"Bush Plans $1.5 Billion Drive for Promotion of Marriage," reports the New York Times. The program includes "training to help couples develop interpersonal skills that sustain 'healthy marriages.' -- Aside from the fact that the this reeks of the sort of nanny state-social worker meddling that Democrats usually specialize in, there's no basis in the U.S. Constitution for making taxpayer-funded marriage counseling a responsibility of the federal government.
But politically speaking, it's clear Bush is hoping to placate
the GOP's religious right base with a $1.5 billion "pro marriage"
payoff, and perhaps avoid being pressed into endorsing the far more
controversial anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment championed by
social conservatives. As the Times noted:
[Administration] officials said they believed that the measure was especially timely because they were facing pressure from conservatives eager to see the federal government defend traditional marriage, after a decision by the highest court in Massachusetts. The court ruled in November that gay couples had a right to marry under the state's Constitution.
The religious right is clearly hoping the marriage initiative will be just an appetizer to the anti-gay amendment main course, but Bush, I think, is hoping it will be enough to satiate the social right's rank and file voters, if not its virulently homophobic leaders.