What a day to be gay
February 24, 2004
“Unless action is taken,” Bush said, “we can expect more arbitrary court decisions, more litigation, more defiance of the law by local officials, all of which adds to uncertainty.
Pop quiz: Bush is speaking of
a) Alabama Cheif Justice Roy Moore, who defied several court orders demanding the removal of a 2.6 ton granite monument of the Ten Commandments from a state-owned building
b) Gay people getting married.
Yes, that’s right. Bush has finally come out in support of a Christian Marriage Amendment. Some people are obviously quite upset with this, but I’m glad to see it happen for a number of reasons.
First and foremost, it’s going to bring the loathesome pustule an issue—whether or not we will Constitutionally enshrine hatred in order to keep gay people from visiting their seriously ill partners in a hospital—to a head much more quickly than I thought.
Secondly—and I think this is a big win for gay rights activists—it firmly establishes both that same-sex marriage is currently legal and that state laws prohibiting such marriages are unConsitutional. Why? Because if those laws were Constitutional, we wouldn’t need a Constitutional Amendment.
Duh.
Yes, yes, I know. Bush says we need it to protect against “activist judges.” But we have protection against “activist judges.” It’s called the appeal system. Bush either doesn’t think the appeal system will give the right result—in which case the judges allowing gay marriages are on the correct side of the law and those trying to ban them the arbitrary, law-defying ones—or Bush thinks it’ll make a grand election issue and he’s willing to force it right now, thus hastening the emancipation of gay people from Conservative Christian control.
Oh yes—even if an amendment is passed, I am sure it will be repealed just as prohibition was. Because, you know, now it’s an issue that people are thinking about. Straight people. Straight liberal and libertarian people. People who don’t see what the fuss is all about.
Ten, twenty years ago it wasn’t.
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February 24th, 2004 at 3:33 pm
I’m reminded of something Atrios wrote a couple of days ago: “It is true that 5 years ago few would have predicted that granting “civil unions” would have been seen almost as a moderate mainstream position.”
If there’s an argument for the Christian Marriage Amendment that doesn’t involve, y’know, Christianity, I’m willing to hear it. (The fact that it’ll cost a lot of money to give gay married couples benefits doesn’t count. We don’t get to create second-class citizens just because it’s more cost-efficient.)
So far, though, have any of the Democratic contenders other than Kucinich come out with a different position on this than Bush?