corrente

Even for Bush, for whom the bar is set very low, his statement on gay marriage lacks intellectual consistency. He said he was "protecting the institution of marriage," but all he was doing was barring gays and lesbians from participating in it. He admitted the "amendment process" was a serious one and should be limited to "matters of national concern." He then trivialized it all by saying "the preservation of marriage rises to this level of national importance."

That is just plain silly. The 3,000 or so gay and lesbian couples who have been married in San Francisco have not, as far as I can tell, materially weakened this great country. What's more, their marriages may not survive challenge. It could be that the crisis will end with some judgment by a court affirming California's right to limit marriage to heterosexuals, such as Britney Spears.

In the style and rigor of his argument, Bush talked about marriage as he did recently about Iraq. He made one assertion after another, linking them not with evidence or with logic, but simply with the word "and." Saddam Hussein is a madman and a threat to the United States. How? Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. Doesn't matter. He was a threat to us all.

It is the same with gay and lesbian marriage. Whatever you may think, it represents no threat to our way of life -- no reason to take the very serious step of amending the Constitution. The amendment would not bar or condemn homosexuality, which is the real issue here, but merely turn marriage into a version of a restricted club: Gays need not apply.

Just about everyone agrees that Bush is securing his conservative base before the general election. This makes political sense, but it also represents moral cowardice.... But he knows -- at least he ought to know -- that some of the movement he is appealing to is motivated by homophobia, by prejudice and that in this, as in all such cases, hatred is hard to contain.

I am thinking now of Harry S. Truman, who thought he could appease the forces of a nascent McCarthyism by instituting a government loyalty program. All he did, though, was encourage anti-communist zealots in their abuse of civil liberties. Truman played politics with fanatics and it didn't work. Too often moderation is seen as weakness.

Bush is attempting something similar. But true homophobes can see through him: Why allow civil unions? They have taken the measure of the man and bullied him into using the weight of his office to restrict the rights of a minority. The grave crisis that Bush would heal by trivializing the Constitution simply does not exist. This self-proclaimed war president looks awfully weak on this issue, a political opportunist who would rather be president than be right. The real crisis is one of conscience. It overwhelmed Bush.