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Monday, November 07, 2005
No Second Class Citizens - Vote NO on 2
My opponent in the 2006 general elections, incumbent Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott, is campaigning on behalf of the passage of Proposition 2. So is the Ku Klux Klan. Let there be no mistake about where I stand and what I appeal to you to do.
If you did not vote early, please let nothing stop you from making it to your polling place on Tuesday and voting AGAINST Proposition 2. The vote on Proposition 2 has become one of the defining moments in the modern history of Texas. Do we want a society that honors privacy, equality under law, and the separation of church and state? Or do we want a society that exalts discrimination, hate, intolerance, and the elevation of some people's one-sided religious beliefs into state Constitutional law?
The Texas Constitutions of 1836 and 1845 prohibited members of the clergy from serving in the legislature. The hardy founders of Texas respected religion, but they did not want priests, ministers, or rabbis making public laws. This principle runs deep in Texas culture. When John F. Kennedy was campaigning for President in 1960, he felt compelled to come to Texas to deliver a major address pledging that if elected as the first Roman Catholic President he would not permit the Vatican to set United States public policy. Consistent with the values of the real Texas, I whole-heartedly support this principle and I urge you to support it on November 8 with the power of your vote in opposition to Proposition 2.
The Texas Bill of Rights is one of the strongest written charters of liberty, democracy, and equality in the world. Texans have always been proud of this. Texans were one of the first groups of people in the country to place the Equal Rights Amendment into their State Constitution (Bill of Rights, Article 1, Section 3a), doing so by a large margin by referendum vote on November 7, 1972. I am not a historical revisionist who is pretending that the promises of the Texas Bill of Rights have always been honored, for clearly they have not been through much of our history for many of the residents and citizens of Texas. But at least those promises have always been there as goals to fight for and to point to as destiny's call. In Proposition 2, the forces of hypocrisy and hate are seeking literally to elevate discrimination to Constitutional stature. The Bill of Rights of the Texas Constitution was written to protect liberty and freedom, not prohibit them.
As parents in a conventional family structure of mother and father and four children, my wife Rachel and I stand with all our fellow Texas citizens who would be reduced to second-class citizenship by this odious amendment to our precious Bill of Rights. Rachel and I stand against intolerance, hate, discrimination, and hypocrisy. We stand against making anybody a second-class citizen. Please join us in voting against Proposition 2 on November 8.
posted by snarko! at 10:42 AM
 
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