Are we such a threat to conservatives?

Apparently so, since Republicans are once again trying to get a constitutional amendment passed that would outlaw gay marriage in the US:

Conservative members of Congress are renewing an effort to outlaw gay marriage through an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, pointing to Massachusetts as the spark in a potential firestorm of court decisions that could redefine marriage across the country.

In a hearing yesterday, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, the Republican chairman of a panel studying the proposed amendment, said Congress is racing against "imminent" action by "activist" judges to legalize gay marriage.

Funny how the GOP likes activist judges when they rule in their favor. They only attack them when the judges' decisions are contrary to their needs and wants.

The amendment effort is sweeping in scope: it would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, aiming to rescind Massachusetts' law passed in May 2004.

Although a similar effort last year led by President Bush failed in both chambers of Congress, conservative lawmakers are hopeful the amendment will come to a vote, though no timeline has been scheduled.

In order to pass, the amendment would need the support of two-thirds of those voting in each House and then be ratified by three-quarters, or 38, of state legislatures.

Hopefully, the right-wingnuts will never be able to muster the majorities necessary to pass such a hateful amendment, because if they did, its passage at the state level would be almost guaranteed, since currently 18 states have constitutional amendments defining the institution as a union for man and woman and 27 states have statutes protecting traditional marriage.

This version of the amendment, however, doesn't seem very well written and might be too sweeping, which might doom it in Congress.

Another lawyer testifying, Louis Michael Seidman, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said the amendment is "sloppily" written and would thus grant federal judges "unchecked power" to interpret it.

"The amendment reflects remarkably poor lawyering," said Seidman, adding that the wording would actually abolish marriage in Massachusetts -- for straight and gay people alike.

Because the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that gays must be treated equally, he argued that denying gays the right to marry also denied it to heterosexual couples. "The amendment has the remarkable, and no doubt unintended, effect of abolishing marriage in the state of Massachusetts," Seidman told the panel.

I wonder what straight people in the Bay State think about that.

Critics say there are more important issues to be debating, like spiraling gas prices, the war in Iraq and rising health-care costs.

"Congress shouldn't be wasting its time taking away people's rights when gas prices are $2.89 a gallon and we owe $1.8 trillion dollars to foreign counties," said Matt Vogel, spokesman for U.S. Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Lowell. "Those are real priorities Congress should be handling."

My point exactly. The fact that the religious right in this country has been able to galvanize its constituency (and a large swath of the population at large) around the issue of gay marriage is so mind boggling, especially given the severity of the problems the country currently faces.

It's so sad that people can be so hateful and so closeminded not to see that all gay people want is the same protections straight people currently enjoy when they get married.

If they're so worried about the institution of marriage being threatened and destroyed, maybe they should concentrate their efforts on outlawing divorce.