Check Out the Trailer

This HBO movie chronicling of the Florida recount of the 2000 U.S. presidential election will have you worrying about our political process. While its main character is on the Gore team, the film argues that when it comes to counting votes, the opposing sides are far more interested in the ones being counted for them. That seems fairly obvious, but when courts and elected officials put party allegiance above the will of the people we have a problem in this country whether we’re on the winning side or the losing one.

Ron Klain (Kevin Spacey, AMERICAN BEAUTY) was Gore’s chief campaign manager until he was fired. Then he was later hired back in a lower function. When he’s offered a post in Gore’s possible transition team, he declines what he sees as a demotion. When it seems the election has been called too early in Florida, he becomes the chief champion for hand recounts. Standing in his way is Republican strategist James Baker (Tom Wilkinson, MICHAEL CLAYTON), who will try every legal trick in the book to prevent the recount from going forward. His chief tool (tool being the key word) was Katherine Harris (Laura Dern, BLUE VELVET), the Florida secretary of state, who did everything in her power to stand in the way of the Gore campaign’s requests, believing that God placed her in this political storm.

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I am a political person. I don’t hide my beliefs in my reviews, because it would be disingenuous to try to pretend that my beliefs don’t influence the way I read things. I’ve been tempted to add political satire or commentary to this site, but have felt it was not the forum for that. However, Google has forced my hand. ProtectMarriage.com has bought up space on Google ads and they are running on my site in California. It upsets me greatly, because my site is for movie fans not fans of banning gay marriage.

So let me set the record straight, the hassle of stripping the Google ad code from my site for a day or two is too much a pain in the butt. So I’m telling you to not click on the ProtectMarriage.com ad to the right. I do not support it and I’m quite upset that Google put this on my site.

My stance on the matter is simple. Take the right to marry away from everyone… or no one. The United States was founded on the separation of church and state, as a way to protect all beliefs. The moment marriage was made a legal status under U.S. law was the moment it became secular. If those whom want to protect “traditional marriage” (as my friend Gina Ruiz at AmoxCalli so brilliantly put, what does that mean? Traditional marriage in the Bible was polygamy) then they should be petitioning to have marriage removed from government. Gays and straights can have civil unions and have the same rights under the law, and marriage can remain a private religious status just like baptism. Unless you’re willing to give up your government-sanctioned right to marry as a straight couple then why should a gay couple have their right stripped away?