Have to admit I found the grotesque hate speech in Mike’s really good post to be comically funny – at least from a Ten Commandments’ perspective.

Let’s face it, Fred Phelps is a serious violator of the the Top Ten.

And he is a serial violator of the specific Commandant in the Top Ten dealing with “shall not misuse the Lord’s name/shall not misrepresent the Lord etc. etc. . . ”

Just how many times in his Vermont missive did he spike the “name in vain” offense?  Let’s rack’um up – points on his pastor’s license in italics:

You hate God’s standards, and He hates you!

Check

God hates you, Doomed america, for what you have done to your children!  . . . God gave you vilent, freakish, worthless, brute-beast children!  You hate your children, and next, YOU WILL EAT YOUR CHILDREN.  

Your antichrist, seated in the White House as the result of your sins, will pass a decree saying you MUST eat your children! (NOTE: probably applies to taking the “Antichrist’s name in vain too”)

Check.

GOD HATES VERMONT.

Check (and all caps name in vain too!).

Because you refuse to repent and return to the God of your covenant, He’ll cause the nations to march on Jerusalem, to afflict Jewry as never before, & you will eat your children.

Check.

God killed fags in Tel Aviv.

Check.

FAG-INFESTED WHOREMONGERS PIMPING FOR A SODOMITE BROTHEL MASQUERADING AS A LEGISLATURE. PICKET THE STATE HOUSE AND THE CITY CLERK’S SAME SEX MARRIAGE LICENSE MILL. THE STENCH OF VERMONT – AS WITH SODOM – HAS REACHED THE NOSTRILS OF AN ANGRY GOD.  Gen. 18:20,21.

Check? No Check.  

I just really liked the part about “Brothel masquerading Legislature” and “God’s nostrils” picking up on what we’re doing in Vermont as I sit here typing – windows open – on the day virtually every farmer in Central Vermont is spreading manure since we’ve just had enough days to finally bring in the hay.

Guess you kinda’ have to be here.

Today the Associated Industries of Vermont will bring together the Douglas appointees (as opposed to the impartial career experts) charged with pushing through the proposed new State land all-terrain vehicle laws. The meeting relates to the regulations (laws) governing archeological sites.

What’s happening behind closed doors, after the flip.

From the Newsguy

From nine in the morning to (roughly) four in the afternoon on Thursday, Vermont business leaders will meet at the Capitol Plaza Hotel across the street from the State House in downtown Montpelier with senior state officials – including Jonathan Wood, the Secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, who is scheduled to be the lunch speaker – to discuss “major regulatory developments” . . .

[Archeological] rule revisions are controversial. Archeologists and their supporters argue that the proposed changes would eliminate preservation on ” lands that have potential (archeological) sites, and restrict it to known sites. That leaves us only investigating areas where there are known historical sites,” said John Crock, an archeology professor at the University of Vermont.

Mmmmmm  So what’s going on?

More Newsguy

. . . Thursday’s conference will provide an opportunity for partisans on one side of the debate – the side that wants to “clarify”( or weaken as the case may be) the rules- to spend several hours presenting their case to some of the very officials who will make the final (though not quite irrevocable) decision.

The event, in short, is newsworthy. . . it will provide some people the opportunity to try to convince those government officials to make the public policy the guests want.

Too bad the Newsguy, along with anyone else who wants to commit an act of journalism, is banned from covering this off-the-record meeting w/public officials.

And what did AIV tell the Newsguy when AIV said “no journalism beyond this line?”

“It’s not like any sort of official meeting, . . . It’s a seminar. It’s not an event for (government) agency folks to listen to us as much as an event for us to listen to agency folks. People come with the expectation that it’s going to be an off-the-record meeting.”

Isn’t that special. No lobbying, no expressing views to government officials, no attempts to shape policy, no officials answering questions about changing state policy.

We should just take that on faith, right?

So what do the lobbyists at Associated Industries tell their members, i.e., the people who are coming merely so they can (cough cough) “listen to agency folks” as AIV claims?  Well AIV tell participants that a goal of AIV is to:

“bring [them] to the table with administration officials, regulators, and legislators to engage directly in the legislative and regulatory process.”

The “regulatory process.”  That would be the regulatory process governing how you and I use (or don’t use) State lands. And “bringing AIV members to the table…to engage directly in the…regulator process” is just what they say publicly. What does AIV say it expects to deliver from government officials in private?  Guess we won’t know will we.

