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The Bi Wonkette: McCotter's Marriage Madness

By Dawn Wolfe Gutterman

McCotter's Marriage Madness

Wait!? Is that a knight I hear, galloping to yet another battle on his brave white steed?
Yes! Yes, it is – it's Thaddeus McCotter, riding forth once again to save the fine institution of marriage from those awful queers.
McCotter, a Republican from Livonia, has done more than any other member of Michigan's delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives to "save" marriage. From 2004 to today, McCotter has not only voted, "Yea," at every opportunity to make sure that same-sex couples never receive our legal rights. He's also co-sponsored every single anti-marriage bill that's been presented on the Hill.
Anyone, you see, can show up for a vote. Every Republican U.S. House member from Michigan with the exception of Joe Knollenberg, in fact, showed up in July to try once again to pass the Marriage "Protection" Amendment.
But it takes a really dedicated guy to co-sponsor not one, not even two – but five anti-marriage bills, including three proposed Constitutional amendments, since 2004.
And Thaddeus McCotter is just that kind of guy.
McCotter didn't just sponsor the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2004 and the "Son of the Federal Marriage Amendment," the Marriage "Protection" Amendment, in 2006. He also co-sponsored HJ Res. 39, a.k.a. "the Marriage Protection Amendment on steroids," in 2005. The 2005 Resolution, also a proposed Constitutional Amendment, boldly took the movement to screw queers where it had not yet gone before. In addition to limiting marriage to dual-sex couples and forbidding the states from granting "the legal incidents of marriage" to unmarried couples, HJ Res. 39 would also have forbidden the courts to get involved in interpreting either the Federal or State constitutions on the subject.
In other words, McCotter didn't want our courts to be able to do their job, at least not where same-sex or unmarried dual-sex couples are concerned.
But, wait! There's more! Not content to muck with our country's founding document, McCotter has also been busy sponsoring proposed laws to bar marriage to queers. McCotter's name appears on the Marriage Protection Act of 2005, which would slap the hands of any Federal judge who might dare consider a case against the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Not content to stop with national law, McCotter jumped on House Resolution 72, which would ban the District of Columbia from granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
All of this effort just to bar couples with matching sex organs from enjoying the legal state of matrimony. If McCotter had spent half of that energy promoting Republican stances on foreign policy or the economy … we'd all be in real trouble now.
This is not to say that the other members of Michigan's Republican House delegation are a bunch of queer-lovers. Candice Miller (Shelby Township), for example, sponsored the '04 and '06 anti-marriage amendments as well as the Marriage Protection Act. Pete Hoekstra (Holland), joined Miller and McCotter in pushing two of the proposed Constitutional amendments. And Joe Knollenberg (Bloomfield Hills), is equally happy to restrict marriage rights, but he'd rather let the states get their hands dirty handling such tawdry issues.
But it is McCotter, and only McCotter, who has put his name, and thus the name of the people he represents, on five separate bills in an effort to make sure that LGBT citizens remain second-class citizens forever.
McCotter has remembered us. Now it's your turn, good citizens of the 11th District, to remember McCotter – with a vote for Tony Trupiano of Dearborn Heights, http://www.tony4congress2006.com Democratic contender for the 11th District seat and BTL endorsee.
This time, let's elect a knight who will ride forth for equality – not bigotry.

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