Jan 28, 2005  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR.  | COMMENTS     

A coalition of social conservative leaders warned the White House last week that they would withhold support for President Bush’s proposal to partially privatize Social Security unless he enthusiastically supports a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

In a Jan. 18 letter to White House political adviser Karl Rove, which was disclosed by the New York Times, the coalition of conservative religious leaders known as the Arlington Group expressed outrage that Bush appeared to be taking a “defeatist” attitude toward the proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage.

The sternly worded letter arrived at the White House three days before Senator Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) reintroduced on Jan. 24 the same constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage that the Senate defeated last year under the name of the Federal Marriage Amendment. Allard renamed the measure the Marriage Protection Amendment.

Twenty-four Republican senators, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), signed on as co-sponsors to Allard’s amendment. Republican Senators John Warner and George Allen of Virginia did not sign on as co-sponsors as of press time. No Democratic senators agreed to become co-sponsors of the amendment.

The letter from the Arlington Group also came one week after Bush angered social conservative leaders by hinting in an interview with the Washington Post that he might not push hard for a constitutional ban on gay marriage because the Senate was unlikely to pass it any time soon.

White House officials quickly sought to clarify Bush’s remarks to the Post, saying the president continues to strongly support such an amendment and would urge Congress to pass it.

But the follow-up statements by the White House did not appear to mollify members of the Arlington Group, which includes anti-gay figure James Dobson, leader of the Colorado-based Focus on the Family.

“We couldn’t help but notice the contrast between how the president is approaching the difficult issue of Social Security privatization, where the public is deeply divided, and the marriage issue, where public opinion is overwhelmingly on his side,” the Times quoted the Arlington Group letter as saying.

“Is he prepared to spend significant political capital on privatization but reluctant to devote the same energy to preserving traditional marriage?” the Times quoted the letter as saying. “If so, it would create outrage with countless voters who stood with him just a few weeks ago, including an unprecedented number of African-Americans, Latinos and Catholics who broke with tradition and supported the president solely because of this issue.”

According to the Times, the letter chastised the president for taking “a defeatist attitude on an issue that is at the top of our agenda” and expressed concern that Bush stated in an interview shortly before the election that he “appeared to endorse civil unions” for same-sex couples.

Senate Republican leaders appeared to deliver another rebuke to the social conservative coalition this week when they released a list of their top 10 legislative priorities for the next two years and did not include a constitutional amendment on gay marriage as part of that list. Among the issues at the top of their list, the Senate GOP leaders said, were Social Security reform, more tax cuts, restrictions on personal-injury lawsuits, and expansion of domestic oil exploration.

At a Jan. 24 news conference, where the Republican senators announced their legislative priority list, Frist said he would arrange for the constitutional amendment to come up for a vote sometime during the 109th Congress. But he said it might not reach the Senate floor until 2006. Most Capitol Hill observers say the amendme
nt has little or no chance of passing during the next two years.

The proposed constitutional amendment was defeated in the Senate and House last year after it failed to receive the required two-thirds majority vote. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.), who introduced the marriage amendment into the House last year, was expected to reintroduce the measure within the next few weeks.

Christopher Barron, a spokesperson for the national gay group Log Cabin Republicans, said the developments surrounding the marriage amendment over the past week show that the social conservative coalition is at odds with the president and most Republican leaders in Congress.

“For them to send a letter like this, at this critical juncture, threatening to yank their support for something as critical as Social Security reform, is really ...