George W. Bush has now pushed the religious right's battle to ban and nullify gay marriages into the forefront of the 2004 presidential race. As Andrew Sullivan writes, he may have "succeeded in ensuring that almost no gay people will vote for or support the Republican party for a generation." I'd say that if enough congressional Republicans come to their senses and help derail the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment, there may still be hope for the party -- especially if the Democrats veer as far to the economic left as Bush is steering the GOP to the cultural right.
Nevertheless, the outpouring of emotion unleashed today rivals that felt back in 1986 when the Supreme Court's infamous Bowers v. Hardwick ruling upheld sodomy laws that made gay people a criminal class. It took 17 years to right that wrong. Hopefully, we can keep the FMA from defacing the Constitution and again making second-class citizenship for gays and lesbians the law of the land.
And I do think the odds are in our favor. While Americans don't support gay marriage, a majority think mucking with the U.S. Constitution to enshrine discrimination is beyond the pale. And the more they think about it, I believe, the more Bush's pandering to "the base" is going to seem like an extremist act. Bush II is repeating the "culture war" embrace that helped doom Bush I, and he's too limited a human being to see it.
I think the Log Cabin Republicans have struck the right chord.
Their statement
says:
As conservative Republicans, we are outraged that any Republican -- particularly the leader of our party and this nation -- would support any effort to use our sacred United States Constitution as a way of scoring political points in an election year.
We are disappointed that some Republicans leaders have abandoned the conservative principles on which this party was built. Liberty, equality and Federalism form the bedrock of Republican values. The President and some other leaders in our party have turned away from these principles to satisfy the radical right in an election year.
I guess it may take another presidential loss before the GOP learns that pandering to extremism is not a winning platform.
On a lighter note, here's a nice bit of parody of anti-gay marriage paranoia from The Indepundit's website.