Washington – Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, recently declared it his mission as a lawmaker “to see that corporations can do everything they want, and that gay couples can do almost nothing that they want.” The senator’s latest push in this regard is a campaign for a constitutional amendment allowing corporations to vote in presidential elections, but disallowing gay people from doing the same.
“First of all, why shouldn’t corporations be allowed to vote?” Sen. Inhofe asked rhetorically. “It makes no sense. They’re entities, just like people are entities. But they’re bigger entities. They have sometimes thousands upon thousands of people working for them. So, if anything, they should get several votes, not just one.”
Corporations are considered “legal persons” and are already afforded several rights under the U.S. Constitution, including a limited right to free speech and to sue and be sued. They are not, however, allowed to vote in elections or to contribute directly to political campaigns.
Inhofe’s proposal suggests that in a given election, a corporation would have all its employees vote internally first. Those votes would then be tallied, and whichever candidate garnered the most votes would receive the one vote of the corporation.
“I mean, you don’t know how the corporation will vote,” Inhofe said. “You may have the CEO vote one way, but the corporation as a whole says, ‘No, you know what? I feel this way.’ Now, you’re saying, ‘Well, Senator, it wouldn’t say it, because it’s a thing, not a person.’ But I say to you, one of these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if corporations started talking. I can see it. I really can. And you know what? If it’s within my power to try to make that happen, I certainly will.”
Inhofe, one of the most outspoken gay marriage opponents in the U.S. Congress, feels that homosexuals in America should not be allowed to vote because of the risk of their thinking being “clouded and confused.”
“When you’re a homosexual, you see everything through that prism,” Inhofe said. “You can’t escape it. So when you walk up to the voting booth, if the curtains are a really pretty color, a homosexual man might be sidetracked by that, and then be unable to focus when it comes time to actually enter his vote. He’s all discombobulated and seeing three of everything because his mind is still on the fabric of the curtains. I’m telling you, this type of thing is well-documented.”
Inhofe envisions a future where corporations have rights that more closely resemble those of actual people, while the freedoms homosexuals enjoy are scaled back significantly.
“I hope to one day see two corporations marrying one another,” Inhofe said, “while on Capitol Hill, a law is passed barring homosexuals from visiting each other in the hospital. That’s the dream.”
