Centerfield

Bush to Support Constitutional Amendment

Joe at The Moderate Voice has a really interesting basic point to make about the impending move by the Bush administration to back a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

I think it's something that doesn't get considered often enough. It's a basic dynamic that happens with a lot of issues.

The "bigger" issues are usually collections of more specific issues or circumstances. For example, with abortion, you have the question of late-term abortions at one end of the scale, and at the other end the recent question of whether the FDA should approve the morning after pill for over-the-counter sales. One involves fetuses at the stage where they're almost a baby, while the other deals with a few cells too small to even see. Pro-life groups generally view the two as essentially the same -- the killing of a person -- but most of the rest of us don't.

So where do they focus their attention? It's no accident that pro-life groups hammer on the late-term abortion issue, introducing it in Congress year-after-year. They play the political game on their home turf, drawing our attention to the aspect of their issue most favorable to them.

Notice, too, that public opinion has been gradually sliding more in favor of a pro-life position over the years. Playing politics on your home turf is effective.

When Bill Clinton took office, a similar dynamic occured on the issue of gay rights. He tried to follow through with his pledge to end the ban on gays in the military "with the stroke of a pen". He didn't think too clearly, though, about the overall issue of gay rights. It would have been more significant in the lives of most gays to push for protections against employment and housing discrimination -- laws that have been proposed many times, but never passed on a federal level. It's also much easier to argue for those laws as a basic matter of fairness.

The military, on the other hand, is a highly specialized institution. It has a lot of unique characteristics that allow people to make special arguments against extending gay rights into that arena.

Clinton was the first openly pro-gay rights president, but he failed to make progress because he didn't think about the issue strategically.

I sense that the issue of gay marriage is actually more unsettling, in people's minds, than gays in the military. However, I also don't believe this will be a big winner for the president.

The notion of amending the constitution will strike most people as radical and disproportionate. Many Americans will view it as fair for each state to be able to make their own decisions on gay marriage. Furthermore, the Democratic nominee will not be someone who favors gay marriage. Kerry and Edwards favor civil unions, but not marriage.

The nominee -- whoever he ends up being -- will argue against putting a heterosexual definition of marriage into the constitution, and in favor of letting each state decide.

Finally, I think it's strategically risky for the president to go after a big wedge issue at this time. I honestly think the public is tired of the ever-more divisive politics of the last few years. It's more natural for us to come together, in a post-9/11 environment, than it is for us to split into two bitterly opposed camps. A national tragedy is a unifying event.

That's one reason the president's State of the Union address went so poorly -- it was pretty strident and divisive ... and people are just sick of that stuff.

This is also why I think an Edwards candidacy would be so potent right now. He has the right basic idea -- invite all of us to join together again ... project a sense of inclusion and optimism. Simple and trite as that may sound, it's an extremely powerful idea right now.