New York City has only one Republican Congressional Rep, Bush Lap Dog Vito Fossella. This guy opposes securing America's ports, flip flops on privatization of Social Security, and has voted to support Bush's Iraq quagmire at every opportunity. Fossella has voted the Bush Republican Party line more than 90% of the time. Hence his designation as Bush Lap Dog.

Here is what the NY Times had to say about Vito Fossella in 2006:

He has been a real water-carrier for the Bush administration and the Republican leadership, staunchly backing the war in Iraq while at the same time denying health benefits to National Guard and Reserve members who make up much of the American force there.

Rock Hackshaw has a piece on marriage equality up, here, that I'm going to have to comment on. He's wrong, in my considered opinion, but wrong in a way that is instructive.

First, we need to acknowledge that the opposition to marriage equality is not even, in that sense, about marriage. It is about the acceptance of gays and lesbians in our society. That's the often enough unspoken context of this debate; one eschewed by advocates, who prefer to merely address the charges made by opponents, and by the opponents themselves, who often enough make their case not with actual gays and lesbians, but with the depraved hordes that they believe lie in wait beyond our ranks: the polygamists, the bestialists, and so on.

So it is in this case as well. I'll say to the charge that marriage equality opens the floodgates to polygamy and what not else simply this: show me the people who are demanding that. Then demonstrate to me that marriage equality will have the consequences you point to. You won't be able to, for one very simple reason: there is no constituency arguing on behalf of, say, bestiality, and your argument essentially comes down to the assertion, unproven and unprovable, that any change in the institution of marriage will destroy it. That's a non-sensical claim; the institution will be strengthened, not weakened, when a new class of citizens joins it. Marriage has undergone significant shifts over the past century, beginning with the end of the idea of marriage as a life-long contract. Whether that's good or not is another subject; but the institution's continued vitality is demonstrated, I think, by the fact that gays and lesbians care enough about it to want to join in its practice.

Recently, the New York State Assembly narrowly passed legislation favoring same-sex marriages, despite the fact that a federal statute (Defense of Marriage Act) legally defines marriage as strictly between a man and a woman. Proponents of this measure have argued that it’s about equality, civil-rights, justice and human-rights for all; but is it really? To me, the same-sex marriage debate is ostensibly an attempt by advocates to redefine traditional marriage, which for eons in civil society, has been in essence: quasi-religious ceremonial arrangements/agreements between men and women; which society, culture, religion and government, sanctioned, blessed, approved, encouraged, formalized, legalized and such; for myriad positive and sensible reasons.

In 1995, the Supreme Court ruled in Romer v. Evans, striking down a homophobic constitutional amendment in the state of Colorado:

We must conclude that Amendment 2 classifies homosexuals not to further a proper legislative end but to make them unequal to everyone else. This Colorado cannot do. A State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws. Amendment 2 violates the Equal Protection Clause, and the judgment of the Supreme Court of Colorado is affirmed.