It's "Defense of Homophobia" weekend!

Churches everywhere are being urged to preach about the dangers of same-sex marriage, which, left unchecked, leads to hurricanes, tsunamis, and terrorist attacks (oh, and the demise of traditional families -- but I haven't figured out that chain of causality, yet). The president has taken time off the hard work of planning an invasion of Iran, calculating still more tax breaks for the wealthy, and discouraging energy alternatives to oil in order to warn against (1) the dangers of "activist courts" getting all haughty and acting like the judiciary is a co-equal branch of the government, and (2) the greatest threat to civilization -- yes, children, even greater even than he whose name must never again be mentioned because it will remind us all that he's still out there -- is the prospect that two men or two women might care enough about each other to desire some kind of official acknowledgement of their union. THAT is the real threat to our freedom: Weddings of Mass Destruction (shoot; for a second there, I thought maybe I made that up, but I didn't).

The pope has been doing his part, arguing that the real "pillar of humanity" is traditional heterosexual marriage. I know, you were probably thinking it was going to be "love," or maybe even "justice" or "kindness," weren't you? No, no, no! In fact, according to Rick Santorum (taking time out of his own busy schedule of teaching family values like how to lie about where you live in order to bilk tax payers), it's time to "get beyond, you know, 'we should treat everybody nicely.'"

Why this Sunday, you may ask? Well, the Republicans are facing pretty dismal midterm election probabilities, so they need to fall back on their reliable electoral techniques - hate-mongering and fear-mongering - to get their otherwise uninspired base to the polls. To that end, Bill Frist (yes, the one with the hairy biceps and jungle-print scrubs) moved the marriage amendment to the front burner, and it is up for a vote this week. It's true that it has little chance of passing (as that article link will tell you), but the important thing is to look like they tried, and to make it a "roll call" vote so they can try to embarrass Democrats in the fall.

Kos has Jack Cafferty's take on the matter:

Guess what Monday is? Monday is the day President Bush will speak about an issue near and dear to his heart and the hearts of many conservatives. It's also the day before the Senate votes on the very same thing. Is it the war? Deficits? Health insurance? Immigration? Iran? North Korea?

Not even close. No, the president is going to talk about amending the Constitution in order to ban gay marriage. This is something that absolutely, positively has no chance of happening, nada, zippo, none. But that doesn't matter. Mr. Bush will take time to make a speech. The Senate will take time to talk and vote on it, because it's something that matters to the Republican base.

This is pure politics. If has nothing to do with whether or not you believe in gay marriage. It's blatant posturing by Republicans, who are increasingly desperate as the midterm elections approach. There's not a lot else to get people interested in voting on them, based on their record of the last five years.

But if you can appeal to the hatred, bigotry, or discrimination in some people, you might move them to the polls to vote against that big, bad gay married couple that one day might in down the street.