Dec 31, 2004  |  By: RYAN LEE  | COMMENTS     

The euphoric optimism gay and lesbian Americans felt entering 2004 dimmed throughout a year when gay marriage, and society’s disapproval of it, became a part of the national discussion like never before.

The gay rights movement seemed to turn a corner in June 2003, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could no longer make homosexuality — or more specifically, consensual adult sodomy — a crime.

And in November 2003, when the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts decided that it was unconstitutional to block gay couples from marrying in that state, some activists hailed the decision as the movement’s “biggest win yet.”

But that big win may have also led to the movement’s biggest political loss: the Nov. 2 election, during which millions of voters in 11 states overwhelmingly supported state constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex unions. Two other states had voted earlier this year prior to add constitutional amendments banning gay marriage.

For many, the election results were an exclamation point that captured the anti-gay marriage tone that dominated 2004 from its opening month, when President Bush announced his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, which defines marriage in the U.S. Constitution as between a man and a woman.

The stinging election defeat — coupled with some political pundits’ assertion that the marriage debate was responsible for Bush being re-elected president over Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) — caused some to question whether the American public had been forced to deal with gay marriage too soon, and if activists made it more difficult to attain rights on other fronts by focusing on marriage.

But as loud and painful as the rejection from their fellow citizens was on Nov. 2, the election results should not overshadow the historic progress made in 2004, according to U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), one of three openly gay members of Congress.

On May 17, 2004, gay and lesbian couples flocked to city and town clerk offices throughout Massachusetts to marry legally for the first time in the history of the country.

More importantly, Frank said, on May 18, the sky in the Bay State had not fallen, heterosexual marriages and families were not under siege, and God did not unleash a wrathful plague.

“The single most important thing of 2004 is that we achieved gay marriage in the state of Massachusetts, because now we will have the reality to debate,” Frank said. “People have these fears beforehand, but after you see it in operation, those fears [dissolve].”

Bush backs FMA
Weeks into 2004, Frank knew the issue of gay marriage was going to receive unprecedented attention.

Frank and millions of Americans watched as President Bush used his Jan. 20 State of the Union address to inch closer toward endorsing the FMA.

“On an issue of such great importance [as marriage], the people’s voice must be heard,” Bush said. “If judges insist on forcing their arbitrary will upon the people, the only alternative left to the people would be the constitutional process.”

One month later, during an early morning appearance on Feb. 24 at which he took no questions, Bush made his support for the federal marriage ban official.

“I call on Congress to promptly pass and send to the states an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of man and woman as husband and wife,” Bush said. “The amendment should fully protect marriage, while leaving the state legislatures free to make their own choices in defining legal arrangements other than marriage.”

Kerry, Bush’s presidential opponent, opposed the federal amendment, although he also said he opposed gay marriage and supported a state constitutional amendment in his home state of Massachusetts.

With passage of a federal constitutional amendment unlikely, political observers and gay activists accused the president, and his top campaign adviser Karl Rove, of pandering to Christian conservatives and using the issue as a re-election get-out-the-vote ploy.

“It definitely took the issue to a different level,” said Seth Kilbourn, national field director for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights group.

“It sort of gave the green light for extremists on the state level to put [state constitutional amendments] on the ballot,” he said.

But Bush’s support for the FMA was not enough to get the measure through Congress. The amendment stalled in the U.S. Senate on July 14 ...