On gay marriage, Bush unfaithful

President Bush can get downright cryptic when he talks out of both sides of his mouth.

Example: His position on whether gay families should be recognized as legitimate and whether gay partners should have the same legal rights as heterosexual married couples. The president says that he would support a constitutional amendment that would restrict marriage to a union between a man and a woman, but he has also said that states should be free to sanction what "legal arrangements" they will.

Huh?

According to the president, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overreached when it ruled last month that it is unconstitutional in that state to deny legal benefits to gay couples that are available to straight married couples. Bush says it might be necessary to amend the U.S. Constitution to define marriage as a union of heterosexuals to protect "the sanctity" of the institution from marauding liberal judges.

Given that sanctity refers to holiness or sacredness, shouldn't protecting the sanctity of marriage be the job of religious institutions, not government? And wouldn't such a cultural and religious prohibition be out of place in the U.S. Constitution, a pointedly secular document that protects and confers legal rights for all U.S. citizens?

The only other amendment to the Constitution that addressed a similar cultural issue - and which took away rights rather than conferred them - outlawed the sale of alcoholic beverages, otherwise known as Prohibition. That proved such a miserable mistake that it had to be repealed a few years later. The same fate would probably befall an amendment that addressed the cultural and religious meaning of what is essentially a legal contract between two people "sanctified" by religious ceremony.

And here's where it gets really confusing. Even as he endorses a constitutional amendment on the sanctity of marriage, the president seems to be saying that legal contracts between same-sex couples (commonly known as civil unions) could be legalized broadly. His position is that "whatever legal arrangements people want to make, they're allowed to make, so long as it's embraced by the state."

That is a more liberal view of civil unions than was taken even by the administration of Bill Clinton, who in 1996 signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act allowing states to refuse to acknowledge such unions established in other states. That law is of questionable legality, because under the Constitution, contracts entered into in one state, including marriage, must be recognized in others.

So what exactly is the president's position? Does he want to "sanctify" the word marriage with a constitutional amendment? Or does he endorse state-sanctioned contractual arrangements between members of the same gender that simulate a marriage in everything but name?

Bush may be hard-pressed to find firm ground between the religious right, which opposes any legal recognition of gay families, and the gay Log Cabin Republicans, whose reported million members would have a tough time supporting Bush if he strongly opposes their forming legal families. Some polls also show that while the majority of Americans are squeamish about applying the word marriage to gay families, most do not oppose civil unions.

Support for recognition of gay marriage and gay families is particularly strong among the young, which suggests the direction that the country wants to head on this issue. That direction is not backward.

'Freedom to Marry Rings' image upper right © H. Mitchell.