Washington – President Bush and Republican senators launched a repeat election-year push Monday for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
Critics denounced it as a political ploy, and even some backers agreed the proposed amendment is doomed to fail.
“Our policies should aim to strengthen families, not undermine them,” Bush said at a White House event as Senate debate began on the measure. “Changing the definition of marriage would undermine the family structure.”
It’s the latest effort to pass the “Marriage Protection Amendment” from Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo. The same measure in 2004 failed to clear a procedural hurdle necessary to go to a vote.
Allard estimates he has 52 yes votes, short of the 67 votes needed to pass the Senate.
In arguing for the amendment, Allard, Bush and other supporters repeatedly pointed to “activist judges” as a powerful force redefining marriage state by state.
“Marriage is under attack all across the country,” Allard said. “If it hasn’t already, an attack against marriage is coming to a state near you.”
Senate Democrats repudiated the amendment debate as a blatant attempt by Republicans to drive conservative voters to the polls in November, echoing their strategy in 2004. During that national election year, 11 states had same-sex-marriage measures on their ballots, including Ohio, a decisive state in Bush’s re-election victory.
“This proposed constitutional amendment is being used to satisfy the most extreme right-wing supporters and politicians,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
White House press secretary Tony Snow acknowledged that “of course there’s a political dimension” to Bush’s pronouncement in support of the amendment but added that “the president is speaking out about a piece of legislation because he believes in it.”
Constitutional amendments must pass by two-thirds votes in both houses of Congress and then be ratified by legislatures of three-fourths of the states. The U.S. Constitution has not been amended for 14 years.
As the Senate debate began Monday, Republicans talked about marriage between one man and one woman as the foundation of all societies. Democrats talked about the need to protect states’ rights and to keep discrimination out of the Constitution.
North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, a Democrat, lashed out at Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family for newspaper advertisements it ran claiming he doesn’t believe every child needs a mother and a father. The ad was similar to one run in Colorado, attacking Sen. Ken Salazar, also a Democrat.
Focus on the Family – which is based on conservative Christianity – must believe there are only nine commandments in the Bible, Dorgan said. “They forgot the commandment that says thou shall not bear false witness.”
Focus on the Family spokeswoman Carrie Gordon Earll said that for Dorgan “to go to the Scripture to try and support his decision not to defend marriage is kind of an odd response.”
Proponents of the amendment talked repeatedly about how children need a mother and a father.
At a morning event before the debate began, Allard stood with representatives of several faiths, many of whom spoke about the dangers of single-parent households.
The speakers would not answer questions about how a gay- marriage ban would stabilize heterosexual marriages, or whether they’d prefer a two-parent, same-sex household to a single-parent household.
“Children are better off when they are raised in traditional families,” Allard. “I don’t think anything else needs to be said other than that.”
Later, Allard said the amendment “is not going to solve all of society’s problems. That’s not what we’re saying. But I think it’s a very important step that we have to have if we’re going to maintain a functioning democracy and keep the society from having such a high rate of divorces and whatnot.”
Bush appeared before several dozen religious and community activists who oppose gay marriage, including Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.
The president acknowledged that Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, allowing states to disregard same- sex marriages allowed by other states.
But, he said, if the U.S. Supreme Court should ever strike down the act, communities across America would “have to recognize marriage as redefined by judges in, say, Massachusetts or local officials in San Francisco.”
