For goodness sake, why an election year?
I'm sure some of the people reading this right now have come from one of the comments I've left on a variety of other blogs concerning gay marriage. Like any number of so-called "conservative" bloggers, I'm for it. Spare me the religious justifications for being against it - not everyone holds the same religious beliefs (and if the only reason you're against it is religious, why doesn't the First Amendment then currently require the government to allow same-sex marriages). Spare me the economic "freeloader" justifications for it - the tax codes that make it advantageous to marry can be changed with relative ease. Spare me the "morals" argument - that goes back to religion.
When I started this blog (lo, a week ago) I meant it to cover a wide range of topics. Likewise, I read a wide range of topics in the blogosphere. But I had the misfortune to start blogging around the time the spark hit the fumes in the gay marriage debate. And the worst part of it is, I'm not burning out on this topic. I'm not gay, I don't have any close personal friends who are overtly gay (this may mean I don't know my friends as well as I ought). I know a few gay people, of course. But I don't have a personal stake in this. So why am I so passionate on the subject? Because some people on the opposite side are using ugly rhetoric to support their position? I don't know. I know that I gave President Bush a number of passes on the issue because he seemed to be doing the absolute minimum his base required on the subject. I guess supporting a constitutional amendment is now the minimum required, but I am quite disappointed by it. I wonder if it'll be worth it, though. My wife had been (reluctantly) planning to vote for him until this came up. I don't know who she'll vote for now. I'm seriously considering a protest vote now (the state I live in is so blue, my vote won't matter for the electoral college without something drastic happening to the democratic challenger). I guess we aren't "in the base", but in some ways that's worse - we're part of the 20% of the electorate whose vote is in play.The democrats spread their playing to the base across the entire primary season - Bush did it in one fell swoop.
Maybe he's hoping that the Musgrave Amendment (which he has carefully not named for his support; but it's the only one out there) will die off by November. I suspect it might.
(Comments to this post are subject to a much lower "annoyance" bar before deletion than normal. If it annoys me, out it goes. This is a personal rant. I want to see some comments, but keep it down).