Wisconsin's freshman Republican Rep. Glenn Grothman is fast becoming our favorite numb-nutted wingnut in the House. He's the one who recently suggested the good people of his district spy on suspicious looking grocery store shoppers, just to make sure those fake welfare queens aren't buying too many crab legs. He'd already created quite a name for himself as a state senator, with some neat ideas about getting rid of weekends and officially declaring single parents child abusers, and we expect great derptastic things from him during his congressional career.
So, no surprise, he has some also neat thoughts about the Supreme Court's ruling on marriage equality. He's mighty appalled that sheeple who "have become so anesthetized to one more level of government bowing to the gay agenda" are not sufficiently outraged, probably because they don't remember what the Civil War, and the subsequent 14th Amendment, was really about:
I think a lot of people who died fighting in that war felt they died fighting for a religious cause, you know, "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and all that.
I think it would shock those people who died in that war to find out the constitutional amendment, which was ratified kind of as a culmination of their great efforts and their great deaths, would be 150 years later, a little less than 150 years later, used by these five robed --arrogantrobed people to take this constitutional amendment and say that that constitutional amendment that was drafted after the Civil War in fact was an amendment designed to say that same-sex marriage had to be legal.
Sure, and they might be shocked that women can vote now too. A lot can change in 150 years, as our founders knew, and as they wrote in the Constitution, which is how we got the 14th Amendment in the first place, duh. But anyway, do go on, Congressman:
[It's] particularly offensive because not only was it intended -- it was an amendment drafted by a people who felt they had just engaged in a strong religious war to further a Christian lifestyle by getting rid of slavery.
Far be it from us to question the great Wisconsin historian, who also remarked that Abraham Lincoln was the "most biblical of presidents" because he "quoted the Bible a lot," and who once said Kwanzaa is just a white leftist holiday to "shove [...] down black people’s throats in an effort to divide Americans."
But battle hymns and biblical quotes notwithstanding, we are fairly certain the Civil War was about slavery, and the economic system of slavery, and above all, states seceding from the Union to preserve the system of slavery. And yeah, there were lots of abolitionists who opposed slavery on religious grounds, but we do not recall reading in our history textbooks that therealpurpose of the war was to make America an even more Christian nation. Perhaps the transcript of the Gettysburg Address left out the part where Lincoln raised his fist in the air and shouted, "This is for Jebus!"
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Also -- setting aside whether we even need to worry about what the hypothetical ghosts of Civil War soldiers might think about current policy -- may we humbly suggest that those who would fight, to the death, for equality might not be all that offended by, you know, equality? The 14th Amendment was intended to recognize all Americans (or at least the ones with penises) as full and equal citizens. It didn't manage to do that right away, and COUGH COUGH, we're still waiting for the Equal Rights Amendment to add "oh and also chicks too," but perhaps those who fought for equality might be pleased to see, 150 years later, that Americans have continued that fight. Just a thought.
[ RightWingWatch ]
Got Mittuns? wha?
I'm sure that many's a ghost of a wounded Civil War soldier who loved that big gay Walt Whitman tended to them in the infirmary, read them poetry, and after lights out, provided a gentle handie. He probably snuck them his flask o' booze, too! In a seánce, I bet lots of dead Civil War soldiers would think fondly of Big Gay Walt, and would want him to be happy. "He was really, really fun" says the Ouija board.