Letter to Bush

[jwd]

Hey Brian(Johnny Stew)this one's for you bud. A friend of mine sent this to me and I thought you'd enjoy reading it, if you already hadn't. I thought the sentiments Bette wrote about marriage were sweet. I agree with Bette.


Letter to the "president", from Bette Midler...

Dear President Bush,

Today you called upon Congress to move quickly to amend theUSConstitution, and set in Federal stone a legal definition of marriage. I would like to know why.

In your speech, you stated that this Amendment would serve to protect marriage inAmerica, which I must confess confuses me. Like you, I believe in the importance of marriage and I feel that we as a society take the institution far too lightly. In my circle of family, friends and acquaintances, the vast majority have married and divorced - some more than once. Still, I believe in marriage. I believe that there is something fundamental about finding another person on this planet with whom you want to build a life and family, and make a positive contribution to society. I believe that we needmore positive role models for successful marriage in this country -

something to counteract the images we get bombarded with in popular culture. When we are assaulted with images of celebrities of varying genres, be it actors, sports figures, socialites, or even politicians who shrug marriage on and off like the latest fashion, it is vitally important to the face of our nation, for our children and our future, that we have a balance of commitment and fidelity with which to stave off the negativity. I search for these examples to show my own daughter, so that she can see that marriage is more than a disposable whim, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

As a father, I'm sure you have faced these same concerns and difficulties in raising your own daughters. Therefore I can also imagine that you must understand how thrilled I have been over the past few weeks to come home and turn on the news with my family. To finally have concrete examples of true commitment, honest love, and steadfast fidelity was such a relief and a joy. Instead of speaking in the hypothetical, I was finally able to point to these men and women, standing together for hours in the pouring rain, and tell my child that this is what its all about. Forget Britney. Forget Kobe. Forget Strom. Forget about all the people that we know who have taken so frivolously the pure and simple beauty of love and tarnished it so consistently. Look instead at the joy in the beautiful faces of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon - 51 years together!

I mean, honestly Mr. President - how many couples do you know who are together for 51 years? I'm sure you agree that this love story provides a wonderful opportunity to teach our children about the true meaning and value of marriage. On the steps of San Francisco City Hall, rose petals and champagne, suits and veils, horns honking and elation in the streets; a celebration of love the likes of which this society has never seen.

This morning, however, my joy turned to sadness, my relief transformed into outrage, and my peace became anger. This morning, I watched you stand before this nation and belittle these women, the thousands who stood with them, and the countless millions who wish to follow them. How could you do that, Mr. President? How could you take something so beautiful - a clear and defining example of the true nature of commitment - and declare it to be anything less? What is it that validates your marriage which somehow doesn't apply to Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon? By what power, what authority are you so divinely imbued that you can stand before me and this nation and hold their love to a higher standard?

Don't speak to me about homosexuality, Mr. President. Don't tell me that the difference lies in the bedroom. I would never presume to ask you or your wife how it is you choose to physically express your love for one another, and I defy you to stand before Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon and ask them to do the same. It is none of mybusiness, as it is none of yours, and it has nothing to do with the "sanctity of marriage". I'm sure you would agree that marriage is far morethan sexual _expression, and its high time we all started focusing on all the other aspects of a relationship which hold it together over the course of a lifetime. Therefore, with the mechanics of sex set aside, I ask you again - what makes a marriage? I firmly believe that whatever definition you derive, there are thousands upon thousands of shining examples for you to embrace.

You want to protect marriage. I admire and support that, Mr. President. Together, as a nation, let us find and celebrate examples of what a marriage should be. Together, let us take couples who embody the principles of commitment, fidelity, sacrifice and love, and hold them up before our children as role models for their own futures. Together, let us reinforce the concept that love is about far more than sex, despite what popular culture would like them to believe.

Please, for the sake of our children, for the sake of our society, for the sake of our future, do not take us down this road. Under the guise of protection, do not support divisiveness. Under the guise of unity, do not endorse discrimination. Under the guise of sanctity, do not devalue commitment. Under the guise of democracy, do not encourage this amendment.



Bette Midler




Joe

[sparky]

Well, go Bette.

Where was this posted - in a magazine ? Online ?

[jwd]

sparky:

Where was this posted - in a magazine ? Online ?

Well, like I said I receieved it in an email and thought I'd pass it on because I really liked the sentiment in it. Your question got me thinking, and I did a google search on it and found out apparently the letter was not really written by Bette but by someone by the name of Stephanie.


This from http://www.bootlegbetty.com/

Meet The Real Author of the "Bush Letter"
After several hours of tracking and researching, I stumbled upon the real author of the infamous "Bush letter." The young lady that wrote it stumbled upon some of my posts for she was trying to stomp out the rumour herself. She wrote me this morning to introduce herself...her name is Stephanie. She posted the letter on her live journal and has no clue who copied her letter and put Bette's name on it....she seemed apologetic, but it's not her fault, of course.
Anyway, let it be known, this is her work...and a fabulous letter it is...This is what she had to say:Hi,Thank you for helping to clear up the authorship of the letter to President Bush. I'm the one who wrote it, and I have no idea how it ended up with Bette's name attached to it. I had no idea, until I got it back in my email a few weeks later. If you want to point people in the right direction, you can link my LiveJournal - that's where I posted it originally.


