An Open Letter to President George W. Bush

Dear Mr. President,
Recently you have emerged on the world stage as the self-appointed spokesperson for heterosexual marriage and all that it represents.
Clearly your mission is to protect the sanctity of marriage by denying gay couples the status of marriage and its broad range of benefits such as Social Security benefits, inheritance benefits, power of attorney, parental rights, spousal visitation rights, child custody rights, tax benefits, and many others too numerous to list.
Your election campaign promised you were a Uniter not a Divider. That being the case I am guessing that you developed your mission and strategy on the issue of gay marriage by first examining a definition of heterosexual marriage as we know it. When you listed all the elements of heterosexual marriage what did you really consider a threat to the institution of marriage? I suggest that you start your crusade with solutions to the following marital threats:
Domestic violence
Domestic homicides
Battered spouses
Adultery
Child abuse
Bigamy
Polygamy
Divorce
Rape
Date rape
Wife swapping
Unplanned parenthood
Unwed mothers
Deadbeat fathers
Incest
Teen pregnancy
Pedophile abductions and attacks
Pediatric AIDS
Child custody abductions
Child murders
Runaway children
Drug related birth defects
Crack cocaine addicted infants
Heroine addicted infants
Throwaway Children
Sexually uneducated children
Abandoned Orphans
One wonders, Mr. President, why you take have taken issue with Massachusetts and San Francisco, which now recognize and honor marriage of gay couples, yet you have never had any problem with Nevada, which provides America with legalized prostitution nor have you taken to the stage in outrage with Utah over the issue of polygamy, issues some may really consider direct threats to your institution of marriage.
Yes, Mr. President, some people do want to redefine marriage. You might argue that gay marriages would experience all the same negative issues on your list and you would likely be somewhat correct. When it comes right down to it, the flaws on your list are human flaws, not straight, not gay. We as a nation must stop pointing fingers and recognize that we are all human beings; good, bad and ugly.
As gay American men and women we would like to eliminate some of the bad and the ugly from your list. Your institution of marriage, which has over a 50% failure rate, does not structure a working model for the kind of marriage the gay community is interested in. For that we will rely on our hearts, our love, our conscience, our religious leaders, God and finally, City Hall.
Clearly Mr. Bush, you are searching for a new project for your remaining months in the White House. You need to look no further. I suggest that many consider the following matters to be just a short list of some real issues that may threaten marriage and the American family: homelessness, hunger in America, alcoholism, drug addiction, cigarette addiction, sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, homophobic violence/hate crimes, sexual child molestation, STDs among teens, unemployment, job exports, women's pay scale, teachers' pay, high school dropouts, salaries for law enforcers and firefighters, racial profiling, police brutalities, prison crisis, housing discrimination, racial discrimination, violence, poverty, health insurance, health care, hospital crisis, nursing shortages, unemployment, illegal immigration, teen suicides, teen pregnancy, stem cell research, Alzheimer's disease, cancer, HIV/AIDS, sexually active junior high teenagers, sex education, legal prostitution industry…
As far as a constitutional amendment is concerned, how about starting with an amendment that guarantees us a balanced budget or health care? Work with America, not against us. Be a Uniter not a Divider.
See what you can do with a short list until December. There's not much time left, Mr. President.