I am a conservative today. Is that amusing, or what?

The amendment, in the form it is being considered in Congress, is called the Musgrave Amendment after its sponsor, Republican Congressperson Marilyn Musgrave. Its authors include lawyer Matt Daniels, who grew up with one mother and no father and doesn't want that to happen to anybody else and thinks this gets him somewhere with that, and Robert Bork, who might have been a Supreme Court Justice if the Senate hadn't freaked when they found out what a fruitcake he was. We now get to see just how right they were. That was some bullet we dodged.

You know your constitutional amendment sucks when legal scholars already can't figure out what it really means, not a hundred years after enacted, but even when it's proposed. Here it is: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the Constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."

The authors say the intent in the second sentence is not to ban civil unions but only to keep courts from mandating them, while allowing state legislatures to decide the issue. But in fact what they have written allows local officials everywhere to defy state laws altogether!

Let's say this amendment passed and say I ran for mayor of Seattle and won. Know what my first act in office would be? Quoting the Musgrave Amendment I would ban all marriages in Seattle. If gays and lesbians can't marry, I would say, then in the interest of equality nobody can. And the Musgrave Amendment would grant me the right to do that, because it says no state law can require marital status to be conferred on anyone who isn't already married!

Q. What reason does Marilyn Musgrave give for opposing same-sex marriages? A. None! She says she's a representative, not a minister, so she shouldn't discuss that! Is that a hoot, or what?