New User Ned Nate Flanders wants you to light up. How preciously timely of him. Go back to where you came from buddy.

It’s 4-20 and I expect the stoners will be out in force, once they wake up this afternoon.  Well, it’s reality check time.

There is too much to lose by legalizing marijuana, so just don’t go there.  Where to begin?  

LEGALIZING marijuana will force money launderers to find honest work.

LEGALIZATION will break up crime syndicates.

LEGALIZATION will drastically reduce violence. Killings, maimings, mayhem, shootings, stabbings. It will end all that violent crime the State and Federal Governments generate for citizens to have a piece of the U.S. Government’s statutorily mandated super profitable crime monopoly. This.Will.Just.END!

LEGALIZATION will seriously dent police corruption and abuse of civil rights.

LEGALIZATION will turn unlicensed farmers who are engaged in crimes of economic advancement, into plain ole’ tax-paying entrepreneurs. Do you really want that?

— you want more?  

LEGALIZATION will save billion$ (TRILLION$$ even) in prison building and by recapturing all those wasted and completely unnecessary judicial and law enforcement resources we spend weeding America.  Overnight, we will be FORCED to spend billions of dollars for public protection that stops violent crime and real criminals, we be subjected to unclogged courts handling genuine disputes in need of serious attention.  We’ll be forced to witness full frontal break-outs of societal prosperity as we return non-violent merchants to an expanding economy. We spend billion$ of our income taxeS to keep non-threatening stoners, and their farmers, in prison.  Next thing you know, these non-threatening criminals (or neighbors as we frequently call them) will be paying taxes instead of taking them, they’ll be outvoting us at PTA meetings and eating shitloads of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey. The Horror!

LEGALIZATION will reunite families, preserve family values, protect two-parent homes. Kids will visit with their dads at night while playing catch instead of between a glass partition on bring-your-kid-to-the-slammer-day.

LEGALIZATION will end the obscene military practice of using poisonous and deadly carcinogenic chemicals on pristine Central and South American farmland. The U.S. is successfully destroying otherwise healthy, productive soils, while generating contempt for our arrogant drug policies as we punish foreign farmers for to satiate our domestic hysteria over substance use.

LEGALIZATION will force our political leaders to be honest and brave and admit they’ve been fucking-the-dog for a generation by treating a health and education issue as a war on Americans who use substances.  Our current substance abuse policies are a demonstrated menace to public health.  Our current substance abuse polices are counter productive and have been overwhelmingly successful is boosting crime, corrupting law enforcement and stunting our economy. Why would we ever want to change that?

LEGALIZATION?  You Have Got To Be Kidding Me!

I could go on and on, but the fact is, legalizing otherwise market driven unlicensed agriculture WILL END LIFE AS WE KNOW IT.

We can’t handle the public health benefits.

We can’t handle the Trillion$$ is savings and/or expansion of our economy.

We can’t handle turning our backs on being world-class hypocrites.  

We would be unrecognizable. Is that the kind of change you really want?  

Happy 4-20. Now pick up your bong, don’t bother voting vote, don’t bitch, don’t become active in politics, don’t demand accountability from our elected officials and, for the love of all that is holy, keep on giving aid and comfort to the narrowest and most spineless leaders; the ones who promise to continue a never-ending & always expanding war on substance users, no matter what the costs in coin and blood. You know it’s what’s truly best for you and all of us.  

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This will be a new “regular” feature. 

Each Friday I'll post, rescue, reprint (regurgitate?) a few of the better, more interesting, funny, insightful or just plain awful comments from our virtual banquet of reader punditry from the preceding week. 

http://www.greenmountaindaily.com/showComment.do?commentId=22358
zuckerman

So what hit your radar this week?
What missed mine?
Drop your links and thoughts in the comments.

On behalf of the State of Vermont, Governor Douglas is threatening to deny equal marriage opportunities to same gender couples.  This will have at least one of the following results.

1.  A long, drawn out, expensive, divisive, distracting, unnecessary, mean-spirited and painful for many Vermonters battle that he will eventually lose in the legislature, if not this year, then soon.

OR

2.  A long, drawn out expensive, divisive, distracting, unnecessary, mean-spirited and painful for many Vermonters battle that he will eventually lose in the Supreme Court next door to the State House.

