[Vision2020] Jeb Bush Featured in Gay Marriage Ads

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (June 3, 2007) Spokesman Review -

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Jeb Bush featured in gay marriage ads 
Lesley Clark 
McClatchy
June 3, 2007

WASHINGTON - Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the poster child for gay
marriage?

A coalition of civil rights groups that back gay marriage is using photos of
prominent couples like the former Republican governor and his Mexican-born
wife, Columba, in an advertising campaign marking the 40th anniversary of
Loving v. Virginia, a U.S. Supreme Court decision that gave interracial
couples the right to marry.

The groups say they hope to use the couples and the court case to bolster
their contention that marriage is a civil right that should know no bounds -
even for those of the same sex.
 
"We're honoring and celebrating something that just over 40 years ago some
Americans said was immoral and wrong and could not happen," said Jimmy
Creech, the executive director of Faith in America, a gay rights advocacy
group that is bankrolling the ad campaign. "We're celebrating the wisdom
that prejudice and bigotry was removed from the law books and Americans were
given the right to marry the person they loved, regardless of race."

The "Freedom to Marry" advertising campaign - to be launched Monday -
consists of six ads that will run in two Capitol Hill publications, Roll
Call and Politico. They feature photos of interracial couples like golfer
Tiger Woods and his wife, Elin, and former U.S. Defense Secretary Bill Cohen
and his wife, Janet Langhart, who have authored a book about their marriage,
"Love in Black and White." Couples married to someone of a different
ethnicity, like the Bushes, are also featured.

The ads note that 16 states still banned interracial marriages until the
Supreme Court struck down a Virginia law in 1967, finding "the freedom to
marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential
to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."

"Jeb and Columba Bush couldn't marry today if discrimination were still the
law of the land," the ad that features the former Florida first couple
reads.

Bush didn't respond to a request for comment. But John Stemberger, an
Orlando attorney who is spearheading a petition drive to put a gay marriage
ban up for a vote in Florida in 2008, called the ads "a little bit silly."

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in
Albany, Georgia and St. Augustine, Florida, and many other campaigns of the
Civil Rights Movement.  Many of these courageous men and women were fighting
for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and
I salute their contributions."

- Coretta Scott King (March 30, 1998)