Mass-Distraction
It's amazing how the national issue-of-the-month, same-sex
marriage, seems to have gobbled up so much of our collective
attention lately. Trying to look at this as if from the future,
we believe the issue's history - what we're experiencing
as its news overload now - will ultimately mirror that of
the other civil rights issues which over time, we've
come to see as basic human rights issues- the abolition
of slavery, voting rights for women, racial integration, the
passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act-changes
which our society has long since accepted as part of what
makes our country the richly diverse and open society that
it is. This month's issue, we think, is one of those
issues, where equal protection under the law will in time
be affirmed for yet another group of citizens, however it
unfolds. Ultimately we think, that will happen both through
the courts including the federal courts, and at the state
level, where it's historically and rightly belonged.
Where it doesn't belong is where President Bush has
chosen to place it: front and center in the latest of his
administration's attempts to bulldoze the wall built
by Thomas Jefferson between Church and State in America. It's
a wall that's protected our freedoms well, and it's
stood the test of time for good reason. But once again -the
forth time by our count- it's under assault from the
Bush Administration. In our view the president's call
for a constitutional amendment on same-sex marriage isn't
just an attempt to deny some Americans their right to equal
protection. It isn't just an attempt to shore up his
core support base by pandering to the religious right. What
it is though, is a direct attempt to legislate American society
based on someone's interpretation of religious scripture.
That is an extreme and historically unprecedented agenda,
and we see it as an attempt to enshrine religious-based intolerance
as one of our fundamental constitutional principles. In one
hyphenated word, we think it's un-American.
Since we don't think the President's un-American,
for us it raises what we think is a legitimate question: Why
is our country even having this dialogue? Sure, it would be
good to resolve the inequities for those relative few the
issue would affect. But it's not New Paltz mayor Jason
West that put the issue on the national radar; it's
President Bush who did. We think the obvious answer to the
why question is that it's all now part of a great big
presidential election campaign. And we think it's
pretty disgraceful when issues that are profoundly personal
and historically religious -like marriage - are being used
as tools of mass-distraction to keep the national dialogue
from focusing on our country's real issues and how we're
handling them. We do think that's what's going
on, and we expect to see plenty more of it between now and
November.
The real issues are the same as they've almost always
been: national security, the country's economic performance,
foreign policy and global stability, public health and education,
the environment, personal and civil rights, and the government's
own agenda which is to say, whose interests it's working
most effectively for. We think the Bush administration has
a record on most of these issues that's going to be
difficult to defend convincingly, especially with gas prices
rising and four million jobs lost or exported. That's
why we're expecting that distraction and misdirection
will occupy an increasing larger share of the national dialogue
as we move toward November's election. It's hard
to know what forms it'll take, though anything that's
emotionally charged, that exacerbates cultural differences
or pulls out deep seated antagonisms is likely to play prominently.
With tons of soft money available for TV commercials, we should
expect the worst. And it's started already, with the
president's media team having laid claim to images of
9-11 for the reelection campaign, over the protests of the
victim's families.
Of the distractions available, the big gun to pull of course,
is war, but we don't think that's likely to happen
before the election. Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick
Cheney are all too smart to get stuck answering questions
about Wagging The Dog. And the fact is that the threat of
domestic terrorism seems to have a similar net impact; nearly
as effective as a war in bringing people together around the
commander-in-chief. Post 9-11, fear's what's
been selling. And the harder it's sold, the more we're
likely to buy and the less we're likely to ask the price.
We have been paying a price in this country to protect ourselves
from the threats of terrorism that we're justifiably
afraid of. And the cost has been very high in terms of our
individual and civil liberties and the constitutional protections
which have been our birthright as Americans. The best protection
we have for those rights is each other: people paying attention
to what's happening, and taking some personal responsibility
for the way things work out. As this national election
season starts in earnest, we hope most everyone will be engaging
what's said with some good critical thinking about what's
important and what's not, and an eye towards sifting
what's substantive from what's just distraction.