Or

3.  The Governor will force “Number 1” which will lead to “Number 2” with the Vermont Courts, which will put us RIGHT BACK TO WHERE WE ARE TODAY and will require additional legislation to carry out the Court's order.

If the Governor goes through with his discrimination veto, he will inevitably force court and legislative battles. The Governor's pro-discrimination veto will send us — in 2010/2011/2012 — right back to the 2009 General Assembly.  Right back to the 2009 General Assembly that is, today, proudly standing with all Vermonters and protecting their rights. 

If the Governor chooses the path of division, delay, distraction and the disgrace of rejecting Vermonters' rights to marry — all of our rights as Vermonters and as people — to enjoy State created legal marriage benefits, then the following is a harbinger of what's to come. 

You did not read it here first, but you will read something like it soon enough if the Governor chooses goes through with his discrimination veto.

Back to the future, below: 

The Iowa Supreme Court eloquently addressed the issue of how its Constitution, just like Vermont's, protects the rights of citizens who want to enjoy the benefits of State created civil marriage. 

Quoted below is just a brief sample of the type of language we should expect to hear from the Vermont Supreme Court if Governor Douglass carries through with his discrimination veto against Vermonters.

Like Iowa's, Vermont's Constitution affords all Vermonters the right to civil marriage.  Here is what the Iowa Supreme Court had to say in response to the argument that marriage rights must be affirmatively denied to homosexuals by the State:

It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past .  .  . 

In the first reported case of the Supreme Court of the Territory of Iowa, In re Ralph, we refused to treat a human being as property to enforce a contract for slavery and held our laws must extend equal protection to persons of all races and conditions. This decision was seventeen years before the United States Supreme Court infamously decided Dred Scott v. Sandford, which upheld the rights of a slave owner to treat a person as property. Similarly, in Clark v. Board of Directors, and Coger v. North West. Union Packet Co., we struck blows to the concept of segregation long before the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Iowa was also the first state in the nation to admit a woman to the practice of law, doing so in 1869. Her admission occurred three years before the United States Supreme Court affirmed the State of Illinois decision to deny women admission to the practice of law, see Bradwell v. Illinois, and twenty five years before the United States Supreme Court affirmed the refusal of the Commonwealth of Virginia to admit women into the practice of law, see Ex parte Lockwood. In each of those instances, our state approached a fork in the road toward fulfillment of our constitution’s ideals and reaffirmed the absolute equality of all” persons before the law as “the very foundation principle of our government.” []

. . . [T]his court . . . faces an important issue that hinges on our definition of equal protection. This issue comes to us with the same importance as our landmark cases of the past. The same-sex-marriage debate waged in this case is part of a strong national dialogue centered on a fundamental, deep-seated, traditional institution that has excluded, by state action, a particular class of Iowans. This class of people asks a simple and direct question: How can a state premised on the constitutional principle of equal protection justify exclusion of a class of Iowans from civil marriage?

And how does the Iowa Supreme Court answer this question, and what can we expect here in Vermont if the Governor forces an expensive, divisive and needlessly cruel and drawn-out court battle to secure fundamental equal protection for all Vermonters?  The end result will sound something like this:

From the Iowa Court —

[There is no] constitutionally adequate justification for excluding [homosexual Iowans] from the institution of civil marriage. A new distinction based on sexual orientation would be equally suspect and difficult to square with the fundamental principles of equal protection embodied in our constitution. [Defendants are unable to show] the existence of a justification for such a legislative classification [banning marriage rights] that [advances] any governmental objective. Consequently, the language in [the Iowa statute] limiting civil marriage to a man and a woman must be stricken . . . and . . . must be interpreted and applied in a manner allowing gay and lesbian people full access to the institution of civil marriage.

Relative to the Iowa defendants' argument that some couples in Iowa should be denied the marriage rights of other couples, the Court went straight to the point and declared that the State's Constitution – like Vermont's – is there to defend the liberty of the State's residents. Constitutional democracy does not exist to “protect” the prejudices of those who would deny equal right, equal liberty and equal legal protection to their neighbors. 

