[Marxism] SF Chronicle Article Scapegoating Gay Marriage

["Steven L. Robinson" <srobin21@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

GAY MARRIAGE: Did issue help re-elect Bush?

Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau

 

Thursday, November 4, 2004

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/11/04/MNG3A9LLVI1.DTL 

 

Washington -- San Francisco did not vote for President Bush, but the pictures 
of wedded gay and lesbian couples streaming from its City Hall last February 
may have helped return him to the White House. 

 

Those pictures and a Massachusetts court decision to allow same-sex marriage 
proved to be, if not political poison for Democratic challenger John Kerry, not 
exactly a tonic, either. 

 

The lesbian and gay community awoke Wednesday morning to a bitter landscape: 
Bush, who supports a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, re- elected (with 
a fifth of the gay vote); four new Republican senators, including staunch 
social conservative Tom Coburn in Oklahoma; the prospect of conservatives 
filling potential Supreme Court vacancies; and to top it off, 11 state 
constitutional bans on same-sex marriage. 

 

The state marriage bans passed overwhelmingly everywhere they were on the 
ballot, including, critically, Ohio, which narrowly handed Bush his victory. 

 

Gay and lesbian leaders faced a sober rethinking of their strategy -- which 
some said must include reaching out to churches and red-state voters who gave 
Republicans their sweep of the House, Senate and White House. 

 

Some, however, fiercely denied that their drive for marriage equality 
contributed to Kerry's narrow loss. The Massachusetts senator opposed a federal 
constitutional ban. 

 

"There's no evidence whatsoever to suggest that gay marriage tipped the scale 
in any state," said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and 
Lesbian Task Force. 

 

Others -- from California Sen. Dianne Feinstein to leaders of the Christian 
right to outside analysts -- disagreed. 

 

Meeting with reporters outside her San Francisco home Wednesday afternoon, 
Feinstein was asked whether Mayor Gavin Newsom's issuance of marriage licenses 
-- which Bush cited as a factor in his decision to support a federal 
constitutional ban -- had caused a problem for Democrats. 

 

"I believe it did energize a very conservative vote," Feinstein said. "It gave 
them a position to rally around. The whole issue has been too much, too fast, 
too soon.'' 

 

Several gay leaders insisted, however, that the marriage measures were mostly 
in states Bush was expected to carry anyway. Even Ohio's measure, they insist, 
did not hurt Kerry. 

 

They also defended their legal drive for marriage rights, which won a historic 
victory with the Goodridge decision in Massachusetts last November that ushered 
in the nation's first same-sex marriages last spring and triggered a national 
storm over gay and lesbian unions in the middle of a presidential campaign. 

 

"It's hard for me to say Goodridge tipped everything when these folks were 
making anti-gay law a centerpiece of their strategy since 1996," said Mary 
Bonauto, the lawyer for the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders who won the 
case. 

 

Bonauto said that by the time Goodridge was decided, 37 states already had 
"defense of marriage" statutes on the books, and a constitutional ban had 
already been introduced in Congress. 

 

"I believe these people would have been out there for Bush in any event," 
Bonauto said. "He had four years to show he speaks a particular faith code that 
other people understand. They were going to turn out for him, and they did -- 
marriage notwithstanding." 

 

But Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said the issue won 
Bush the election. 

 

"It was these value voters who ushered the president down the aisle for a 
second term," Perkins said, citing polls showing moral values trumped war, 
terrorism and the economy as the key issue for many voters. 

 

Same-sex marriage "was the great iceberg," said Robert Knight, director of the 
Culture & Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women of America. "A lot 
of analysts saw the tip but didn't understand the power of the mass underneath. 
It galvanized millions of Christians to turn out and vote, and George Bush and 
the GOP got the lion's share of that vote." 

 

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Some gay leaders agreed. "I think it's pretty clear that (Bush political czar) 
Karl Rove's strategy of using gay and lesbian families as wedge issues in this 
election worked," said Christopher Barron, political director of the Log Cabin 
Republicans, who refused to endorse Bush. "It's hard to argue with results." 

 

Foreman, however, pointed to Kerry's vote gains in Ohio, Michigan and Oregon, 
all of which had the same-sex ballot measures, over Democrat Al Gore's tallies 
in the 2000 race as proof the measures did not contribute to Kerry's defeat. 

 



At a press conference, Newsom expressed little patience for the suggestion that 
GOP victories and state amendments were related to his decision to issue 
marriage licenses to gay couples. 

 

"If you listened to the president," he said, "it was the activist judges who 
had the audacity to interpret the Constitution appropriately and say it's wrong 
to deny equal protection to all people. 

 

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