Question Details	Asked By	Asked On
Took The Bait??	XCHOUX	03/06/04
There is talk in Chicago-land that Bush "took the bait" regarding the issue of marriage for homosexuals by proposing an Amendment to the Constitution to describe the specifics of marriage. That this issue will lose him his second term in the White House. My opinion, he is gong to lose on this issue if he pushes it. Comments....
Clarification/Follow-up by XCHOUX on 03/07/04 12:06 am: Tom, Thanks for the link. I guess there is little chance of a "Remember The Twin Towers" campagne slogan! All my best!
Answered By		Answered On
voiceguy2000		03/06/04
With due regard for those who may be directly affected by this, I consider the issue of gay marriage to be comparatively minor in the grand array of election-year concerns. The truth is that dealing with something by advocating a constitutional amendment is better than burying it in a committee. The amendment process is so long and complicated that nothing can possibly happen within a relevant (that is, relevant to the election) period of time. Thus it is a fairly safe choice to "come out" (pun intended, I guess) in favor of a constitutional amendment. It would be little different to appoint a blue-ribbon commission to study the situation and make recommendations. Frankly, I cannot imagine more than a handful of voters actually changing their minds about Bush on the basis of his position on gay marriage. In other words, I believe you would have to search far and wide to find very many people who could truthfully say, "You know, I was a supporter of Bush, but after his pronouncements on gay marriage, I have decided to vote for Kerry instead." The truth is that Bush's position represents the traditional values of a significant portion of the country. A lot of those people would have voted for him before his announcement, and will certainly not change their preference after the announcement. His position on gay marriage is consistent with his position on a broad spectrum of social issues. For the same reason, because of Bush's other views, I suspect that people who favor gay marriage would already have tended to dislike Bush on other grounds, and this simply reinforces their view of him. What we seem to be witnessing here is a reenactment of Roe v. Wade, where courts are short-circuiting the political and legislative processes by inventing uwritten constitutional rights involving highly divisive social issues over which people hold passionate views. I would have thought we had learned our lesson with Roe.

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