We are entering an election year so calls for Constituinal Amendments are ramping up.
We periodically see politicians advocate Amendments to the United States Constitution. Often those Amendments have zero chance of ever passing.
But politicians bring them up anyway in order to fire up their base.
Democrats have the Equal Rights Amendment (as if women weren’t already covered by the due process clause of the 14th Amendment and as if disparities in average pay were not the result of different career trajectories, choices of careers, and decisions to stay at home with children).
Republicans have the Flag Burning Amendment. They also have the school prayer amendment.
On both of those issue, who cares? Neither Amendment has a chance of passage. But they also don’t really hurt anything. No animositities and prejudices are stirred up - except maybe against those atheistic flag-burning hippies. Luckily, the hippies no longer exist, having traded in their hemp shirts for stock portfolios. No harm, no foul: It’s just politics.
But Bush’s support for an anti-gay marriage amendment is not like the others.
Like the others, it has zero chance of passage. Unlike the Protection of Marriage Act, it would be meaningful. Even the craven hypocrites who voted for this unconstitutional law (it violates due process, equal protection, and full faith and credit) because they knew it was meaningless will have second thoughts about really enshrining discrimination. Forty five senators are on record opposing the Amendment . 67 Senators have to approve of the Amendment before it can be referred to the states. Do the math. There is zero chance of passage.
Bush, regardless of what the kids over at Daily Kos claim, is a smart man. He knows that there is zero chance that this Amendment will pass. So his support is purely political.
Unlike the flag burning and school prayer amendments, this amendment does encourage the bigots out there*. So Bush is scoring political points knowing full well that he will end up not a uniter, but a divider.
That is wrong.
* For all of our readers out there who support the Marriage Amendment for principled reasons: Of course, I don’t mean you when I say that the Amendment will bring out bigotry. I’m sure your opposition to gay marriage is not based on fallacious slippery slope arguments, retread arguments from the Anti-Miscegenation Amendment, does not rely on disproven claims that children of gays are maladjusted, doesn’t involve trite “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” and does not rely on the Orwellian claim that seeking equal rights is tantamount to special rights. I’m sure you are not a bigot. Your opposition to gay marriage does not boil down to feeling that “gays are icky.” But while you may be a paragon of virtue, you have to admit that whenver this Amednment rears its ugly head, the gaybashers come out in force waving their “Adios Infected Dick Suckers” signs. Disclaimer ends here.
UPDATE: I’m sure that our readers who are opposed to gay marriage on virtuous principle have also never used the canard that they are trying to keep gays from getting “special rights” and openly admit that they want to deny gays the over one thousand legal rights (as calculated by the General Accounting Office) granted to heterosexual spouses.
