President Bush announced Tuesday that he supports efforts by the religious right to amend the constitution of our country to prohibit same-sex marriages. In his speech he said the institution of marriage was in danger as a result of recent events in Massachusetts and San Francisco, and that the process of a constitutional amendment had to be used to prevent a change in the definition of marriage.
Before the average Madisonian starts panicking about this, we need to put it in perspective. This proposal stands nearly no chance of passage. In order to reach a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives it would need 290 votes. What that means is that even if all Republicans voted in the affirmative it would then need more than 60 Democrats to support it as well. Similar odds prevail in the Senate, where one-third of Senate Democrats would have to cross over if there was Republican unanimity. There will not be Republican unanimity, as some moderates in swing districts will not want the headache of supporting this sort of thing. Even some hard-liners like Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif have voiced skepticism on the subject.
This amendment does not even command the widespread support we might want in order to go about changing our country's fundamental document. The latest ABC News poll has support for the notion of amending the constitution in such a manner at only 46 percent. The amendment currently under consideration, sponsored by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., only complicates things further. Some of the principle authors of its vague language, such as Princeton Prof. Robert P. George, have said it would prohibit even civil unions or domestic partnership entitlements, making it even harder to touch.
There are many good reasons to oppose this amendment whether one is a liberal, a moderate or a conservative. First, Bush wants to take the amazing step of stripping states of the power to make and interpret their own laws. Second, to say that marriage is suddenly changing is simply a falsehood. Marriage has been changing throughout history. At one point polygamy was common; now it's forbidden. A wife was once regarded as property of the husband, then eventually was promoted to a subordinate and today in our culture is regarded as an equal.
The introduction of no-fault divorce in the last 40 years, enacted in all the state legislatures, has in turn been a cultural redefinition of marriage and its binding power. Some states make available something called covenant marriage, where the couple will swear off any right to a no-fault divorce when they marry. That, too, is an acceptable variety in the definition of marriage across states. Bush supports the notion of stopping all further cultural development by tinkering with the central law of our country, a truly reactionary step.
This is also a very bad idea for another reason, best pointed out by right-wing former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga. A constitution spells out the structure of government and the rights of the citizenry. It should not be used for codifying social policy questions that ought to be left to continuously changing democratic majorities. This is especially true when we consider that the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act has yet to be tested and public opinion on gay rights is steadily changing over time. The last time the constitution was used for deciding moral questions was Prohibition. Aside from providing my great-grandfather Herman Kleefeld a good living as a bootlegger, Prohibition was an utter disaster and a national embarrassment, a misadventure in national moralism that had to be repealed.
Make no mistake about what the proponents of this amendment, including the president, want to do. They want to take the time and effort to write into the constitution that roughly 3 percent of our country's population is not welcome here. Insofar as they know it cannot pass they are happy to do it just to whip up intolerance. This president is a radical who has truly gone off the deep end in the degree to which he will pander to his religious right base and demean whole sections of the country for his political benefit. The fact that so many leaders of our country would get involved in such a venture, up to and including presidential imprimatur, should be remembered by every last American as we head into the election.
