Surprise, surprise. Another election year, another push by the Religious Right to stand up for “Family Values,” by which they mean demonizing homosexuals. The failed Federal Marriage Amendment is making a re-appearance on June 5th, when the Senate is expected to vote on it.

The Marriage Amendment, which would define marriage as being one man and one woman and that the states would not need to recognize any other such unions, was put forward in 2004. This was meant both as a response to the 2003 Lawrence vs. Texas Supreme Court decision to strike down sodomy laws, as well the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling that gay marriage may be legally recognized in their state. Its supporters believe the institution of marriage to be under attack and that its eventual destruction is the prime directive of the “gay agenda.” Basically, that gays want to destroy marriage by getting hitched. Take that!

Most people who think queers are a threat to families believe so because they operate under several false premises, the first being that the sole reason for marriage’s existence is to propagate children. This conveniently ignores the thousands of straight married couples who are either a. unable (by reason of age or medical problems) to have kids, or b. DON’T WANT to have kids. They also subscribe to the idea that gay couples are unable to raise their children properly and will even go so far as to molest them. This claim is unfounded and is not at all endorsed by American Psychological Association, but is embraced by Focus on the Family. Guess who the religious folk consider the more qualified authority?

When all else fails, they fall back on the ‘it’s not natural’ argument. News flash: anything, anything outside of coitus is an unnatural sexual practice. Masturbation, oral pleasure…technically, kissing anything (even someone else’s lips) should be considered unnatural because the mouth is supposed to be used only for eating and communicating (with a language that is a human invention). Where do you draw the line? Just a thought.

Marriage is not being destroyed by homosexuals; if anything, straight people are doing a pretty good job of dismantling it themselves. Although the ‘50% of marriages end in divorce’ maxim bandied about is more anecdotal than scientifically backed, it’s still reasonably accurate; there are more broken homes now than there were a generation ago. Maybe that’s because there are more homes, period. I don’t know. What I do know is that the majority of these divorces are happening in conservative, family-centric red states. Studies have shown that, with the exception of easy-come, easy-go Nevada, the states with the highest divorce rates are all in the Bible Belt (Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama), while the lowest are in liberal strongholds like Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut. One reason for the disparity is that people in the North tend to wait longer to get married, ensuring maturity and a stable financial situation.

However, a factor that cannot be ignored is religious in nature: according to the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, 30% of Jews and 27% of Born-Again Christians have been divorced, as opposed to 21% of Atheists and Agnostics. That’s not to say they’re bad people, just that they (namely the Born-Agains) need to do some reflection before they start pointing the finger for our decaying society, or whatever their gripe is.

Make no mistake, that’s what has been done. The 2004 Presidential election should have been focused on national security, the economy, or any other number of pressing issues; instead, as brilliantly summed up by Bill Maher, it was turned into “a referendum on boys kissing.” Family Values was the issue of the day, along with the Federal Marriage Amendment coming up for a vote, 13 states passed their own amendments barring gays from tying the knot. And yes, I’m sure that most of the people who voted on that were political moderates, but it was religious conservatives who were making most of the noise. Dick Cheney asserted that electing Kerry would lead to another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, and Born-Agains told us (or at least insinuated that) legalizing gay marriage would lead to our immediate smiting by our Creator, a la Sodom and Gomorrah.

So here we are two years later, heading into another election cycle. Things are decidedly different this time around; the Republicans are in much deeper trouble (Hurricane Katrina, Jack Abramoff, the continuing Iraq insurgency, Terri Schiavo, high gas prices, need I go on?) than they were previously. So what do they do? Roll out the Marriage Amendment in order to get those fundamentalist Christian voters to come out (so to speak) in November. Karl Rove has made it clear that gays and lesbians, of which Dick Cheney’s daughter Lynne is one, are little more than a wedge issue to drive people apart and distract them from issues that actually matter.

In the meantime I suggest you, the readers, write to your senators and voice your concern on the upcoming vote (even if you don’t agree with me, let them know you care). This is the freaking Constitution. Cliché as the expression is, it’s true: the Constitution is meant to protect freedom, not deny it. Here’s another: if Britney Spears can get a marriage and then an annulment 55 hours later because she “really wanted to see what it was like to be married," then what right have we to say two men or women who have been together for years, or even decades, are not deserving of a long-lasting, legal union?

As far as I’m concerned, the institution of marriage is as sacred and inviolate as Britney’s uterus.