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| President Bush on Tuesday called on Congress to promptly pass a constitutional
amendment banning gay marriage so that the states could ratify it. It would take
two-thirds of the members of both houses in Congress and ratification by three-fourths
of the states before a gay marriage ban would become part of the Constitution.
(Photo by Susan Walsh/AP)
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HOME > NEWS > NATIONAL NEWS
By: LOU CHIBBARO JR. COMMENTS
 
Gay civil rights groups, including the nation’s largest gay Republican organization,
denounced President Bush’s endorsement this week of a constitutional amendment
to ban gay marriage, calling the president’s action an election year ploy to
secure support from conservative religious voters.
“Today, the president of the United States, solely for political gain, called
upon Congress to amend the United States Constitution to enshrine our second-class
citizenship in the nation’s most revered document,” said Matt Foreman, executive
director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. “This is a despicable new
low.”
Although gay rights groups were expected to raise sharp objections to the
president’s action, gay Republican leaders were just as forceful in their opposition
to the development, saying that gay GOP groups would most likely sit out the
election rather than endorse the president.
Gay D.C. Council member David Catania (R-At-Large), who campaigned for Bush
in the 2000 presidential election, called the president’s backing of a constitutional
amendment “repugnant” and said he could no longer support the president’s re-election
effort.
“I am denouncing him,” Catania said. “I will not be supporting him. I will
be working to defeat him.”
Catania won election earlier this month as a Bush delegate and a member of
the Republican National Convention’s Platform Committee. He said he plans to
take his seat at the convention in New York City as a Bush delegate, with the
aim of opposing the anti-gay constitutional amendment. He acknowledged that
party officials might oust him from the convention hall.
Officials with the national gay group Log Cabin Republicans called the president’s
action a calculated decision to write off as many as 1 million gay votes that
the president received, mostly from gay Republicans, in the 2000 presidential
election.
Exit polls in the 2000 election estimated that Bush received about 25 percent
of the gay vote, with Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore receiving about
75 percent of that vote.
This year, Bush and his campaign advisers have apparently decided it would
be far more advantageous for the president to embrace a highly divisive social
issue such as gay marriage to bolster his political base of socially conservative
and fundamentalist Christian voters, according to Democratic Party consultant
Stanley Greenberg.
Greenberg, in television interviews this week, said the Bush strategy of waging
an election battle in the “culture war” could energize social conservatives
to turn out to the polls but could also turn off moderate voters.
In a statement he delivered in person at the White House on Feb. 24, Bush
said he was prompted to move ahead with his endorsement of a constitutional
ban on gay marriage following a Massachusetts court ruling legalizing same-sex
marriage. He said he was also troubled by the decision earlier this month by
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to issue marriage licenses to thousands of “people
of the same gender.”
“Today, I call on the Congress to promptly pass and to send to the states
an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union
of a man and a 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.
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters that the president’s
reference to states defining “legal arrangements” other than marriage could
include civil unions and domestic partnership arrangements.
But McClellan declined to specify whether Bush would seek changes in the wording
of the Federal Marriage Amendment, the proposed constitutional amendment seeking
to ban gay marriage introduced in Congress by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.).
Gay rights attorneys have said the Musgrave amendment would most likely ban
or invalidate civil unions as well as domestic partnership laws.
Musgrave and her supporters dispute this claim, saying the amendment would
only ban same-sex marriage and would leave state legislatures free to pass
civil union or domestic partner laws.
In press conferences and television appearances across the country, gay civil
rights activists said they strongly oppose any version of a constitutional
amendment, calling civil unions unacceptable measures that are “separate and
unequal.”
Gay D.C. City Council member trong>David
Catania (R-At-Large) was selected to be a delegate
for President Bush to the Republican National Convention.
However, since Bush came out in favor of a constitutional
amendment to ban gay marriage, Catania said he no longer
supports the president.
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