{"id":7952,"date":"2006-07-17T14:25:53","date_gmt":"2006-07-17T18:25:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/7952.html"},"modified":"2006-07-17T14:25:53","modified_gmt":"2006-07-17T18:25:53","slug":"gay-marriage-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/gay-marriage-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Gay marriage? Again?"},"content":{"rendered":"

About a month ago, the [tag]Senate[\/tag] went through the motions and held a vote on a [tag]constitutional amendment[\/tag] to ban [tag]gay marriage[\/tag]. It failed miserably<\/a>; proponents needed 67 votes in the Senate and they couldn’t even break 50.<\/p>\n

With one chamber already rejecting the measure, the [tag]amendment[\/tag] can’t be approved, at the earliest, until next year. To which [tag]House[\/tag] [tag]Republicans[\/tag] respond: where’s the fun in that?<\/a><\/p>\n

Undeterred by a decisive defeat in the Senate, House Republicans are moving ahead with a vote on a constitutional amendment to [tag]ban[\/tag] gay marriage, forcing lawmakers to take a stand just months before the election.<\/p>\n

The vote, scheduled for Tuesday, will occur in a week devoted to several priorities of social conservatives — what House GOP leaders call their “American [tag]values[\/tag] agenda.” […]<\/p>\n

Defeat of the amendment is once again a near-certainty. The Senate fell 11 votes short of the 60 votes needed just to advance the proposal to a yes-or-no decision. Two years ago, just before another election, the House came up some 40 votes shy of the two-thirds majority required to advance a constitutional amendment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Proponents don’t have the two-thirds majority they need, and they don’t have the Senate support they need, but they’re going to hold the vote anyway … because apparently the GOP base gets riled up by failure. As Tony Perkins told the AP, “The more this issue is discussed, the more people understand the threat.”<\/p>\n

I generally avoid predictions, but I have a hunch this isn’t going to work.
\n<\/p>\n

Rep. Tammy Baldwin, an openly gay Democrat from Wisconsin, said the marriage amendment “certainly is a tool that the right wing is using, but I think it has lost the impact it had in 2004.”<\/p>\n

Baldwin said voters are more concerned about the war in Iraq, health care costs and gas prices and to a greater extent “are recognizing this time that these measures are politically motivated.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s always a mistake to underestimate the draw of these emotional culture-war issues, but I think Baldwin’s right. This has “backfire” written all over it.<\/p>\n

For the right, it’s a reminder that even with big GOP majorities in both chambers, they still can’t get the amendment they want. For everyone else, it’s a reminder that big GOP majorities in both chambers would rather waste time on an amendment they know they can’t pass than work on real issues that affect people’s lives.<\/p>\n

House Dems shouldn’t sheepishly kill time and get this vote out of the way — they should embrace this as a terrific opportunity. Dems could hold huge media events showing that House Republicans want to focus their energy on an anti-gay measure that can’t pass while events in the Middle East spiral out of control. Dems should then ask, “Had enough?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About a month ago, the [tag]Senate[\/tag] went through the motions and held a vote on a [tag]constitutional amendment[\/tag] to ban [tag]gay marriage[\/tag]. It failed miserably; proponents needed 67 votes in the Senate and they couldn’t even break 50. With one chamber already rejecting the measure, the [tag]amendment[\/tag] can’t be approved, at the earliest, until next […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}