John Kerry's campaign is squealing like a stuck pig about Republican mailings in the swing states of Arkansas and West Virginia. Kerry must win one of those states to win in November.
These letters portray the liberals banning the Bible while allowing same-sex marriage. "This will be Arkansas if you don't vote," some letters warn.
The mailings show a Bible labeled "BANNED" and explain that the liberal agenda includes removing "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. For contrast, the mailings show as "ALLOWED" a picture of a man, on his knees, putting a wedding ring on the hand of another man.
There is nothing far-fetched about these pictures. Already, the Supreme Court has banned Bible readings, the Ten Commandments and even voluntary prayer from public schools, our largest federal circuit has banned "under God" from the Pledge (a decision that the Supreme Court temporarily sidetracked on a technicality), the Massachusetts supreme court has ordered same-sex marriage licenses, and the gays are filing lawsuits to get activist judges in other states to force them recognize the Massachusetts outrage.
The liberal media are yelping about these mailings because the Kerry Democrats' game plan is to conceal from the voters the fact that they do support these goals. By keeping mum on the subject, and refusing to do anything to stop these travesties, Kerry and his running mate are counting on Democratic-appointed activist judges to render these unpopular decisions so the Democratic politicians won't have to take the heat for it.
When the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) passed Congress in 1996 and was signed by President Clinton, Kerry was one of only eight current Senators who voted against traditional marriage. The vote in the Senate this summer on the marriage amendment gave Kerry a chance to clean up this embarrassment, but he declined to do so.
Kerry's own state of Massachusetts, the source of the country's most direct attack on traditional marriage, is now issuing same-sex marriage licenses. Not only has Kerry done nothing to stop this travesty, the usually loquacious candidate doesn't even criticize it.
The Pledge of Allegiance issue also has Massachusetts overtones. The Democrats' 1988 presidential candidate Michael Dukakis's veto of a Pledge of Allegiance bill helped to cause his defeat at the hands of the first President George Bush.
Funny thing, when the Democrats held their national convention in Boston this summer, they hid their hometown leader and past presidential nominee from the television audience.
Ordinarily, we would expect liberal lawyers such as John Kerry and John Edwards to champion free speech. Instead, they are running like crybabies to get their pals in the media to censor the Republican mailings.
Kerry trotted out trial lawyer John Edwards to whine that President Bush should "tell everyone associated with the campaign to never use tactics like" these mailings. But Republicans should have no fear of putting these issues in the presidential debates.
Opposition to same-sex marriage is a powerful issue in the 2004 election. Missouri voters passed a traditional marriage amendment to their state constitution in August by a stunning 71 percent, and Louisiana voters did likewise in September by 78 percent.
Similar amendments to ban same-sex marriage will be on the November ballot in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, and maybe Ohio. The Democrats know that this issue is hurtful to John Kerry, so the ACLU is desperately trying to get an activist judge to remove it from the Arkansas ballot.
Fortunately, our U.S. Constitution gives us a solution to curb the judicial supremacists who legislate from the bench and trash our culture. Article III endows Congress with the authority and responsibility to curb the power of an abusive and overreaching judiciary by deciding what cases the judges cannot hear.
The House of Representatives has stepped up to the plate and passed two bills to withdraw jurisdiction from the federal courts over these matters where the activist judges are trying to overturn centuries or decades of our culture. The House passed John Hostettler's Marriage Protection Act, H.R. 3313, to stop the courts from forcing 49 states to recognize Massachusetts gay marriage, and then passed the Todd Akin's Pledge Protection Act, H.R. 2028, to keep judicial activists' mitts off of our Pledge of Allegiance.
Historians should mark these votes as the beginning of the end of the runaway judiciary's assault on our culture. Will the supremacist judges try to resist this limitation of their power?
The 247-to-173 vote by which the Pledge Protection Act passed shows that there are more than enough votes in the House to impeach any judge who defies these constitutional laws. The House can adopt Clint Eastwood's approach: "Go ahead; make my day."
