McCain, Falwell, and the ‘Federal Marriage Amendment’

March 29, 2006

To follow up on yesterday’s post about the [tag]John McCain[/tag]-[tag]Jerry Falwell[/tag] courtship, it’s also worth noting that McCain’s once-firm opposition to the right’s anti-gay constitutional amendment isn’t quite as clear as it was.

When the so-called “[tag]Federal Marriage Amendment[/tag]” last came to the Senate floor, McCain joined Dems in defeating the [tag]gay-marriage[/tag] measure, calling it “antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans.” Now, according to Falwell’s home-town paper, McCain is equivocating a bit.

Falwell said McCain has expressed a willingness to support a Federal Marriage Amendment, an issue dear to conservative Christians.

The amendment would define marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

Christian conservatives, including Falwell, are concerned about efforts by homosexual groups to have civil unions between same-sex partners recognized as marriages. McCain previously has said the matter of defining marriage should be handled by state legislatures, but now concedes that a federal statute may be necessary, Falwell said.

It prompted the DNC’s Karen Finney to say, “Here he goes again, more double talk and pandering to the right wing from John McCain. It looks like there are real questions about where he truly stands on this issue, in fact, it’s getting hard to tell where he truly stands on a number of critical issues.”

According to The Note, Falwell clarified the issue with ABC News, saying that McCain is not pushing the [tag]constitutional amendment[/tag] “at this time,” but would support it if federal court ruled against state bans on gay marriage.

I guess McCain was sort of against the amendment before he was sort of for it.

I like the Falwell quote–an illustration of typical GOP “leadership” (i.e., “I’ll go along with it only if someone else takes the first step). And an illustration of how hard the GOP will fight for its fundie allies.

Feh. Losers.

  • Nothing gets the right fired up quite as much as homophobia. Be careful, you, or worse yet, your children might catch gay from one of them. McCain should really feel ashamed of himself for supporting legislature that actively bans civil rights. How much did they give him to change his stance on this issue?

    If the marriage protection act does come to pass, I do wonder how the law would be worded. As far as gender identity goes, the law at this point becomes fuzzy. Marriage between a man and a woman? How about a transgendered female, who has fully transitioned into being male (yes, the birth certificate is legally changed to say male) marrying his lesbian lover. Legally, this is now a straight couple, consisting of a male and a female. Marriage between a biological male and a biological woman? What happens in the reverse situation? A biological male legally transitions into a female, and then marries a female. Technically this is an union between a male and a female, although outwardly it appears to be a lesbian relationship. (The 2 situations work just as well with men). Additionally, how will biological gender be defined? XX chromosones for female and XY chromosones for male? How about those rare cases with an extra X chromosone or an XX chromosoned male? How about those very rare instances where a biologically female child is born with testicles? There’s a lot of questions that need to be answered and it might be interesting to watch the lawyers struggle to put this into law.

  • Those are all real good points VT Idealist, but the main reason to oppose the FMA is that it seeks to write biogtry into the Consitution. Everything else is just secondary.

  • I think we need to stop referring to these people as the Religious Right and start referring to them as they were know in the old days: the KKK.

  • Much more accurate (well, not as accurate as “KKK,” but you know what I mean) would be to call them the Religious Wrong or the Sacreligious Right. While no one religion can, with any rational thought, consider itself the one correct religion, it is interesting in terms of a more trascendent set of human moral values to look at where numerous, very different religions have overlap. Nearly all “world” religions have some version of the Golden Rule. They nearly all have some sense of being “our brothers’ keeper.” These hateful, oppressing, selfish, greedy L.F.B.s are truly anything but religious if that word is to be given any meaning at all. They are, at best, Religiously Wrong (i.e. mistaken) or more likely they are Sacreligious, intentionally doing evil deeds for purely selfish greed and power lust. It’s almost worth adopting a belief in hell just to enjoy thoughts of them all rotting there for eternity.

  • If the religious right is so concerned about the “immoralists” in this country, why don’t they run their own candidate in elections instead of trying to coerce from the outside? Because their candidates would stand no chance of winning on an outright religious right platform. When will politicians learn to not pander to the minority of society just b/c that minority is very vocal.
    John McCain will lose the support of independents and dem’s if he embraces the religious right faction. It’s a net sum loss for him (he doesn’t gain enough on one side to abandon the other). But as dem’s, independents, liberals, etc., we should push for him to embrace that faction so that 2008 will be even better for a Dem presidential candidate.

  • #7 – agreed, push him into those corners. Make him spend the next 2 years running to the right.

  • sad. I thought McCain was the only republican with a shred of dignity…once again, they have proved me wrong

  • Why is it exactly that we are accepting Falwell’s word on McCain’s stance on this issue? I personally don’t consider Falwell to be an entirely reliable source with a history of telling the truth about important issues.

    I’ll wait to see what McCain has to say about it before I decide to convict him on the word of a liar.

  • #7 Well, maybe from our perspective, it seems like a bad idea for John McCain to switch and embrace the right-wing, but really, he must do it. Now, McCain and only a select few politicians (from both sides) are (sort of) palpable to both sides of the aisle, but when push comes to shove, dems and independents don’t vote for the Rep nomination, religious conservatives do. So, although McCain could win a national election, he doesn’t stand a chance getting nominated if he shuns a small, but highly vocal part of the GOP. It’s all just posturing, of course, but McCain doesn’t want to find himself in one year being hailed by independents and liberals and then getting shafted by his own party. They already don’t really like him (and this immigration issue isn’t getting him any bonus points), he can’t afford NOT to embrace these evangelicals and this amendment.

    I think it’s pretty sad that this is the state of American politics where you can be on one side of an issue for years and years, and then you have to change it to fit a party faction.

    Also, #7, it doesn’t matter how many liberals or independents are turned away from the McCain camp (myself included), if McCain is nominated, he WILL win, no Democrat can beat him. Hilary? Let’s stop kidding ourselves.

  • If McCain and Falwell want to get married, it’s okay with me, as long as I don’t have to live next door to ’em. I don’t think I could stand the bickering.

  • So what do people think about THIS?
    ————————————————————
    BATON ROUGE, La. — US Senator John F. Kerry said yesterday that he believes it’s a mistake for the Massachusetts Democratic Party to include a plank in its official platform in support of same-sex marriage, saying that such a statement does not conform with the broad views of party members.

    Kerry, who opposes same-sex marriage but supports civil unions, said in an interview with the Globe that he would prefer that the party not mention gay marriage in its platform, because Democrats continue to disagree on how to handle the issue.

    ”I’m opposed to it being in a platform. I think it’s a mistake,” Kerry said shortly after hosting a forum on his universal children’s healthcare bill in Baton Rouge. ”I think it’s the wrong thing, and I’m not sure it reflects the broad view of the Democratic Party in our state.”

  • A letter I wrote to his office.

    5/13/06

    Mr. McCain,

    I am a card carrying Democrat, and in most cases would be considered a proud liberal. I will say, however, you sir are one of the few republicans that I would consider voting for, for president of the U. S. Well sir, that just ended with your visit to the Jerry Falwell School. If you can tell me one good reason to align yourself with this man that does not include pandering to the people of his ilk, please let me know. Otherwise you are now either a crazy person like him, or a liar (re. things you have said about him in the past). I hope you are crazy because you were one of the few politicians of any party, that I thought might be a real straight shooter.

    Very disappointed,

    Stephen Sandnes.

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