Bush against same-sex marriage

[Ronin Storm]

a child that comes from parents of the same sex is likely to feel ashamed of itself and it's parents

Hmm, that's feels pretty presumptive. While I admit that (some?) children can be really mean and can, at sight of weakness, press home like predators until their prey scares them off or collapses, given a supportive environment I see no reason why a child should find same-sex parents at all shameful or distressing. After all, in some American Indian tribes the children were nursed and raised by all the women in the tribe and that's got to be pretty peculiar compared to how we were brought up, yes? But I strongly doubt they feel ashamed of their upbringing.

What I'm getting at their is that I don't feel it is primarily a matter of how a child is raised (in a male-female pair, in a same-sex pair, as a communal thing, whatever) but more how their environment treats them, and if their environment is close-minded then they're probably in for some trouble whether they're raised in a "normal" setting or not.

 

[Ronin Storm]

Turns out that the US Senate wasn't going to let this one fly either:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5056474.stm

 

[Haven]

I'm not personally reading too much into this - its a policy decision to bring back the christian conservatives (a sizeable percentage of the literate voting community in the US). After recent polls suggest less than a 1/3rd of all americans showing approval for the president in his position he has to try something to improve this rating.

If he was black then he could court the black/hispanic voters ... but he's not. He's a gun toting christian whiteboy who's somewhat unsruprisingly trying to raise his profile and approval rating with *insert drumroll* gun toting christian conservative americans ... who'd have thunk it

Yes this is a jaded opinion, I'm a jaded person but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.

 

[Pestcontrol]

Politics for such a public leader figure as a president is all about gestures, image and rating. Leave complicated matters such as policy to the real politicians. Basically showing good intent to the potential voters you want to appeal to, without pissing too many other people off. Some people call this opportunism, some people call it lying, but i feel if you understand the rules of the game, it's just doing the strange job that you have.

In this sense Bush is not the natural talent Clinton was, or The Great Communicator Reagan although that's before my time.

Anyway, from this point of view there really isn't that much news value to the whole thing. Bush attempts to rally support with a plan that's doomed to fail. But hey, making it succeed never was the point of it. He's just playing the game.