President George Bush on Tuesday plunged headlong into the United States’s culture wars, allying himself with the Christian right-wing of his Republican party by endorsing a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage, and calling heterosexual marriage ”the most fundamental institution of civilisation”.
His stance, condemned by Democrats, set him apart from their candidate, John Kerry from Massachusetts, the state whose ”activist judges” the president explicitly condemned for allowing gay marriage.
It has become what Americans call a ”hot button issue”: the fault line between generations, regions and political affiliations; states from New Mexico to Maryland have adopted opposing stands. While in Boston and San Francisco wedding planners court gay and lesbian custom, legislatures in other states are hurriedly forcing through bills to ban such marriages.
In his announcement at the White House, Bush came down firmly on the side of the Christian right, who argue that giving legal sanction to same sex weddings would destroy the institution of marriage. He took sideswipes against the ”activist judges” of Massachusetts who legalised same-sex marriage last autumn, and the ”defiance” of city officials in San Francisco, who have presided over 3 000 such weddings this month.
”After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilisation,” Bush said.
He justified his response — the first serious initiative to amend the constitution in 25 years — by saying that existing legislation did not go far enough in shoring up a sacred institution under threat. The federal government passed a Defence of Marriage Act under then president Bill Clinton, and currently 38 states ban same sex unions, with several more exploring the option.
”There is no assurance the act will not itself be struck down by activist courts,” Bush said. His statement was cheered by the Christian right, and attacked as ferociously by Democratic party officials and liberal organisations.
Amid the furore, one fact was clear: yesterday was the formal start of Bush’s re-election campaign, and he intended to draw a stark contrast between his leadership and that of the Democratic frontrunner, John Kerry, as a stereotypical liberal from Massachusetts.
Anthony Corrado, a fellow in politics at the Brookings Institution, said the announcement was aimed at energising the core Republican constituency of conservative Christian voters, as well as attracting working-class urban Catholics who might otherwise vote Democrat. ”It’s also an effort to elevate questions about values. The White House feels much more comfortable talking about values and moral questions than they do about the health of the economy.”
However, Bush knows full well that his proposal has virtually no chance of seeing daylight — certainly not before the November election. A constitutional amendment needs support of three-quarters of states, as well as two-thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives.
Bush did not go as far as the original proposers of the constitutional amendment would have liked. He left the door open for civil unions, an arrangement that confers on same sex couples some — but not all — of the benefits of marriage, and is recognised in Vermont.
However, Mark Shields, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, a gay civil rights organisation, said: ”This was pure political pandering to his far-right base. This is the president trying to jumpstart his election campaign.”
However, it is far from clear on Tuesday just what mileage Bush could expect to gain. Attitudes towards lesbians and gays have changed hugely. In 1997, the comedian Ellen DeGeneres caused a furore when she came out on her TV show; today one of the top-rated programmes is a make-over by five gay men called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. – Guardian Unlimited Â