I think the bolded paragraph hit the nail on the head.
Sodomy Ruling Fuels Battle Over Gay Marriage
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2003; Page A01
When the Supreme Court struck down a Texas law against sodomy a month ago, religious conservatives viewed the decision as a terrible defeat. But now, they increasingly think it has handed them a winning political issue: opposition to gay marriage.
In an unexpected shift in the electoral landscape, polls show that public support of gay rights in general, and of "civil unions" for same-sex couples in particular, has fallen about 10 percentage points since the court's June 26 ruling.
Leaders of the Christian Right say this is because Americans have realized that the legalization of gay marriage, which once seemed remote, is suddenly a real possibility.
Any day now, the highest court in Massachusetts will rule on a case that could make that state the first to allow gay couples to marry. Last month gay Americans began flocking to Canada for marriage licenses, and in the next week Episcopalians may risk a schism by voting to develop a blessing for gay couples.
Both religious conservatives and gay rights activists see these events pushing the definition of marriage onto the national agenda. Before long, they say, Americans will have to decide whether marriage is fundamentally a civil or religious institution, and whether it is really about procreation or commitment.
Both sides express confidence that as people think about those questions, public opinion will continue to shift. But buoyed by the latest polls and alarmed that gay couples in at least four states have filed lawsuits seeking the right to marry, conservative Christians are urging the Republican Party to make opposition to gay marriage a major campaign issue in 2004.
"We can prevail on this one. That's all the buzz among Christian groups," said the Rev. Rob Schenck, co-founder of Faith and Action in the Nation's Capital, which evangelizes among federal officials. "This is an opportunity to stop the liberal social juggernaut that has been in motion for 40 years."
More than a dozen religious broadcasters and Christian political organizations -- including James Dobson, D. James Kennedy, Pat Robertson, the Family Research Council, the Traditional Values Coalition and Concerned Women for America -- are pushing for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union of one man and one woman.
They also are lobbying state legislatures to pass so-called "defense of marriage" measures that prohibit gay unions.
So far, three-quarters of the states have enacted such laws, the same number required to ratify a constitutional amendment.
Even if the constitutional amendment fizzles, conservative Christian groups predict that gay marriage will be a major issue in the next presidential election, one that will bring out the conservative vote and swing moderates to their side. They express frustration that President Bush and other Republican leaders have not followed Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's lead in endorsing a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.
"The Republicans are sitting on a major weapon and are not using it," said Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, a conservative think tank.
Bush repeated yesterday that he believes "marriage is between a man and a woman" and said for the first time that he has lawyers looking into ways "to codify that."
Knight said he believes the president is "getting very bad advice from the Big Tent folks" who fear that campaigning for a constitutional ban would spoil Bush's effort to build a compassionate, inclusive image for the Republican Party.
The issue's sudden emergence also has put Democratic presidential candidates on the spot. Most have endorsed civil unions but opposed gay marriage.
The Supreme Court's majority opinion in the sodomy case said it was not addressing same-sex marriage. But in a dissent frequently cited by conservatives, Justice Antonin Scalia said: "Do not believe it." The ruling "dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned," he wrote.
Glenn Stanton, senior analyst for marriage and sexuality at Focus on the Family, a Colorado-based advocacy group, said "over-reaching" by various courts has forced Americans to realize that what "was once a pretty radical and 'out there' idea could really happen."
In 1999, Vermont's Supreme Court ruled that gay couples were entitled to the benefits of marriage, but let the legislature decide how to accomplish that goal. Lawmakers voted in 2000 to create civil unions that have all the legal protections of marriage under state law, and the measure was signed by then-Gov. Howard Dean, now a Democratic presidential candidate.
Civil unions in Vermont, however, do not confer any federal benefits, such as Social Security.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is expected to rule soon on a lawsuit by seven gay couples who say the state constitution guarantees the right to marry the person of one's choice. Similar suits have been filed in New Jersey, Indiana and Arizona. Meanwhile, two Canadian provinces -- British Columbia and Ontario -- began issuing same-sex marriage licenses this year.
Two polls released last week showed that opposition to gay marriage has eroded steadily since 1996, from 68 percent to 55 percent in Gallup surveys and from 65 percent to 53 percent in studies by the Pew Research Center and Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
This week, however, a new Gallup poll found the trend has reversed since the Supreme Court's sodomy ruling. In May, the public was evenly split on whether to allow civil unions for gay couples. In the latest survey of 1,006 adults, conducted July 25-27, 57 percent were opposed and 40 percent in favor.
Moreover, the portion of Americans who said "homosexual relations between consenting adults should be legal" dropped from 60 percent in May to 48 percent this month. Those who said homosexuality is "an acceptable alternative lifestyle" fell from 54 percent to 46 percent. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Connie Mackey, vice president for government affairs at the Family Research Council, a lobbying group, said, "Over the years, the gay agenda has moved forward, while the slumbering majority has been sort of libertarian on the issue. Gay marriage is the line in the sand where people are waking up."
But Winnie Stachelberg, political director of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization, said the key to the poll results is "how you explain to people what civil marriage is."
Marriage, she said, "is a contract that accords to people in a loving relationship certain rights, responsibilities and benefits. It's not one thing, it's a thousand things -- it's hospital visitation, it's Social Security benefits, it's joint tax filing, it's passing on your estate."
When Americans are asked each of those questions, they overwhelmingly say gays should be treated the same as heterosexuals, she said.
One sign of changing attitudes is that almost every mainline religious denomination has been racked by battles over whether to celebrate same-sex unions.
Practices often are grayer than policies. The United Methodist Church, for example, has a rule against same-sex commitment ceremonies, but it is flouted in California and some other states.
A committee of 25 Conservative rabbis voted last month to reconsider their movement's position, which does not sanction same-sex unions but is lenient on rabbis who perform them. Under its current rules, a rabbi who marries a Jew and a non-Jew can be ousted, while one who performs a commitment ceremony for a gay couple cannot.
The most heated fight is in the Episcopal Church, where conservatives are threatening a schism if delegates vote to accept a gay bishop and to develop a liturgy for same-sex blessings at their general convention, which began yesterday in Minneapolis.
The Rev. Michael Hopkins, a gay Episcopal priest in Maryland who is a leading proponent of same-sex blessings, said church and state should separate their roles. "When I marry someone I'm functioning not just for this church, I'm signing a marriage license for the state. I wish we'd stop that," he said.
But many conservatives believe any sanctioning of a same sex-union undermines the inherently religious institution of marriage.
"Marriage is a place to fight the battle not just because of the polling data, but also because it's the right place to draw the line, because it's the most important thing to preserve," said Diane Knippers, an Episcopalian who is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a think tank in Washington. "It's a pre-Christian institution written into the human psyche. And one of the reasons God made it that way is that it's the healthiest environment to rear children."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company |
