ANDREW SULLIVAN ON GOP POLITICS OF SSM: From the Washington Post

It has become almost a cliche that the issue of marriage rights for gays is a wedge issue for Republicans. ...

There's some truth to this, but it's a largely dated analysis. ...

...What chance is there for [a marriage amendment] to succeed with a mere 20 percent?

Worse, many leading conservatives oppose the amendment. ...

And even among the hard right that supports an amendment, there is no consensus about what should actually be in it. Some have argued that a simple statement reserving marriage for a man and woman is enough. But others are concerned that this simply protects the word "marriage" while allowing civil unions -- which give many but not all the benefits of civil marriage -- to be enacted. That's why the most-cited version of the amendment would ban not just gay marriages but all "the legal incidents thereof," i.e. even civil unions or domestic partnerships. Yet another faction wants to allow civil unions -- but only if they don't explicitly involve sex. One version of the amendment puts the word "sexual" in the Constitution for the first time -- and not in a good way.

These are just some of the many rifts within the Republican coalition. On the Democratic side, there are no such rifts. Every single candidate opposes the constitutional amendment. And most leading candidates oppose gay marriage but endorse civil unions. So raising the amendment issue actually divides Republicans while uniting Democrats. And the Democratic position is more appealing to most of the country, which is not anti-gay and has few qualms about civil unions but still gets queasy about full marriage rights.

more
posted by Eve at 3:37 PM VOTE

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home