Bush Refines His Position on a Measure Banning Gay Marriage
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
July 15, 2004
NEWS ANALYSIS
nytimes.com
WASHINGTON, July 14 - From the beginning, gay marriage has been an issue that President Bush has tried to finesse.
Under election-year pressure from his social conservative base, Mr. Bush endorsed the effort to adopt a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage. In the last few days he has turned up the volume on the issue, talking about it in his weekly radio address on Saturday and calling wavering senators over the last day or two in an effort to shore up support for the measure as it headed toward a crucial procedural vote on Wednesday.
But after endorsing the measure in February, he would often go weeks without mentioning it in public, suggesting either a personal or political reluctance, or both, about pushing it too hard. And when he did raise the topic, he was careful to modulate his message to avoid alienating moderate voters, warning in particular against allowing the issue to become an excuse for gay bashing.
"What they do in the privacy of their house, consenting adults should be able to do," Mr. Bush said during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania on Friday, seeking to distinguish between private behavior and giving legal sanction to same-sex marriages. "This is America. It's a free society. But it doesn't mean we have to redefine traditional marriage."
By hedging his position, if only a bit, Mr. Bush may have insulated himself somewhat from the sting of the defeat the proposed amendment suffered in the Senate on Wednesday. But the way in which the proposal went down with a whimper - short of a simple majority, much less the two-thirds of the Senate needed for approval - raised questions about whether the White House had fundamentally misjudged the nation's attitude on the issue. And the vote left even some of Mr. Bush's own advisers wondering if his backing of the amendment did not hurt him politically more than it helped by further stoking opposition to him from the left.
"It's a net loss for Republicans politically," said one prominent Republican in Washington who works closely with the White House. "It does nothing for our base, because they're grumpy about not having it, and it energized a significant portion of their base. I guarantee you that the gay community will give twice as much money and work harder for Kerry now, not so much because they care about marriage per se, but because this effort plays to their fears that we're homophobic."
While polling has generally found that most Americans are opposed to gay marriage, it has also shown that few people see the issue, or the proposal for a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as being only between a man and a woman, as being a priority for the country. Polls and focus groups have repeatedly found that the subject barely registers with voters, if it registers at all, at a time when most people are primarily concerned with Iraq, terrorism and jobs.
But wading into the issue was in keeping with the White House's overriding political priority, keeping Mr. Bush's base happy and energized, even at the risk of alienating moderate and swing voters who might see it as anti-gay.
It also provided an opportunity for the White House to maneuver Senator John Kerry into a position where it could again accuse him of taking both sides of an issue, the central theme in its effort to portray Mr. Kerry as so lacking in conviction that he would be an unreliable leader. Mr. Kerry has said he opposes gay marriage, but he also opposed the amendment, largely on the grounds that the issue was one for states to decide.
In the end, neither Mr. Kerry nor his running mate, Senator John Edwards, voted. But Mr. Bush appears to have been more successful in convincing social conservatives that he is steadfastly with them on the issue.
"This is where you see President Bush taking a political risk," said Deal W. Hudson, an informal adviser to the White House and the publisher of Crisis, a conservative Catholic magazine. "I think he knew there would be fallout among the swing voters who respond to the perception of political leaders being moralistic in their stands. Given that he knew that, for him to support the amendment to the degree he has is evidence of his conviction."
Mr. Bush won a big round of applause at a campaign rally in Wisconsin on Wednesday when he alluded to the "debate" in Washington over the subject. "I believe that a traditional marriage - marriage between a man and woman - is an important part of stable families," he said.
In a statement issued by the White House, Mr. Bush said he was "deeply disappointed" that the amendment had been "temporarily blocked" in the Senate, and he urged the House to take it up.
Some Republican strategists said the focus on the issue was part of a temporary diversion into a broader battle over values between Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry before the campaign returns to the defining issues of the election - Iraq, terrorism and the economy.
But other Republican strategists said that in an election that is as likely to be decided by how successful each party is in getting its loyalists to go to the polls on Election Day as by their appeals to swing voters, gay marriage is proving to be a powerful issue that will not fade.
"To what I would call the moralist portion of the president's base, this issue has become in some ways the new abortion," said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster. "It generates passion."
James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, said Mr. Bush had used the issue skillfully to reassure conservatives without alienating voters in the center.
"It was a classic way to appeal to the conservative values base, knowing full well that it wouldn't pass but that he would still get credit," Mr. Thurber said. "He can say it was the first step, and that he is on the side of his base, but he is not making it a major strategy, theme and message of his campaign nationally."
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