Election time is coming soon, and the Bush administration has
decided to manipulate the issue of gay marriage in an attempt to
convince voters that Republicans really are different than
Democrats. President Bush is employing gay marriage as a campaign
issue because he knows it is a topic affected by spin, emotion and
faith as much as substantive debate.
During last Tuesday’s State of the Union address,
President Bush criticized judges who support gay rights, suggesting
that a ban against gay unions should be codified into the
constitution. He said, “if judges insist on forcing their
arbitrary will upon the people, the only alternative left to the
people would be the constitutional process.”
And yet, while Bush’s comments have elicited controversy
and debate, the emotional divisiveness of the issue belies how
politically irrelevant it should be ““ particularly in a time
when the nation faces problems in global terrorism, reconstruction
in Iraq and economic recovery. From a practical standpoint, the
government really shouldn’t be concerned about who is
marrying whom, especially not when there are crusades to be waged
against “evildoers” and weapons of mass destruction to
be found in Iraq.
But apparently, fear gets votes. As the Institute for Public
Affairs’ Jim Rinnert writes, focusing on gay marriage
“reduces the cause of gay rights to a single issue, one that
will strike fear into the hearts of a population that has
difficulty seeing past easy labels and sound bites.” The
issue of gay marriage has become a socially (or at least
politically) acceptable form of discrimination.
It appears Bush will continue pressing this topic until voters
succumb to their irrational fear and misunderstanding of
homosexuals. Voters are to believe that only Republican leadership
can save the country from radical liberal affronts by
“activist judges” against “the sanctity of
marriage.” But if the President doesn’t mind me saying,
if marriage is supposedly the strength of our country, then our
country clearly isn’t that strong, considering its
approximate divorce rate of 50 percent.
However, rather than saying that voters should redirect support
toward a Democratic presidential candidate, I’d like to
suggest that concerning gay rights, the Republicans may have more
in common with Democrats than they’d like to believe, perhaps
reinforcing Michael Moore’s assertion that a Democrat is
nothing more than a Republican in a cheap suit.
As he writes in “Stupid White Men … and Other Sorry
Excuses for the State of the Nation!” Moore points out that
former President Clinton signed the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act,
which gave states the rights to refuse recognition of gay civil
unions from other states. Also, Moore says that Clinton took out
ads on Christian radio “touting his opposition to any form of
legal same sex coupling.”
Furthermore, Democratic presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman,
who ran with Al Gore against George W. Bush in the 2000 election,
is opposed to gay marriage, though he qualifies his sentiment by
asserting that states have the right to allow gay civil unions.
Conveniently, this allowed him to please conservative voters
without alienating potential support from the left.
Though Bush would like to paint the gay marriage issue as one
that divides the two parties, both have behaved similarly
concerning gay rights. Without commenting on the merits of both
sides of the argument, it’s better to warn you to keep a keen
eye out for the type of flagrant voter manipulation Bush is trying
to pull. Our recent past has shown us that issues of morality, such
as abortion and affirmative action, play an important role in
election politics despite little action taken regarding the issue
after all is said and done.
Although the issue of gay rights is a real civil rights
question, it should not be used as an emotional blackmail during an
election year simply to earn votes. The fact that Bush waited until
now to bring it up should be proof enough of his intent to
manipulate voters.
Dang is a third-year political science student. E-mail him
at ndang@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.