From the President today:
Today, I call upon the Congress to promptly pass and to send to the states for ratification an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of a man and woman as husband and wife.
Lately, I have been more or less convinced by those who have argued that the San Francisco weddings have been the wrong way to press for change, and that there’s not too much upside to the backlash that open law defiance might cause. (Clearly, I think the Massachusetts situation is quite different). Bush’s full-on endorsement may be tied into that backlash, though his sympathies were clearly there beforehand and other factors seem more at play.
Still, the unedifying spectacle of California political theatre pales in comparison to the attempt by a ruling party to use the fedeal Constitution to inscribe a policy matter simply to deny rights that states might allow gay people. Andrew Sullivan puts it most succinctly: “[Bush] is proposing to remove civil rights from one group of American citizens - and do so in the Constitution itself. The message could not be plainer: these citizens do not fully belong in America.”
But what of the political dimension of this announcement? Just last week on Greater Boston, the Globe’s media critics, Mark Jurkowitz argued that the recent grumblings from conservative opinion makers and activist about Bush’s performance weren’t consequential. An Andrew Sullivan aside, would any of these critics really have any one else to vote for? Rather than serious threats to withdraw support, he argued, they were the kind of political performance that happens every political cycle, only to ebb by the general election date.
I believed this analysis - only today, I’m not as sure. Josh Marshall - and to some extent Calpundit - come to the conclusion that Bush isn’t making this announcement from a position of strength but is being backed into a corner politically. From the timing and tone of it, I’d say they’re right.
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