Labour Unions: Gay Marriage: Alliance opposes AFL-CIO use of workers dues re "Gmarriage," while itself deceiving workers
Mr Kendall Boutwell,
Union Workers against Gay Marriage
I agree with your point about unions. I support the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC) and the smaller Christian
Labour Association in the USA (CLA-USA), despite the load of homophobia they presumably carry and which I have personally experienced several decades back. The situation may have changed; I don't know; but I critically support both CLAC and CLA-USA because, aside from the concern I just registered, they are much more founded on good principles and welcome people of all faiths to unionization based on those principles derived from the Gospel. Yet, I'm still trying to get justice from CLAC on the matter of concern. While I disagree with that homophobic past practice (which had a disastrous effect on my family, including a suicide) by any union, it must also be said in all fairness that CLAC does not use any member's dues for political purposes, either for or against one side or another in the issues you put in the forefront - or others. All unions have to shoulder a strong claim against them in regard to day-to-day homophobia that affects the earning of wages and every outcome of the lack of an equal playing-field for particapation in society, union, and performance of work. That's something other than a union using workers' dues to pay for a campaign against the Federal Marriage Amendent to the US Constitution. Yet you manipulatively make no such distinction.
I definitely agree that the AFL-CIO and its President John Sweeney are being outragously manipulative in using union funds for these partisan purposes. I'd like to add my name to your petition.
But, you and your bosom-buddies in the alliance against Sweeney's AFL-CIO are being equally dishonest and manipulative.
I strongly disagree with the bigotry of your petition. You pretend that you're supporting the Federal Marriage Amendment, but you abuse those of us who would dearly like to join in the petition who cannot support the hate-motivated clauses you piggyback on that one central point, that one valid central point.
In Canada, the Conservative Party on the Federal level has offered alternative legislation to the Government's attempt to demote marriage to some generic designator only. But the Conservatives have been far too late in coming somewhat to their senses in the battle and are up against far too devious an alliance of political opponents, to the net effect that the CPC's improvement on the government's proposed legistlation to demote the traditional legal definition of marriage, seems at the moment a lost cause. The Tory alternative legislation is very unlikely to win the day. It makes provision for legal recognition of "same-sex" "civil unions" - two dubious terms that should not be enshrined in law, especially in law recognizing other kinds of intimate unions than that of marriage. In fact, there is no generic same-sex intimate union; there are Lesbian intimate unions and there are male homo intimate unions, and if the state finds it has an interest in recognizing either or both, it should do so with integrity in recognizing the difference between the three kinds of intimate unions now under consideration - 1woman1man, Lesbian 2women, and male homo 2men. It's very important to keep the element of vows made by any such couple, vows that stipulate the intention of permanence, and to the exclusion of all others. The one-to-one provision should be emphasized regarding all three - that's the chief factor of sameness. But the differences otherwise should more largely determine what the state evaluates as its own interest in regard to these two additional claims to recognition - recognition of what alredy exists in society and is part of the American and Canadian societal fabric.
You're site's rhetoric is reprehensible because it is not based on clarity of petition, is not pinpointed to supporting the Federal Marriage Amendment and intentionally exludes those who cannot support your dishonest piggybacking of additional points, as these raise a question regarding the authenticity of your motives, has presumptuous hate-motivated small-print subtextual clauses - to the net effect that you are manipulative and untrustworthy. I do not trust that the peition is really in support of traditional marriage and allowing other people with other choices to find a distinct separate recognition, should the individual states find it in their interest to do so. Of course, to do so to whatever extent (variously state by state, and under some other more appropriate names than marriage - which should not be redefined and which should remain relatively privileged in the interests of the state), with perhaps limited, if any, further provisions beyond sheer recognition as to their existence and the mere right of these kinds of intimate relations to exist without suppression or persecution in the workplace, and without the political order going into a condition of denial about the sorts and conditions of humanity's different kinds of intimate unions that exist within the various state jurisdications. Your stance is a sin against neighbour and even more important against God, a manipulative use of the political process of petition, and a morally bankrupt move for precisely that reason.
You should also clean up your act in regard to your rhetoric. If you mean "Gay activist" or "GBLT activist" you properly reference an ideology that binds certain activists, and not what is referenced by the word "homosexual" (I never use the term, but only "homo"). A "homosexual activist" could easily mean an activist supporting the police or a change of rules in a baseball league - any activist who is active about anything and is also a homo. I think your very verbiage is a function of your dishonest motive; it is a kind of Newspeak that does not add clarity, There is no homosexual agenda; but there is a Gay agenda, and I oppose it. What's more you don't have to be homo to be a "Gay activist" - and you and your bosom-buddies don't know the actual sexuality of many of the people you try to gather in your net of false words. You should go after the ideology/agenda and not the sexuality of those you oppose. I'm homo; and I'm a vowed celibate with formally solemnized recognition. I stick to my vows and my neo-monastic hermit cell. Where do I fit in your classificatory system? (a rhetorical question only).
In conclusion, you are undermining the wisdom of President George Bush when he tells us that people should not be fired nor their intimate relations used against them. Rules of decorum in the workplace should suffice. And, again following the President's lead, the states should decide what is in any given state's interest in recognizing or otherwise enacting provisions, separately I would hope for all the three kinds of intimate unions, to allow peaceable and just existence for all inhabitants.
Yours, Albert Gedraitis
American living in Canada
Former researcher, Christian Labour Association of Canada
Former shop steward, Service Employees International Union (a truly corrupt union in my day here)
Union Workers against Gay Marriage
Christian Labour Association of Canada
Christian Labor Association (USA)
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