Once again, you did not hear it here first, but if Governor Douglas carries through on his threat to issue a discrimination veto and creates a long, divisive and unnecessarily mean fight, the will ultmimately and needlessly be thrown at the Courts for the resolution, which is already that is sitting on his desk, then here is a taste of what the Vermont Supreme Court will say about the Douglas' “legacy:”

From the Iowa Supreme Court — 

This lawsuit is a civil rights action by twelve individuals who reside in six communities across Iowa. Like most Iowans, they are responsible, caring, and productive individuals. They maintain important jobs, or are retired, and are contributing, benevolent members of their communities. They include a nurse, business manager, insurance analyst, bank agent, stay-at-home parent, church organist and piano teacher, museum director, federal employee, social worker, teacher, and two retired teachers. Like many Iowans [and like many Vermonters], some have children and others hope to have children. Some are foster parents. Like all Iowans [and like all Vermonters who do not subscribe to illiberal discrimination], they prize their liberties and live within [Iowa/Vermont] with the expectation that their rights will be maintained and protected . . .

Please take time to read the entire decision Varnum v. Polk Co. Dk't 07-1499 (Iowa 2009).

It’s also OK to defend those priorities.  

It is also important to call out divisive and hate generating media advocacy when it rears its ugly head.

Greenvtster makes a good point when he says the Democrats need to prevent the media, or conservatives – but I repeat myself – from defining their agenda as a single issue.

The Times Argus’ toxic and divisive poll is a reminder to our legislative leaders that the responsibility to enact priorities carries with it the responsibility to publicly advocate for those priorities. “Leading,” it is why we elect them.

The Democrats need to advocate for the policies and priorities needed to help Vermonters protect themselves from an economy that Republican and conservative policies have thoroughly dismantled and run into the fiscal ditch. The economic recovery and sustainability plans, particularly those the Governor and his administration consistently undermine, need to be pushed front and center.

They, and we, also need to advocate against those forces deliberately distorting the agenda our legislative leaders are pushing on our behalf. Do not shy from calling out partisans in the media. Do not shy away from those conservatives who are fighting social justice or any other group that is distracting from a badly needed progressive legislative agenda.



. . . UPDATED down under . .

The effect of inartful language in the Times Argus‘ “poll” **  is nothing more than a direct, in-your-face, jab at gays and lesbians specifically, and the majority of Vermonters, in general, who value equal protection of the law.

The TA’s behavior The survey’s language has the effect of playing into a narrative that anti-marriage rights opponents are pedaling, which pits Vermonter directly against Vermonter. The poll’s not-too-subtle message to its readers is “Your interests are necessarily mutually exclusive from the priorities of other Vermonters’ interests when it comes to legislative priorities.”

This is just plain untrue. It is toxic thinking. It creates a false, media generated, and media perpetuated conflict of priorities where none exists.

Is the TA afraid too much consensus is building around equal marriage rights? Seriously, what is the inspiration for this?

Here is the problem.  When a survey in a newspaper asks:

Do you think same-sex marriage should be a top priority for the Legislature?

What it is really telling its readers is “are the issues that are important to gays and lesbians more important than the issues that affect you?”

If that’s the questions they are really asking, then want to know what the real answer to that question is?  The answer is Bullshit!  It’s bullshit because the implication is false. The conflict is non-existent.

If the Times Argus really wants to play those games, what’s stopping them from pulling out all the stops and pitting the rest of “us” (whoever “we” happen to be) against each other and against our neighbors?  Let’s see the TA put up a poll that pits children against farmers or the elderly against working people. Why only imply to your readers that it stops with marriage rights? Certainly there are other groups that can fight to trump each other?

Try this:

What’s more important?

Do you think the legislature should make the needs of working families a top priority OR are the elderly more important?

When media outlets such as the Times Argus (they are not the only ones, just the most recent example) carelessly use language in surveys that plays into a false narrative being promoted by the GOP, the effect is to pit Vermonter divisively against Vermonter and it asks us to dig deeply into our inner-hate.

Memo: Stop pitting Vermonter against Vermonter.

This is just shameful because there really is no shortage of targets for the TA, or others, to use when pitting one group of Vermonters against another. Once the tone is set, everyone gets into the game. Worse, it makes people think they may have competing interests when, in fact, nothing is further from the truth. Because, if the TA or other well-poisoners want to play that game, they can throw frogs into the drinking water all day. How about this one:

What’s more important? Do you think the Legislature should preserve Vermont’s image of natural beauty and make cleaning up Lake Champlain a priority OR should the legislature protect Vermont’s farming heritage and ignore agricultural discharging or animal feces and pesticide runoff into the Lake?

