The so-called Marriage Amendment, Ballot Issue #, actually bears his name. But just who is Bob Marshall? In this article, we get a glimpse of the man “who refers to himself as Virginia’s ‘chief homophobe.'”
“There is a natural order of things, a natural order where gay marriage is an impossibility,” he said, books tucked under his arm and waving a hand for emphasis, like the disheveled college professor he often resembles. “For example, a woman’s arm is constructed at a certain angle so that she can adequately cradle a baby. This is the way we’re created. There are just certain things that nature intended.”
Who knew that a woman’s arm was constructed to hold a baby? Guess you better tell all those fathers out there that their arms were not constructed that way.
For nearly 15 years, Marshall, one of the conservative state’s most conservative lawmakers, has been wielding a heavy stick marked with his brand of moral and religious certainty.
Recall I said earlier that this was an attempt to impose a certain morality on the rest of us? Who died and put Bob Marshall in charge of the morality police?
Marshall’s critics said what they see in his push for the amendment is what they have always seen from him: an effort to thrust his narrow view of religion into law — in this case, in conflict with the religious freedoms that they say the state constitution enshrines.
“He will go to any lengths to promote his religious view, and I think that’s dangerous. He’s doing the same thing with this marriage amendment,” said Del. Katherine B. Waddell (I-Richmond), who clashed with Marshall for several years when she was the state chair for a national Republican abortion rights group. “He’s imposing his own religious views onto us. That’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s interjecting his religion into legislating.”
Yep. That’s kind what we have been saying. But that’s not all.
Marshall dismisses such attacks with characteristic aplomb. But he also describes tussles with his opponents in the same way he talks about his days of getting into schoolyard brawls: “Once you’re in the battle, you never give up. Never.”
Hear that folks? Bob Marshall has no intention of stopping his crusade to inject his definition of morality into our laws. Tell me, Mr. Marshall. Who should be next? Blacks? Women?
All of these folks around here in the Virginia blogsphere are claiming that they are not homophobes, yet their leader calls himself the “chief homophobe.” All of you know that this amendment isn’t about stopping “activist judges” (as yet unseen in Virginia) , it isn’t about “protecting marriage” (from what I have yet to figure out) – it is about bigotry, pure and simple.
Tell Bob Marshall to take his bigotry back to his native DC. Vote NO on Ballot Issue #1.
Technorati Tags: Marshall Newman Amendment, Virginia Marriage Amendment
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
I wouldn’t be surprised if he were a closet homo.
It seems the ones who have the greatest moral outrage and least empathy and tolerance are the ones waving a war with their internal demons as well as with progressives who believe in a live and let live society. .
I for one am going to do everything in my power to help get this guy chucked out of office.
Same here. I mean when the guy starts talking about bones… Bones (leg and skull if I recall correctly though it’s been four of so years since I studied the history of Eugenics) were a major factor in the arguments that black people were inferior to whites!
Also worth keeping in mind that this is the guy that wanted to outlaw artificial insemination for unmarried women. So women will not be next; he’s already after them.
Rock on Vivian!
Vivian — Your points are good, but your logic is not. The part about a father’s arm is clearly rediculous. If I say, “taxis are designed to carry people,” do you respond with, “I guess you’d better tell that to all the bus drivers that their vehicles weren’t constructed that way”?
No-one “died and put Bob Marshall in charge of the morality police.” The voters of his district put him in. (As evidenced by Chicago, Baltimore, and New York City, the dead vote overwhelmingly Democratic.)
The ad hominem attacks against Marshall do nothing to argue the merits or demerits of the proposal. Musolini got the trains running on time. Musolini was a fascist dictator, therefore punctual trains are bad?
Eileen has the correct approach, and Mimi may very well be correct. (And if he starts saying Blacks are inferior to Whites, I’ll be right there with you to get him out.)
As I have tried to explain to David and Jonathan, I am not a homophobe, although I disagree with your goals. I believe that homosexuals are children of God, as we all are. I believe that homosexuals have been given a burden greater than most people, and that if they trust in God, and overcome that burden, they will be rewarded far more than I will be.
Jack – even though I disagree with almost all of your points made in each of your posts, I respect your right to hold your opinions and beliefs. That is the basis of American politics and culture. However, your beliefs do not entitle you the right to impose them on me. What if I don’t believe in your God? I am given that right in the American Bill of Rights. I can believe in any god or no god if I want to – that is my freedom of religion. What you (and Bob Marshall, and everyone else who supports this amendment) want to do is restrict my right to freedom of religion by adding language to our constitution that is based on YOUR faith. State imposed religion has proven its failure – reference: Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, dictators in general. What about my right to disagree? Or are you going to support a bill that would require everyone to be a Christian (of your particular denomination?)
