President Bush wants a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Two-thirds
of both houses in Congress must OK it and three-fourths of the states ratify
it before it becomes part of the Constitution. (Photo by Susan Walsh/AP)
The Democratic presidential hopeful reiterates support for a range of gay rights bills and issues, including a trans-inclusive ENDA and a National AIDS Strategy.
Did the quick-witted, gay lawmaker help or hinder the situation?
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‘I hope gay and lesbian Americans will give full consideration to supporting me’
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By LOU CHIBBARO JR.
Friday, February 27, 2004
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Gay civil rights groups, including the nation’s
largest gay Republican organization, denounced President Bush’s endorsement
this week of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, calling the president’s
action an election year ploy to secure support from conservative religious voters.
“Today, the president of the United States, solely for political gain,
called upon Congress to amend the United States Constitution to enshrine our
second-class citizenship in the nation’s most revered document,” said
Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. “This
is a despicable new low.”
Although gay rights groups were expected to raise sharp objections to the
president’s action, gay Republican leaders were just as forceful in their
opposition to the development, saying that gay GOP groups would most likely
sit out the election rather than endorse the president.
Gay D.C. Council member David Catania (R-At-Large), who campaigned for Bush
in the 2000 presidential election, called the president’s backing of
a constitutional amendment “repugnant” and said he could no longer
support the president’s re-election effort. He acknowledged that party
officials might oust him from the Republican Convention.
Officials with the Log Cabin Republicans called the president’s action
a calculated decision to write off as many as 1 million gay votes that the
president received, mostly from gay Republicans, in the 2000 presidential election.
Exit polls in the 2000 election estimated that Bush received about 25 percent
of the gay vote, with Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore receiving about
75 percent of that vote.
This year, Bush and his campaign advisers have apparently decided it would
be far more advantageous for the president to embrace a highly divisive social
issue such as gay marriage to bolster his political base of socially conservative
and fundamentalist Christian voters, according to Democratic Party consultant
Stanley Greenberg. Greenberg has said the Bush strategy of waging an election
battle in the “culture war” could energize social conservatives
to turn out to the polls but could also turn off moderate voters.
In a statement he delivered in person at the White House on Feb. 24, Bush said
he was prompted to move ahead with his endorsement of a constitutional ban
on gay marriage following a Massachusetts court ruling legalizing same-sex
marriage. He said he was also troubled by the decision earlier this month by
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome to issue marriage licenses to thousands of “people
of the same gender.”
“Today, I call on the Congress to promptly pass and to send to the states
an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union
of a man and a woman as husband and wife,” Bush said. “The amendment
should fully protect marriage, while leaving the state legislatures free to
make their own choices in defining legal arrangements other than marriage.
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters that the president’s
reference to states defining “legal arrangements” other than marriage
could include civil unions and domestic partnership arrangements. But McClellan
declined to specify whether Bush would seek changes in the wording of the Federal
Marriage Amendment, the proposed constitutional amendment seeking to ban gay
marriage introduced in Congress by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.).
Gay rights attorneys have said the Musgrave amendment would most likely ban
or invalidate civil unions as well as domestic partnership laws. Musgrave and
her supporters dispute this claim, saying the amendment would only ban same-sex
marriage and would leave state legislatures free to pass civil union or domestic
partner laws.
Gay activists said they strongly oppose any version of a constitutional amendment,
calling civil unions unacceptable measures that are “separate and unequal.”
- Passage by two thirds of the House (292 out of 435)
and the Senate (67 out of 100); no approval from the president
is required
- OR a constitutional convention called
for by legislatures from two-thirds (34 out of 50) of
the states
- Congress decides whether ratification is
by state legislatures or state conventions
- Ratification
is by legislatures or conventions from three-fourths
(38 out of 50) of the states
- There have been 27 amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
The first 10 were the Bill of Rights proposed on Sept.
25, 1789.
- The most recent amendment to be ratified was
the 27th, on May 7, 1992. It took 203 years to be approved
by three-fourths
of the states.
- States have never banded together
to call for a constitutional convention to propose new
amendments.
