‘Federal Marriage Amendment’ as political theater

April 12, 2006

I’m not quite sure why, but some conservative [tag]Republicans[/tag] seem excited about the fact that that their constitutional amendment to [tag]ban[/tag] [tag]gay marriage[/tag] will lose this year, but by a smaller margin than last year.

A majority of the [tag]Senate[/tag] this year will support the [tag]Federal Marriage Amendment[/tag], an outcome that both the left and the right say will energize their respective bases in November.

In the summer of 2004, the effort to define [tag]marriage[/tag] as between a man and a woman failed in the Senate, on a 48-50 vote. Now that [tag]Republican[/tag]s have increased their majority, the amendment has collected more support. If all senators vote the way they did in 2004 and the freshmen vote as expected, the bill will attract 52 votes — well short of the 67 needed to amend the Constitution.

First-term Sens. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), John Thune (R-S.D.) and David Vitter (R-La.) have all co-sponsored the amendment. These four legislators replaced Democrats who voted against the amendment in 2004. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who won the seat vacated by Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), has also co-sponsored the new legislation.

Bill Frist has already promised the base a vote in June on the so-called Federal Marriage Amendment ([tag]FMA[/tag]), and everyone knows it’s not only going to lose, but it’s not even going to be close. Proponents don’t even have the votes for cloture.

In this sense, the vote on the FMA will just be political theater. But who, exactly, are the theatrics for?

The right will be reminded that, despite a huge GOP advantage in the Senate, they’re still 15 votes short of sending the amendment to the states for ratification. The left will be reminded that most Republicans want to enshrine bigotry into constitutional stone. And the middle will be reminded that the Republican majority can’t seem to govern, but it can devote limited time in an election year on a divisive measure that they know in advance can’t pass. Even Bush has indicated he has no plans to invest time and political capital in an amendment that will inevitably fail.

So what’s the point? Even if the idea is to rally the far-right base before Election Day, isn’t the message essentially, “Vote GOP, so we can lose the vote on the FMA again next year”?

Sad to say (or happy, depending on how you look at it), this is what passes for good news these days for the GOP. Gotta love it.

  • Bring it on!

    I once feared these wedge tactics, but now I think it will backfire on them. GOP wedge issues were once useful for splitting blue-collar voters out of the Dem bloc, but this time I think the new “disapproves of Bush” demographic will be too great to overcome.

    True, the FMA will fire up the GOP base, but that base is smaller this time around. And all the GOP-sponsored FMA attacks will provide free energy that pumps up the Dem base too.

  • Let the amendment wars begin.
    How about a truth in government officals amendment?

    That untruthful statements made by elected government officials acting in offical capacity will carry the legal consequence of sworn untruthful testimony in a court of law.

  • It’s funny when you see what a mess this country is in, and then notice how the Republican leadership wastes its time and our taxpayer money worrying about crap like this. It’s one of the many reasons to throw them all out of office.

  • It’s a lot like those quixotic attempts to pass civil rights legislation in the face of a Dixiecrat filibuster before 1958. Doomed, maybe, but its proponents kept the issue on the table and clarified exactly who was responsible for blocking it.

    And in the meantime, Republicans are placing a marker. Even if it never passes, they’re making it clear to the religious right that one party supports its pet issues and one party does not.

  • “How about a truth in government officals amendment?” – kali

    You want to make government service a constant state of bearing witness (as in “Thou shall not bear false witness”) ????

    Sounds good to me. I’ve suggested in the past that malfeasance of office should be a capital crime.

  • I think our present government is too obviously dysfuntional for the wedge issues to get much traction. I’m sure there are a few nutcases who think gay marriage is a more important issue than, say Iraq, or Katrina. Those people deserve nothing but ridicule.

  • I have to say that these wedge tactics, like the FMA and the current anti-immigrant campaign, do bother me.

    The fact is that there are people out there who will say one thing and vote another (I know, I once was one on one of these issues). Inside the privacy of the voting booth, a voter can let come out whatever fears, anxieties, or bigotry they have that they know not to parade in public, safe in the knowledge it’s entirely private.

    In my own case the issue was immigration and Prop 187 here in California, and I voted my fears of the unknown – later that year, my personal circumstances would radically change and I ended up getting to know those people first-hand, which changed it around. But I know through the rest of the country there are a lot of whites who are experiencing now what we in Southern California experienced 20 years ago, and fear of the unknown is more prevalent out there than anyone wants to admit.

    Most of the people I know who are for the FMA are people who also don’t know any gays personally (or know that they know any). Just like illegal immigrants, not knowing any of a particular group personally allows one’s fears and the rumors they hear to become their “database” of “information” on which they make a decision.

