By Jason Grissom
If you’ve been around MTSU’s campus lately, you might have seen a flurry of “Vote No on 1” cards being stuffed into the hands of passersby and peppering the ground. Usually the cards are marked with voting schedules and locations, but leave people wondering what referendum one is, and why some are so desperate that you vote for or against it.
Fearing a state law prohibiting same-sex marriage wasn’t enough to protect our fair state from the horrors of gay love, the Tennessee General Assembly passed a measure that, if approved in the November election, would amend our state constitution to define marriage as being strictly between a man and a woman.
It would seem the legislature ran out of actual problems to address and felt like hopping on a hot-button issue that was sure to attract voters.
In response, the Vote No on 1 campaign has been distributing fliers, signs and bumper stickers to discourage people from voting discrimination into our constitution. The argument goes that, rather than encouraging redundant political ploys that support inequality, we should use our constitution to expand the rights of our citizens.
Still, some fear that the sacred institution of marriage, the same one currently plagued by rising divorce rates, would be somehow eroded if gay couples were allowed the same rights as heterosexuals. Luckily for them, striking down the referendum would do nothing to legalize gay marriage. In truth, the only thing the amendment would accomplish is to further the idea that it’s okay to discriminate if you don’t like the fact that someone is different from you.
Certainly, the arguments against the addition could stretch on far longer than one could hope to tackle in a single article, though many of them can be found on votenoon1tn.com.
However, by this point it should seem obvious how absurd and underhanded the amendment is. To hijack a document that is meant to safeguard our rights from the government for political gain and exclusionary tactics is nothing short of scandalous. All one could hope for is that you, as a voter, can remove whatever impressions you have of homosexuality and consider the amendment for what it is?an absurd scheme that further demeans an already ostracized group?and vote against it.
