Responses to my Dec. 7 posting, both in that item's comments area and on our letters page, take me to task for conveying Abner Mason's claim that George W. Bush supports civil unions and that gay activist badly missed the boat when they failed to capitalize on it. While it's true Bush actually said he's not against states passing such recognition, let's note that on Good Morning America he explicitly criticized his own party's platform for opposing civil unions, and that he said on the Larry King Show: "If [states] want to provide legal protections for gays, that's great. That's fine." I'd say that's a tilt at least arguably to the left of neutral.
On the other hand, it's true the Federal Marriage Amendment that Bush supports bars "marital status or the legal incidents thereof" from being conferred on same-sex couples, although whether the amendment only limits judicial "conferring" of such "incidents" is murky (and perhaps intentionally so).
Nevertheless, Bush's saying that civil unions are OK was still an opening that gay activists should have promoted to defeat state initiatives that banned both gay marriage and civil unions, and for dialoging with Bush about the apparent inconsistency in his civil union statements and his support for the FMA. Instead, activists in knee-jerk fashion condemned Bush's remarks and continued to chant, like petulant 3-year-olds, "George W. Bush, You're Fired!"
Well, it didn't work out that way, did it? And now there is no
dialogue with the party in power to speak of. Sorry, folks, but
this was an opportunity missed and our activists (including Log
Cabin Republicans' Washington leadership) need to be called on the
carpet.