- Amendments to the Constitution
have been used to expand rights for U.S. citizens. The
13th Amendment
abolished slavery;
the 14th Amendment ensured former slaves would be treated
as citizens and be provided “equal protection under
the law.” (That phrase has been used for a variety
of rulings, including the 2003 Supreme Court ruling that
overturned sodomy
laws.) The 15th Amendment gave black men the right to vote;
the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote; the 23rd
Amendment gave D.C. residents the right to vote in presidential
elections;
and the 26th Amendment lowered the age of eligible voters
to 18.
- The only amendment to limit established individual
rights was the 18th Amendment, which initiated Prohibition,
beginning Jan. 16, 1920. The 21st Amendment, ratified Dec.
5, 1933, repealed it.
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“To use the Constitution to discriminate against our families is un-American,
shameful and divisive,” said Cheryl Jacques, president of the Human Rights
Campaign, the nation’s largest gay political group. “This amendment
would be the first to reinstate discrimination in our Constitution. There is
no doubt in my mind that the American people will see this as an ugly and discriminatory
game of politics.”
Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, the nation’s
largest gay Republican group, said the president’s decision to support
a marriage amendment would make it unlikely that the group will endorse his
re-election.
Guerriero said Log Cabin will remain in the Republican Party to continue its
fight for gay civil rights, even if the group doesn’t support Bush’s
re-election. “We will mobilize all our resources and grassroots strength
to fight this anti-family constitutional amendment,” he said.
Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia who
specializes in U.S. elections, has said in the past that a constitutional amendment
seeking to ban gay marriage would most likely fail. Constitutional amendments
require approval by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress. They must
also be approved by three-fourths of the states.
This week, Sabato said he sees no reason to doubt his previous prediction
that such an amendment would fail, despite the flurry of publicity generated
by Bush’s official endorsement of a constitutional ban on gay marriage. “The
odds are still against this getting out of Congress,” Sabato said. “But
if it does, just 13 single houses — not the full legislatures — in
13 states can defeat this.”
“Bush knows this won’t pass,” Sabato said. “So why
is he doing this? It accomplishes his purpose of energizing his conservative
base and it draws out the differences between him and [leading Democratic presidential
candidate John] Kerry.”
Among the gay Republicans expressing opposition to the president’s endorsement
of the marriage amendment this week was Scott Evertz, the former director of
the White House Office of National AIDS Policy. Evertz currently works as a
special assistant to Secretary of Health & Human Services Tommy Thompson.
“I agree with the speakers here today that this represents an historic
first in enshrining discrimination as opposed to furthering civil rights,” said
Evertz. “It’s upsetting to those of us who served the president
since the beginning of the administration,” he said.
- 3 countries (Netherlands, Belgium, several provinces of Canada) issue
marriage licenses to gay couples
- 0 states recognize same-sex marriages
but Massachusetts has been ordered by its Supreme Judicial Court to begin
doing so by May 17;
- 1 city (San Francisco) has issued marriage
licenses to more than 3,200 same-sex couples since Feb. 12 but California
state officials are moving to
invalidate those marriages
- 1 state (VT) recognizes civil unions that
extend marriage-like rights and responsibilities to gay couples
- 1 state
(NJ) and DC recognize domestic partnerships that carry limited legal rights
and don’t have a DOMA law
- 2 states (CA, HI) offer limited legal
recognition to gay couples. But California voters passed a 2000 initiative
limiting marriage to heterosexual
couples; Hawaii passed a state constitutional amendment limiting marriage
to heterosexual couples
- 11 states have not passed any law concerning
same-sex couples
- 33 States have passed Defense of Marriage Acts
(DOMAs) restricting marriage to heterosexual couples and have no other
laws addressing same-sex
couples
- 2 states (NE, OH) have passed “Super DOMAs” that
ban domestic partner benefits to gay couples in addition to defining marriage
for heterosexual
couples only
- 1 state (AK) has passed a constitutional amendment banning
gay marriage and offers no other form of recognition to gay couples
Sources: Human Rights Campaign, National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, International
Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission, Associated Press
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