Same false assumptions and same false priorities. They are easy to “poll,” but hard to explain.

When the equation is: “What’s more important, marriage and family rights or [Fill.In.The.Blank]?” — why even bother to ask the question? Why frame an issue in a way that suggests (as the Governor and other conservatives are also doing) that fixing one problem means ignoring others? I’ll say it again, nothing is further from the truth.

Divisive questions are really nothing more than divisive statements that are really an editorial about a false conflict. And the conflict pits Vermonter against Vermonter. It does not illuminate the subject. It does not pit “this is where we are today” with “this is where we need to be tomorrow – and why.” No, the editorial questioning keeps public policy on a zero-sum reptilian level and ignores what is truly at issue.

Chew on this: Liberals can address more than one serious problem at a time, just like Republicans and conservatives can spend their entire day trying to obstruct and block progress on any work to fix more than one problem at a time. Smell the coffee, assholes.  

When the General Assembly is in session, every State law that is on the books is potentially on the table. Every (1) State dollar of every (2) State funding priority is at issue and every (3) State policy is subject to review. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

The fact is WE ALL have an interest in civil rights. Civil rights is always a top priority. And top priorities do not make anything else less important either.

————————-



UPDATE:  Thank you to Rob Mitchell, of the Times Argus, for commenting on this post.

He re-states the Times Argus’ support for equal marriage rights and comments that:

The editorial of a newspaper is the voice of the publisher and the community we serve. Sometimes the editorial leads the community, sometimes it follows. . . we support gay marriage as a civil right. We said so editorially, and that is separate from our news coverage. . .

We are not just a poll question, we are much more than that. We provide a forum for people to voice their opinions, and we do not discriminate against any opinion – we protect free speech.

It is easy to get fired up about a poll question, but we have put our money where our mouth is in support of equal rights time and time again.

Please see all of his comments including, HERE and HERE, below.  I note there are revisions in my post in light of his comments.

– cl

———————

[** the “poll” is a stolen cookie click’n’refresh feature. Not only is it not a poll, but this means it cannot even gauge reader preference since one person can vote as many times as desired.]

Also, an alert reader directed us to a neutrally worded survey at WPTZ (and one that does not require you to clear or “toss” your cookies!).

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If you attended the press conference in the ENTHUSIASTICALLY PACKED State House Cedar Creek room a week ago Friday, you also saw Euan Bear unfurl a banner.

The banner asks a simple question: If civil unions are the same as marriage, want to trade?

To me the banner is really asking: “why does the State of Vermont – or any state – force upon a couple, a union, a marriage, this legal distinction?”

More over the bump . . .

The real issue, of course, is not about anyone “trading” their State-created legal couple status, whatever that status might be.

The point is no Vermonter should be forced to think about “trading-up” for a status that the State already gives away to most of its citizens. This is a pure civil rights matter, and it is our General Assembly’s responsibility to fix. And it is our responsibility to stand with our General Assembly to see it fixed.

This is about fairness, this is about equality.  Because some of us have heterosexual marriages, the government chooses to give us one set of rights and recognition relative to our families’ State-sanctioned legal protections. The State’s role is not to play favorites, the State’s role is to play fair.

For many of our friends, relatives, neighbors and many others in our community, Vermont government ignores their right to a marriage.  Relative to state-created family and state-sanctioned marital protections, Vermont government forces upon members of our democratic community a lesser legal status if they are not heterosexuals.

Why the difference between two communities in our one State? Or, why does Vermont choose to continue imposing two sets of rights for one community of citizens? The lack of equal treatment exists because some of us were NOT born homosexual; and the treatment occurs because some of us were NOT born heterosexual. That is not a way to make public policy; it is only a recipe for community division.

So here is the practical issue. We are now at the point – finally – where State recognition of THE RIGHT to marriage, which same gender couples inherently have, is within reach. It is a relatively simple act from a legislative perspective. The bill pending in the General Assembly is only a few sentences long (H.178).

The equal marriage rights bill is simple. At its statutory core, what this law will do is recognize the right to marry by changing JUST.4.WORDS.

JUST(ice) = 4 Words

I’ll say it again, the bill TAKES FOUR (4) WORDS OUT of the Vermont code.

