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Another Bush Culture War
(Harold Meyerson, Washington Post, February 26, 2004)
This is the way that Bushes run for president when they fall behind: They plunge us into culture wars. . . . It was only when Poppy Bush fell behind Michael Dukakis in the summer of '88 that he made an issue of Willie Horton and the Pledge of Allegiance. It was only when George W. fell behind John McCain in the winter of 2000 that he went to Bob Jones University to align himself with the old white South. . . . And now the president has fallen behind John Kerry. Abruptly, it is the season of doctored photos showing Kerry alongside Jane Fonda, of Internet and Murdoch-media rumor campaigns about affairs that never were. Like father, like son; like Atwater, like Rove; no one spreads sewage quite like the Bushes. . . . But the proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage, which our current Bush endorsed on Tuesday, is more than just wedge politics as usual. It would actually create within the Constitution a permanent secondary caste in American life. Not untouchables, certainly; we're beyond that. Just unmarriageables. . . . Bush must affirm -- because most Americans now believe -- that gays and lesbians are created equal to heterosexuals; they have all the rights of Americans save those commonly associated with marriage and, in some states, parenting. And there's the rub: Once a group is viewed as fully human, it grows harder to accord it some rights and deny it others. In the early 20th century, the laws banning miscegenation were justified as protecting whites against "inferior" blacks. By mid-century, in much of the nation, blacks were no longer inferior, and the case for miscegenation had dwindled to a defense of marriage as such. But if whites and blacks were no longer really different, what was it that marriage needed to be defended against? . . . Now the issue is joined again. . . . But the meaning of marriage changes all the time as our views of human equality change. Women used to take a vow to obey their husbands because marriage sanctified the inequality of the sexes. The rising acceptance of gender equality -- and with it, the advent of birth control -- has vastly reshaped marriage over the past century. . . . Champions of the constitutional amendment want to freeze an institution that has been evolving in an egalitarian direction for the past century. They cannot attack gays and lesbians as such, however, so they seek to define marriage exclusively as heterosexual child-rearing. . . . But if we grant legal protections to marriages because we wish to protect child-rearing, why is it legal for, say, an 80-year-old widow to marry an 80-year-old widower, while a lesbian couple in their thirties with adopted children can't tie the knot? That's not arbitrary? And if the issue really is that we don't want children to be raised outside of heterosexual families, then Bush should be promoting a constitutional amendment not against gay marriage but against gay adoption. . . . Bush needs more evangelical voters, however, if he's going to pull this one out, and the evangelicals have been roused by the outbreak of nuptials by the Bay. And yet, the president's embrace of this amendment could do the Republicans the same kind of long-term harm that California Gov. Pete Wilson's support in 1994 for the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 brought down upon his state party in the years thereafter. As Wilson estranged Latino voters, so Bush runs the risk of estranging young voters, who, the polls demonstrate, heavily oppose the amendment and who divide evenly on gay marriage itself. For that matter, the only age group that clearly supports the amendment is voters over 65.

posted by Lorenzo 11:58 AM