The Job's Not Done
By Jerry Fuhrman
I am proud of you guys. I knew the outcome of the marriage amendment vote on Election Day was never in doubt, but I had no idea the turnout would be so high and the support for the amendment would be so overwhelming.
In the 9th Congressional district, 141,511 citizens of Southwest Virginia voted to permanently protect the much-beleaguered institution of marriage (75.2 percent of the total vote), and in the 6th, which includes the city of Roanoke, 137,902 did the same (64.3 percent).
Compare this to that bastion of liberalism in the commonwealth, the 8th district (much of Arlington, Fairfax, Alexandria, Falls Church), where 143,794 voted to oppose the amendment, and it is clear that we together not only drowned out the clarion call for amorality, we sent an unequivocal message to liberal newspaper opinion editors and leftist legislators around the state:
We rule.
But our work doesn't end here. There is much yet to be done. If our purpose in passing an amendment to the state constitution was to prevent rogue judges from someday reinterpreting the fundamental tenets of the document that serves as the cornerstone of all laws that govern our great state, reinterpretations that occur all too frequently in this era of activist political judges, we now need to turn to other vital areas of concern and chisel in stone in a similar way our collective will, to prevent them from making further mockery of our way of life.
We should now turn our attention to the most divisive social issue of our time: affirmative action. Whereas the concept originally called for positive steps to increase the representation of minorities and women in the areas of education, employment and business opportunities from which they had been historically excluded -- a concept with which few of us ever disagreed -- affirmative action evolved into a harsh, negative sociopolitical policing program, used as a cudgel to beat down certain groups not protected in favor of others that were.
It is today a quota system advancing the opportunities of those often less qualified over others because of their gender or the color of their skin (in some areas of the country, even their sexual orientation).
You may recall the firestorm that engulfed Blacksburg in 2003 when the Virginia Tech board of visitors decided to implement in policy form that which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sought many years before -- that his "four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
The board had decided to bar the consideration of race and gender in admissions, hiring and financial aid programs at Virginia's largest institution of higher learning. The decision was, by every poll ever conducted, supported by an overwhelming percentage of the populace.
Then-Gov. Mark Warner and a coalition of liberal organizations throughout the state and nation thought otherwise, denouncing Tech's actions and rejecting any notion that the university would be color- and gender-blind in its practices. The university quickly retreated.
Because the issue hasn't been on the front page of your local newspaper of late doesn't mean it isn't an issue we need to confront. Just this past Saturday, an article appeared in The Wall Street Journal about a young male who had a perfect 2400 on his SAT and a near-perfect 2390 on SAT2. Despite this, he was rejected by the University of Michigan, Stanford, MIT and three Ivy League schools.
Why? He was Asian-American, that ethnic group lowest on the affirmative action quota totem pole and the most discriminated against in the country. His case is being investigated by the Justice Department because -- get this -- a white student with lower scores was admitted to Princeton at the same time he was turned away.
Affirmative action is un-American. It goes against every ideal we hold dear. And it breeds nothing but contempt and racial hostility.
We the people have the power to put a stop to it forever by amending the state constitution.