If Bob Marshall were only concerned about “activist judges” ballot question #1 would end at paragraph one. That second paragraph (that I have yet to hear a single local news program read) is where he shows his true colors just like this new arm bone argument and the fact that most of his scientific “facts” like the Scandanavia Argument are either outdated or flat out wrong.
Jack – I may have missed it, I have admittedly come into this blog late, but have you addressed the fact that this amendment, besides being the first constitutional alteration that would deny rights instead of protecting them (which is not something that should be dismissed lightly by any means), does NOTHING that has not already been written into Virginia law? Gays already may not marry and already may not confer to each other those rights that most would consider as spousal under Virginia law. The amendment is total overkill in that regard. (Don’t tell me about protecting against “activist” judges. We don’t have them in Virginia.)
This amendment has nothing to do with gays and everything to do with preventing unmarried people who want to legalize their trust in each other without the RELIGIOUS sanction of marriage from doing so. Please remember separation of church and state – no one should have to undergo a religious exercise in order to obtain legal rights.
What is the problem with letting people live the way they want to live as long as they are not trampling on your rights? Why does that threaten you? I’m not seeing anyone telling you that you can’t live the way you want, why do you want to do that to others? And way more importantly, why do we need a constitutional amendment that tells people they cannot give to each other the trust and credence that they freely choose to give and accept?
Why is this so threatening to those who are convinced they must vote to mutilate the constitution in this manner?
Enlightenment — You make a common, but erroneous argument. As I have mentioned earlier, animal sacrifice is outlawed, prostitution is outlawed, and polygamy is outlawed. Passing a law that is in accordance with someone’s religious beliefs is not “respecting an establishment of religion.”
Pat — marriages do not have to be performed by a priest, but may be done by a judge. VA Code § 20-25: “Any judge or justice of a court of record, any judge of a district court or any retired judge or justice of the Commonwealth or any active, senior or retired federal judge or justice who is a resident of the Commonwealth may celebrate the rites of marriage anywhere in the Commonwealth without the necessity of bond or order of authorization.”
How do you know that I do not want a second wife, and perhaps a third or fourth? The state may in fact be restricting my right to live the way I want.
The phrase “separation of church and state” does not appear in the Constitution of the U.S.; it appears in the Constitution of the USSR (Article 124).
Separation of church and state is inferred in the Establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. It has been a longstanding political doctrine.
One of the problems with social conservatives, as opposed to other conservatives, is that they lack the respect for long-held traditions – except their idea of marriage, of course.
(Ten Conservative Principles)
Hmmm, that “separation of church and state” thing must explain why the first Congress created the House and Senate Chaplains positions (in the same week that they approved the First Amendment), and why each session of Congress opens with a prayer by said Chaplains, which practice the Supreme Court ruled constitutional in 1983 (Marsh v. Chambers).
Those who brought the lawsuit did not have much respect for long-held traditions, did they?
Bob Marshall has long been waging a war against women. He spends an inordinate amount of time trying to control what everybody else does. Check out this lovely legislation he introduced in 2006:
HB187
Prohibition on the provision of certain intervening medical technology to unmarried women.
Provides that no individual licensed by a health regulatory board
shall assist with or perform, for or on an unmarried woman any
intervening medical technology, whether in vivo or in vitro that
completely or partially replaces sexual intercourse as the means of conception, including, but not limited to, artificial insemination by donor, cryopreservation of gametes and embryos, invitro fertilization, embryo transfer, gamete intrafallopian tube transfer, and low tubal ovum transfer.
Patron – Marshall, R.G.
Jack, get off the Internets. You know it’s only a product of those heinous liberal values, science and openness, right? The less we hear from you, the better.
Olivia — the same argument can be made against Webb. You can vote against him tomorrow.
MB — Plumb out of arguments, eh? The Internet (singular) came out of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The very same Defense Department (even worse, the “Black Projects” division) that liberals oppose. Al Gore did not invent it.
No, Jack, not out of arguments. Out of patience. I admit my own failures in ignoring hopelessly ignorant people like you, but your attacks on my basic rights make it rather difficult to casually dismiss your constant spewing of half-truths and distortions. It’s not as if there is any reasoned discussion in which to engage with you, and and this veneer of civility that you try to cover your rank bigotry with gets under my skin.
The better approach, I suppose, would be to mock and ridicule you, as you should be. Laugh at your sad little attempts to play lawyer, or pity the fact that one of your primary purposes on the net seems to be to advocate taking away the rights of people who would otherwise never know (or care) that you existed. If you ever actually get out of the house and publicly espouse your backwards views, I expect that there are many who privately laugh at you, too polite to tell you what I’m telling you directly, here – you’re an ignorant man, Jack. An ignorant small-mined little man.
Thankfully, with a bit of time, anachronisms like you will shrink to ever smaller parts of the population, and history will look on you with the same head-shaking reserved for Galileo’s accusers, the Salem prosecutors, and George Wallace’s defenders.
Don’t bother replying, as I am well and truly done with you.