Flippy - I Rant, You Read
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Gay Marriage - A More Educated View
This was written in a lovely manner (she’s been on tv as a commentator a lot since the OJ trial, so she’s probably writing from a lovely manor too). She gets digs in at Bush, supposedly on behalf of the religious right. Then, she comes out fully in favor of gay marriage. I’ve always liked Cynthia Tucker, but I thought this was particularly well-written in order to get her points across.————————ANTI-GAY MARRIAGE PUSH GETS BUSH’S HALF-HEARTED SUPPORT By Cynthia Tucker
2 hours, 5 minutes ago
President Bush should be ashamed. He has treated religious conservatives with more disrespect than Hollywood or the so-called liberal media ever could. He has used their opposition to gay marriage as nothing more than a political prop to be trotted out just as the election season begins, and he apparently believes they are naive enough to fall for his clumsy and half-hearted gestures.
Last weekend, after two years of virtual silence on the subject, the president used a radio address to launch a low-profile push for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning same-sex unions, although he knew perfectly well that the amendment would not pass the U.S. Senate. It’s not even clear that he wanted it to.
After all, his wife, Laura, recently told Fox News that gay marriage should not be “used as a campaign tool.” Vice President Dick Cheney opposes the amendment, as does his daughter, Mary, a lesbian who lives openly with her partner of 14 years. Mary Cheney has called the amendment “fundamentally wrong.”
But the GOP is in trouble. Polls show that voters are more inclined to trust Democrats than Republicans on important issues, and Bush’s own popularity ranks right up there with Simon Cowell and Barry Bonds. Even Bush’s most faithful constituents—religious conservatives—are dispirited, believing the president has ignored them since he was re-elected.
So now, just in time for the campaign season, Bush trots out a ban on gay marriage, expecting religious conservatives to show the same missionary zeal for GOP candidates that they did two years ago. In 2004, GOP operatives managed to get gay marriage bans on the ballot in 11 states, an initiative that drove social conservatives to the polls and probably gave Bush the winning edge in the battleground state of Ohio. Karl Rove hopes to recapture some of that magic in November.
But the president’s heart isn’t in it. On Monday, when Bush assembled a group of religious conservatives to talk about a gay marriage ban, they met in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building rather than in the Rose Garden, where the president usually launches important initiatives or promotes prominent causes.
By all accounts, Bush takes religion quite seriously. So why is he treating an article of faith among his ultraconservative constituents as if it is just another wedge issue to be exploited for a few more votes? He ought to treat their sincerity with the respect it deserves by telling them the truth: A constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is not an issue on which he wishes to expend what little political capital he has left. It is not one of the pressing issues of our time.
Prohibiting same-sex unions would have absolutely no effect on the state of traditional marriage. Britney Spears—whose first marriage lasted less than a day—has done much more to discredit traditional marriage than gay couples have. (If an aversion to gay unions showed a commitment to traditional marriage, then black America could serve as the model for healthy heterosexual unions. After all, few voting blocs show a stronger antipathy to gay marriage than black voters do. Yet marriage is in decline in black America.) Nor does the Bible bestow a singular blessing on unions between one man and one woman. The marital arrangement most often cited in the Bible is polygamy.
Besides, as Bush well knows, the stability of a pluralistic democracy depends on laws that respect the equality of all men and women, whether they are Muslims, Jews, Baptists, Wiccans or atheists.
Among James Dobson and his right-wing ilk, there is a misconception that mixes up religious traditions with civil marriages. Churches may control who is married by their clerics and institutions. But no group’s religious views should stand in the way of two consenting adults—two men, a man and a woman, or two women—who want to go to a courthouse, city hall or Las Vegas love chapel to get married, if they so choose.
Catholics worked this out a long time ago: If you wish to be married in the church, you must follow the teachings of the church. Otherwise, you can go to the courthouse, or you can find another church that suits your beliefs.
What Dobson and his followers are trying to impose is a Christian version of sharia—religious law. That wouldn’t bode well for an Iraqi democracy, and it wouldn’t bode well for this democracy, either.
(Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She can be reached by e-mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).)
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that was so well said.
i, on the other hand, upon seeing bush spouting gay-marriage-related nonsense on TV at the gym, could only manage a tourettes-like snarl of “FUCKING ASSHOLE.”
yeah, i’m makin’ LOTS of friends at the gym.
sweetney on 06/08 at 07:03 PM -
That was a great article. What happened to the separation of church and state? I used to just love that!
Nancy on 06/10 at 04:10 AM
