Sometime the week of July 12 the U.S. Senate may vote on the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment, which would ban gay marriage across the nation. Since few observers believe the amendment will get the requisite two-thirds super-majority needed to pass, the vote will be a cynical attempt by Republican leaders to make gay marriage a campaign issue. Any Democrat who votes against the amendment is likely to be baited on the issue in the future. John Kerry and John Edwards, both Senators, must rise to the bait.
Let's be clear where the blame for this atrocious amendment lies. It is squarely on the shoulders of the GOP, where all anti-gay rhetoric and legislation in this country are born. Despite the strenuous efforts of the Alliance for Marriage to make the FMA seem a bi-partisan cause, the sponsors are overwhelmingly Republican. In the Senate, the only Democrat to sponsor the amendment was Georgia's Zell Miller, who's a Democrat in name only. With a few noble and principled exceptions, Republicans support the FMA.
Then there's the Democrats. At the national level, they've been cotton candy for the gay civil rights movement. All sweet and no substance, they puff out and then evaporate into nothing. The litany of their failures, and excuses for failure, is familiar. Bill Clinton came in promising big, soothing us with nice words, but delivered little and signed the two most anti-gay pieces of federal legislation ever enacted. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) was a direct consequence of his willingness to talk like a big guy and pay like a little guy. He proposed lifting what had been an executive policy banning military service by open homosexuals, then retreated as soon as he encountered resistance.
The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which banned federal recognition of gay marriages, was even worse. Clinton signed the bill as if ashamed of it, then touted his support on Christian radio stations. In typical Clinton fashion, he wanted to have his cake and eat it, too. Democrats almost completely abandoned us on both DADT and DOMA.
On DOMA, there were exactly 14 dissenters among Senate Democrats. One of them was John Kerry. (Edwards wasn't yet in the Senate.) Kerry said that he opposed DOMA because it was "nothing more than gay-bashing on the floor of the Senate." (He also said he thought DOMA was unconstitutional, a view he's since retracted.) He was right. There was no good reason for DOMA, even if one opposed gay marriage on policy grounds. Gay marriage was legal nowhere in the country in 1996. There was little likelihood states would be forced to recognize other states' gay marriages, even if it became legal somewhere.
Similarly, there is no good reason to support the FMA, even if one opposes gay marriage. Sure, gay marriage is now legal in one state, Massachusetts. But that is Massachusetts' business; the states have always defined marriage as they see fit. And if it's judicial activism that bothers you, the states are responsible for policing the excesses of their own courts, as they always have been. So when the FMA comes up for a vote the week of July 12, it will be, to borrow a phrase, "nothing more than gay-bashing on the floor of the Senate."
Kerry and Edwards have announced their opposition to the FMA. They think the matter should be left to the states, which is the sensible position taken by Dick Cheney during the 2000 campaign (but retracted this year).
But Kerry and Edwards have not been all light and truth on gay marriage. Both are against it. Kerry opposes it, he says, because, well, he just believes marriage is between a man and a woman and, you know, it's a sacrament. It's the sort of stammering response you get from someone who's saying something just because he thinks it's good politics. I suppose that's better than being opposed in principle to gay marriage because at least it augurs a change when the wind shifts. But it doesn't say much for Kerry's ability to lead.
Worse, Kerry supported amending the Massachusetts constitution to ban gay marriage as long as civil unions were allowed. Think about that for a moment. If the position of the Democrats' standard-bearer were adopted universally, the result would be to ban gay marriage in all 50 states. That's just what the FMA would accomplish.
So when the Senate votes on the FMA, where will Kerry and Edwards be? Up to now, Kerry's been spending all his time running around the country campaigning and raising money, which is perfectly understandable for a candidate in a tight race against a well-funded incumbent president. He's missed a lot of votes over the past few months. But he has come back to Washington to vote when it really mattered to him.
Well, a lot of the money he's been raising the past few months has come from gay people. I suggest that when the FMA comes up for a vote, Kerry and Edwards should take a break from taking our money. This isn't a vote on an appropriation for a new post office in Poughkeepsie. It's about stamping second-class status for gay Americans into our most sacred political document.
This election, we must get more from the Democrats than kind words. We must start to demand real commitment and real progress. The Democratic ticket's vote against the FMA would be a start. It's the least they can do.