Poor Priorities

This story caught my eye this morning.

Groups spent millions on gay-marriage amendment
Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Supporters and opponents of a ballot initiative to ban gay marriage in Ohio combined to spend nearly $2.2 million in efforts to reach the state’s voters, a new spending analysis shows.

Nationwide, the sides spent $13.3 million on 2004 election campaigns that ultimately banned same-sex marriages in 13 states, including Ohio, according to the study by the Institute on Money in State Politics.

“The proliferation of these marriage-definition ballot measures in a quarter of the states during the same election cycle shows how easily journeyman political organizers, whether conservative or liberal, can manipulate the electoral debate with hot-button issues,” said Edwin Bender, the institute’s executive director.

The Cincinnati-based conservative group Citizens for Community Values spent $1.18 million promoting state Issue 1, making it the biggest spender nationwide in the gay marriage debate.

The issue’s passage created an amendment to the Ohio Constitution defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

The committee opposing the state’s amendment - Ohioans Protecting the Constitution/Ohioans for Fairness - raised $942,400, the study found.

The Washington, D.C.,-based Human Rights Campaign, which promotes gay rights, led the opposition effort, contributing $384,145.

I find it terribly depressing with all the misery in the world, with so much poverty, and with so many lacking life’s most basic necessities, that a group—claiming to be Christians—would pour so much money into a campaign whose sole purpose was to promote inequality and deprive others of their rights. Ye shall know them by their fruits (Matthew 7:16).

Put another way, the $1.2 million that conservative Ohioans wasted promoting bigotry and hate could have

• provided nourishment, shelter, health, and education to more than 4,000 impoverished children for a whole year.

• purchased 200,000 insecticidal mosquito nets to protect African families from malaria, which kills one African child every 30 seconds and affects between 300 and 600 million people a year, almost twice as many as tuberculosis, AIDS, measles and leprosy combined.

• vaccinated more than 9 million impoverished children against measles.

Of course, one could (if they were brainless) make the same argument about the more than $900K spent by those defending marriage equality. However, I’m sure that I’m not the only one who sees a difference between raising money to fight bigotry and promote equality and raising money to promote bigotry and undermine equality.

I think the message is very clear. The Religious Right cares (much) more about legislating morality and marginalizing GLBT citizens than it does about helping sick and starving children. Think of the good that could have been accomplished with all that wasted money.

Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me (Matthew 25:40).