Where the law currently reads:

. . . the town clerk shall issue the marriage license “in the town where either the bride or groom resides . . . “

H.178 changes the language so the law will now state:

. . . the town clerk shall issue the marriage license “in the town where either party resides. . .”

See the difference? Four words.

That’s the scoop. Just four words.  JUST[ice] 4 WORDS.

History already left the station on this issue.  Vermont maybe leading much of the country.  However, it is still playing catch-up respecting the rights of all Vermonters who want a marriage.

It’s about time. It’s past time. Don’t let the forces of fear, hate, division and prejudice stop the righting of this wrong.

JUSTice 4 WORDS

Don’t fall for the distractions.  The Governor is trying to distract you. The anti-marriage collective is having the vapors in front of you. The harp-along conservative dittoheads are clutching their pearls and fretting over how “complicated” an issue this is. They are all bearing false witness about how “time consuming” or “distracting from the important work of the legislature” this will be. They shiver and stutter about how difficult civil rights issues are for the General Assembly.  Excuse me.  My representatives can vote and chew gum at the same time.

This will only become time consuming and this will only be complicated if conservatives and the anti-marriage forces drag it out. There is nothing to drag out.

The time is now. The work is done. Vote!

JUST 4 Words.

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If you attended the press conference in the ENTHUSIASTICALLY PACKED State House Cedar Creek room a week ago Friday, you also saw Euan Bear unfurl a banner.
 

The banner asks a simple question: If civil unions are the same as marriage, want to trade?

To me the banner is really asking: “why does the State of Vermont – or any state – force upon a couple, a union, a marriage, this legal distinction?”

More over the bump . . .

The real issue, of course, is not about anyone “trading” their State-created legal couple status, whatever that status might be.

The point is no Vermonter should be forced to think about “trading-up” for a status that the State already gives away to most of its citizens. This is a pure civil rights matter, and it is our General Assembly's responsibility to fix. And it is our responsibility to stand with our General Assembly to see it fixed.

This is about fairness, this is about equality.  Because some of us have heterosexual marriages, the government chooses to give us one set of rights and recognition relative to our families' State-sanctioned legal protections. The State's role is not to play favorites, the State's role is to play fair.

For many of our friends, relatives, neighbors and many others in our community, Vermont government ignores their right to a marriage.  Relative to state-created family and state-sanctioned marital protections, Vermont government forces upon members of our democratic community a lesser legal status if they are not heterosexuals.

Why the difference between two communities in our one State? Or, why does Vermont choose to continue imposing two sets of rights for one community of citizens? The lack of equal treatment exists because some of us were NOT born homosexual; and the treatment occurs because some of us were NOT born heterosexual. That is not a way to make public policy; it is only a recipe for community division.

So here is the practical issue. We are now at the point – finally – where State recognition of THE RIGHT to marriage, which same gender couples inherently have, is within reach. It is a relatively simple act from a legislative perspective. The bill pending in the General Assembly is only a few sentences long (H.178).

The equal marriage rights bill is simple. At its statutory core, what this law will do is recognize the right to marry by changing JUST.4.WORDS.

JUST(ice) = 4 Words

I'll say it again, the bill TAKES FOUR (4) WORDS OUT of the Vermont code.

Where the law currently reads:

. . . the town clerk shall issue the marriage license “in the town where either the bride or groom resides . . . “

H.178 changes the language so the law will now state:

. . . the town clerk shall issue the marriage license “in the town where either party resides. . .”

See the difference? Four words.

That's the scoop. Just four words.  JUST[ice] 4 WORDS.

History already left the station on this issue.  Vermont maybe leading much of the country.  However, it is still playing catch-up respecting the rights of all Vermonters who want a marriage.

It's about time. It's past time. Don't let the forces of fear, hate, division and prejudice stop the righting of this wrong.

JUSTice 4 WORDS

Don't fall for the distractions.  The Governor is trying to distract you. The anti-marriage collective is having the vapors in front of you. The harp-along conservative dittoheads are clutching their pearls and fretting over how “complicated” an issue this is. They are all bearing false witness about how “time consuming” or “distracting from the important work of the legislature” this will be. They shiver and stutter about how difficult civil rights issues are for the General Assembly.  Excuse me.  My representatives can vote and chew gum at the same time.

This will only become time consuming and this will only be complicated if conservatives and the anti-marriage forces drag it out. There is nothing to drag out.
 
The time is now. The work is done. Vote!

JUST 4 Words.