Bush's clarified marriage amendment

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Bush’s clarified marriage amendment

On February 24, 2004, President George W. Bush took it upon himself to propose an amendment to the Constitution which, for the first time since the days of slavery, would deny millions of Americans the equal protection formerly guaranteed by that august document.

In one of his most strangely convoluted speeches to date, Bush meandered through fields of platitudes and clichés to assuage his vocal right wing religionists and assure the country that denying gays and lesbians is the only righteous path government can take to protect marriage and “serve the interests of all.” Furthermore, said Bush, the issue of gay marriage needs “clarity.”

To begin with, the idea that Bush’s idiosyncratic view of the world will allow him to clarify anything is rather risible. This is, after all, a man who sees only two colors – black and white – and only two ethical poles – good and evil. For Bush and his theocratic conservative cohorts, there is no middle ground and hence no possible compromise.

We’ve seen this moral polarization at work in the decision to invade Iraq and, more recently, when his Education Secretary, Rod Paige, decided that the teachers and administrators of the National Education Association were “terrorists” because they dared raise intelligent objections to the preposterously ill-conceived No Child Left Behind Act.

Hence clarification for Bush essentially means that in some bizarre way we must construct and define a force inimical to marriage, from which marriage must be protected. Once we determine, as in the case of Iraq, where the societal cancers lie, we forcefully excise them so that the good cells may prosper and live in accordance with the gospel of compassionate conservatism. Hence, all unmarried couples become the enemy, though the subtext clearly implies gays and lesbians.

Quite beyond that, the amendment itself is rather strangely concocted. The first sentence is perhaps the clearest, in that it states that “Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.” Neither “man” nor “woman” is defined, and one wonders what happens in the case of transgender people, or some transvestites for that matter. But that, perhaps, is begging the point. It’s what follows that will occasion interpretive interest.

Without mentioning gays or lesbians specifically, the amendment goes on to say that neither the federal Constitution nor state constitutions, nor state or federal law “shall be construed to require that marital status, or the legal incidents thereof, be conferred on unmarried couples or groups.”

One wonders why the verb require was used, as opposed, say, to allow. While a state might well not require marital status be granted to unmarried couples, it might indeed allow them to be married.

But even more troubling is the use of marital status. By marital status do we mean the state of marriage or, as the following clause indicates, the rights or incidents attendant to marriage. The idea that states should not be required to confer the right to marry –and hence marital status - upon any unmarried couples who wish to get hitched seems ludicrous at best. On the other hand, unmarried couples would not be expected to demand the rights associated with marriage if they chose to remain unmarried.

And why would anyone expect the state to require that marital status be granted to groups? Do we really expect that the American Legion is going to apply for marital status? Or the Daughters of the Confederacy? What on earth does that mean?

What it means, of course, is that gays and lesbians are considered in toto, as a group, to be unworthy of marriage. And they are obviously the unmarried couples to whom the amendment refers.

Unfortunately, however, because of the ambiguity that prevails in the amendment, any unmarried couples, gay or heterosexual, are caught in the net. In fact, it might well be the case that, if this amendment passes, no unmarried couples, gay or straight, will ever meet the marriage requirements of any state or the federal government. If you’re not married now, you may never get married.

It would seem, then, that far from clarifying the status of gays relative to the question of marriage, the amendment has confused the issue even more and moved it far beyond the bounds of redemptive purity.

We can hope only that the ambiguity inherent in the amendment creates such a donnybrook of diverse opinions in Congress and the state legislatures that it finally is consigned to the appropriate trash bin and ultimately deleted.

March 2, 2004