Hoping to win
back some of the conservative base he has lost in recent
months with his mishandling of the war in Iraq, the
Hurricane Katrina disaster, and illegal immigration,
President Bush and his supporters in Congress are
again trotting out the gays and their desire to be
married as the most important issue of the day. Only
this time, Bush is breaking new ground on Monday by
using the Rose Garden, a venue traditionally reserved
for important announcements and agreements with
foreign leaders, to attack gay rights with his public
support for amending the U.S. constitution to ban
same-sex marriage forever.
Ahead of the
Monday event, Bush used his weekly radio address on Saturday
to make his position on the matter clear. ''Ages of
experience have taught us that the commitment of a
husband and a wife to love and to serve one
another promotes the welfare of children and the
stability of society,'' Bush said. ''Marriage
cannot be cut off from its cultural, religious and
natural roots without weakening this good influence on society.''
"This is
fundamentally both a civil rights and religious freedom
issue, and the president's position of supporting amending
the Constitution is just dead wrong," Barry W. Lynn,
executive director of Americans United for Separation
of Church and State, told the Associated Press. "This
is simply to give ammunition to the so-called
religious right just to show that the president is still
with them."
The U.S. Senate
is scheduled to vote on the amendment, which would
prohibit states from recognizing same-sex marriages, on
Tuesday. It stands little chance of passing the
100-member body, where proponents are struggling to
get even 50 votes. Several Republicans oppose the measure,
and so far only one Democrat, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska,
says he will vote for it. To become law, the proposal
would need to receive two-thirds support in the Senate
and House and then be ratified by at least 38 state
legislatures.
According to the
AP, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the
amendment on May 18 along party lines after a shouting match
between Democratic senator Russ Feingold of
Wisconsin and the chairman, Republican senator
Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Specter bid Feingold
"good riddance" after Feingold declared his opposition to
the amendment and his intention to leave the meeting.
A recent poll by
the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press
found that barely over 50% of Americans oppose same-sex
marriage, but it also showed that attitudes are
changing: 63% opposed same-sex marriage in February
2004.
Opponents of the
amendment say Bush is using gays as a political tool to
help the Republican Party maintain control of Congress this
November. Numerous political pundits say Bush
benefited by supporting the amendment in 2004 as
religious conservatives turned out to vote and helped him
win a second term. Bush has said little about it since
then. White House spokesman Ken Lisaius only said,
"The president firmly believes that marriage is an
enduring and sacred institution between men and women and
has supported measures to protect the sanctity of marriage."