Here's another link:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/librar...tte_midler.htm


I think it's safe to assume Bette would have written the letter, but only with a few more four letter words.



Joe

[dissention]

Bette didn't write that.

If you've seen her new tour, you know she absolutely despises Shrub. She's a *huge* monetary contributor to the Dems and even holds benefit concerts for the nominees.

Now, if you want to see a sweet sentiment, get your arse over to one of her latest shows and watch her video duet with Mister Rogers on "I LIke To Be Told", dedicated to the one and only Dubya.

[dissention]

Originally posted by jwd
I think it's safe to assume Bette would have written the letter, but only with a few more four letter words.

And it would be quickly followed by the infamous taco joke.

[darklinensuit]

Originally posted by jwd

Don't speak to me about homosexuality, Mr. President. Don't tell me that the difference lies in the bedroom. I would never presume to ask you or your wife how it is you choose to physically express your love for one another,

Are you sure this wasn't Bette?
It has Bette hit written all over it.
"For you are the wind beneath my Bush..."

- Jake

[Johnny Stew]

Originally posted by jwd
Hey Brian(Johnny Stew)this one's for you bud. A friend of mine sent this to me and I thought you'd enjoy reading it, if you already hadn't. I thought the sentiments Bette wrote about marriage were sweet. I agree with Bette.

Thanks for posting that, Joe.
I enjoyed reading it, even if Bette didn't actually write it.

I'm sure I don't need to say that I agree with the sentiment behind it too.
If only the people who really need to read (and understand) something like this, would do so.

[strandinthewind]

The following is an excellent Op-Ed from today's NY Times regarding the Defense of Marriage Amendment proposed by President George Bush.



Op-Ed Columnist: Marriage: Mix and Match

March 3, 2004
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, New York Times

Shakespeare's "Othello" used to be among the hardest plays to stage in America. Although the actors playing Othello were white, they wore dark makeup, so audiences felt "disgust and horror," as Abigail Adams said. She wrote, "My whole soul shuddered whenever I saw the sooty heretic Moor
touch the fair Desdemona."

Not until 1942, when Paul Robeson took the role, did a major American performance use a black actor as Othello. Even then, Broadway theaters initially refused to accommodate such a production.

Fortunately, we did not enshrine our "disgust and horror" in the Constitution - but we could have. Long before President Bush's call for a "constitutional amendment protecting marriage," Representative Seaborn Roddenberry of Georgia proposed an amendment that he said would uphold the sanctity of marriage.

Mr. Roddenberry's proposed amendment, in December 1912, stated, "Intermarriage between Negroes or persons of color and Caucasians . . . is forever prohibited." He took this action, he said, because some states were permitting marriages that were "abhorrent and repugnant," and he aimed
to "exterminate now this debasing, ltrademoralizing, un-American and inhuman leprosy."

"Let this condition go on if you will," Mr. Roddenberry warned. "At some day, perhaps remote, it will be a question always whether or not the solemnizing of matrimony in the North is between two descendants of our Anglo-Saxon fathers and mothers or whether it be of a mixed blood descended from the orangutan-trodden shores of far-off Africa." (His zoology was off: orangutans come from Asia, not Africa.)

In Mr. Bush's call for action last week, he argued that the drastic step of a constitutional amendment is necessary because "marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society." Mr. Roddenberry also worried about the risks ahead: "This slavery of white women to black
beasts will bring this nation to a conflict as fatal and as bloody as ever reddened the soil of Virginia."

That early effort to amend the Constitution arose after a black boxer, Jack Johnson, ostentatiously consorted with white women. "A blot on our civilization," the governor of New York fretted.

In the last half-century, there has been a stunning change in racial attitudes. All but nine states banned interracial marriages at one time, and in 1958, a poll found that 96 percent of whites disapproved of marriages between blacks
and whites. Yet in 1997, 77 percent approved. (A personal note: my wife is Chinese-American, and I heartily recommend miscegenation.)

Mr. Bush is an indicator of a similar revolution in views - toward homosexuality - but one that is still unfolding. In 1994, Mr. Bush supported a Texas antisodomy law that let the police arrest gays in their own homes. Now the Bushes have gay friends, and Mr. Bush appoints gays to office without worrying that he will turn into a pillar of salt.

Social conservatives like Mr. Bush are right in saying that marriage is "the most fundamental institution in civilization." So we should extend it to America's gay minority - just as marriage was earlier extended from Europe's aristocrats to the masses.

Conservatives can fairly protest that the gay marriage issue should be decided by a political process, not by unelected judges. But there is a political process under way: state legislatures can bar the recognition of gay marriages registered in Sodom-on-the-Charles, Mass., or anywhere else. The Defense of Marriage Act specifically gives states that authority.

Yet the Defense of Marriage Act is itself a reminder of the difficulties of achieving morality through legislation. It was, as Slate noted, written by the thrice-married Representative Bob Barr and signed by the philandering Bill Clinton. It's less a monument to fidelity than to hypocrisy.

If we're serious about constitutional remedies for marital breakdowns, we could adopt an amendment criminalizing adultery. Zamfara, a state in northern Nigeria, has had success in reducing AIDS, prostitution and extramarital affairs by sentencing adulterers to be stoned to death.

Short of that, it seems to me that the best way to preserve the sanctity of American marriage is for us all to spend less time fretting about other people's marriages - and more time improving our own.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/03/op...847e6744585405