    I mean, consider it: how many here who are opposed to the FMA know and are at least acquaintances with gay people, so you know they don’t have horns and a tail???

    This whole thing on both issues is knowledge vs. ignorance and unfortunately “ignorant” is a good word to describe too many of our fellow Americans.

    Which means we still have a lot of educating to do.

  • I’d like to see a Dem-sponsored ‘privacy’ amendment, just to record the yeas and nays

  • With all the problems we have going on right now, who gives a crap about this? When will someone in Congress just stand up and say “Don’t we have something better to deal with in this building? Apparently, a gay couple has become a greater threat to this nation than Osama bin Laden.”

  • I guess they crow about this because these days just getting something, anything, to the floor for a vote at all represents a major victory for the Republican unleadership. Even if it’s doomed to fail before it gets there.

    Oh, the shame of it all. 😉

  • “Don’t we have something better to deal with in this building? Apparently, a gay couple has become a greater threat to this nation than Osama bin Laden.”

    Well, gee, let’s see here. I’ve been with my partner for almost 30 years. I guess we must be personally responsible for September 11, Katrina, conflict in the middle east, Iran/Contra, Whitewater, the impeachment of Clinton, Enron, high fuel prices, and the emergence of Paris Hilton as a cultural icon.

    I’m particularly bitter about the FMA today. This morning, I filed my income taxes. I paid over $23,000 in Federal taxes to support a government that considers me unfit to serve my country in the armed services. I paid over $9,000 in taxes to the District of Columbia, a good share of which goes to educate other people’s children (which is fine with me). I paid God(dess) knows how much in social security taxes, even though the benefits will not go to my partner if I pre-decease him.

    Eeyore the mournful donkey.

  • eeyore,
    the benefits issue always irritates the hell out of me. Who cares who gets your benefits? You pay the costs, so it’s your decision.

    As for the military, that’s going to take a long time. As a veteran, I met too many mouth-breathing crackers in the Army who will fight the issue tooth and nail.

  • Doing it for a campaign issue. First, they can say they voted for it. Second, they can “help” republicans running against Democrats have an issue to energize the base and beat up the Democratic candidate with.

  • “..the emergence of Paris Hilton as a cultural icon.” – eeyore

    Don’t you dare try to take credit for Paris Hilton!

    I really don’t see why everybody is down on the girl. She just spends her days and nights laughing up her sleeves (not that she every really wears any) at all of us and sitting on her $200,000,000 inheritence.

    It’s Nicole Ritchie who is a danger to American culture.

  • Frankly I don’t see much to choose frombetween Paris and Nicole. Brittany Spears, though, now there’s an energizing chunk of womanhood if you want to talk about dangers to American culture. Or is that her husband, Mr. Federline? Maybe both.

  • eeyore #12 and 2Manchu #13,

    Every time I see reference to gays serving in the military my brain goes beserk. Clinton pledged, over and over again, that his first act as President would be to issue an Executive Order opening up the military to gays. His first act, in fact, was to bend over for Senator Sam Nunn who came up with the nefarious “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Try issuing such an order to all heterosexuals in the military. I lost all respect for Clinton at that point and have never believed a word he said – no matter how apparently sincere and how superficially heartfelt.

    Others tear up when they see Clinton on the boob tube today – “Oh, if we only had a campaigner like that today”; I just weep over what sappy fools we’ve beome in the last half century. Truman fully integrated Blacks into the army over much inertial opposition, much more hostile in a way. Clinton just didn’t have the balls. He still doesn’t. Nor does Hillary. Nor, for that matter, do any prominent Democrats. From my point of view, this is a no-brainer for defining “Democrat”.

  • “Brittany Spears, though, now there’s an energizing chunk of womanhood if you want to talk about dangers to American culture.” – Curmudgeon

    I thought Brittany WAS American culture! Blonde, Ambitious, Southern, barely-talented, Curvaceous…

    … in short, everything American Culture is all about, including incompetent parent 😉

  • It’s just the usual red-meat-to-the-base strategy, to encourage them to come out and vote. It’s worked for them before, so why should they change?

  • The Dems should amend the hell out of this proposal. Saying marriage is officially between one man and one woman would therefore outlaw polygamy and force AZ and UT to become part of this debate. How about defining a national age when people can get married if they are going to codify marriage in the first place. That will get a few of the lower age red states in a tizzy. And what about codifying punitive measures while they’re at it? I’m not for any of this stuff but I think federal lawmakers fussing with the details of peoples lives should be a tar baby they shouldn’t want to touch.

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