Mainstream GOP no longer exists

To the editor:

With the support of the administration, this borrow-and-spend Republican-controlled Congress established its top priority for 2006: a constitutional amendment defining marriage as existing between a man and a woman. Legislators knew the measure wasn't needed and had about as much chance of being enacted as a snowball's survival in the deepest pits of hell.

Every two years, the Republicans trot out the three Gs: God, guns and gays. You would think this inept group would find better use of its time. With Americans dying in the Middle East, the outsourcing of jobs, unaffordable health insurance, rising insurance costs, the erosion of our civil liberties, the mishandling of natural disasters, political corruption running amok and their proven inability to effectively govern, you would think that wasting time and taxpayers' money would not be a priority.

This is an election year. This group of radicals is willing to spend your tax dollars to promote its brand of propaganda. In enacted, the amendment would deny civil rights to a segment of our population. The institution of marriage may not be as stable as it once was, but there is no proof that the gay community has caused the divorce rate among heterosexuals to increase. Rather than deal with real problems, the political right's solution is to bash gays and propose an amendment limiting their civil liberties. Moderate Republicans must question whether this is the part of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford. The answers is obvious: The moderate, mainstream Republican Party no longer exists.

PAUL J. ALLEE, Jackson