XPost: alt.politics.homosexuality, alt.california 
  
 Dating the Anti-Gay Backlash - Oval Office embraces homophobia 
  
  
 Fri Aug 8, 5:24 PM ET 
  
  
 By Doug Ireland LA Weekly Writer 
  
 George Bush wanted to distract the electorate from the rising U.S. 
 body count in Iraq (news - web sites), the sputtering economy and the 
 other issues that are eroding his poll numbers. The pope wanted to 
 distract the worlds dwindling Mass-goers from the Catholic Churchs 
 ongoing pedophile scandals. So, natch, both seized on that old standby 
 issue to which political and religious reactionaries have recourse 
 when things are going badly for them: gay bashing. 
  
 Bushs decision to push the hot-button issue of gay marriage at his 
 Rose Garden press conference last week was fueled by the Gallup Poll 
 released two days previously showing a dramatic backlash (as poll 
 director Frank Newport put it) against gays in the wake of the Supreme 
 Courts decision striking down the so-called sodomy laws and legalizing 
 sex between consenting adults of the same sex. 
  
 Not only did support for same-sex civil unions drop from 49 percent in 
 Gallups May poll to 40 percent, those saying homosexuality should be 
 considered an acceptable lifestyle careened downward from 54 percent 
 to 46 percent. Worse, a comfortable majority of 60 percent favoring 
 the legalization of same-gender sex plummeted sharply to 48 percent in 
 the wake of the Supremes decision. Among blacks, the drop in support 
 for legalizing gay sex was even sharper: a whopping 23 points. (A New 
 York Times poll released August 3 tended to confirm the backlash 
 Gallup found on the gay-marriage issue among blacks [65-to-28 against] 
 and Hispanics [54-to-40 against]). 
  
 Bushs categorization of gays as sinners in his biblically framed 
 announcement that hes ordered his lawyers to figure out how to block 
 gay marriage reflected a stepping-up of the Republicans gay-hostile 
 electoral strategy. It followed GOP Senate Majority Leader Bill Frists 
 declaration on Meet the Press a month ago that he would absolutely 
 support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Frists 
 surprise declaration was no accident: It was, as Howard Fineman 
 reported in Newsweek at the time, made with no-fingerprints support 
 from the White House. 
  
 Bushs decision to surf on the anti-gay backlash also reflects the 
 enormous pressure hes been under from the Christian right and 
 conservative ideologues on social issues. Both The Weekly Standard 
 (which devoted its cover to the gay-marriage issue last week, and 
 which has editorialized in the past that heterosexual sex within 
 marriage is the only relationship compatible with the Republic) and 
 the National Review have come out in support of the Federal Marriage 
 Amendment, as the attempt to write discrimination into the 
 Constitution is known. And Pat Robertsons 700 Club prayer campaign 
 calling on God to remove three Supreme Court justices in the wake of 
 the Supremes legalization of gay sex was only the most off-the-wall 
 reflection of how the right-wing Christers have taken to heart Justice 
 Antonin Scalias proclamation in his sodomy-law dissent that the court 
 has adopted the homosexual agenda. 
  
 Karl Roves strategy for Bush and the Republicans not only to win a 
 second term for Dubya but to increase their majorities in both houses 
 of Congress calls for energizing the Bush Bible Belt base (it was, 
 after all, the Christian right that motored Bushs 2000 primary 
 victories over John McCain). The 13 states whose anti-sodomy laws were 
 nullified by the Supremes were all states that Bush carried last time. 
 NASCAR (news - web sites) Dads have replaced soccer moms as the 
 constituency to be chased this year, and theyre considered hostile to 
 gays in general and gay marriage in particular. The center-right 
 Democratic Leadership Councils pollster, Mark Penn, has identified 
 white men and married women as the two constituencies among whom the 
 Democrats are weak (both happen to have high anti-gay numbers), and 
 Howard Deans national identification with Vermonts civil unions for 
 gays (even though he did nothing to help pass the law authorizing them 
 and signed it in a closet without the press present) is one reason the 
 DLC has been denouncing him as a loser. In this it has been echoing 
 Rove, who has made no secret of his preference for Dean as Bushs 
 November opponent next year. 
  
 As to Congress, there are only 40 swing districts in play in this 
 election cycle, a sign that the incumbent-protection racket is alive 
 and well. A paltry number of genuinely contested seats, to be sure, 
 but theyre situated not in more gay-friendly urban areas but in 
 rural-suburban districts where the Republicans expect the gay-marriage 
 issue to cut against the Democrats. The Senate seats that are open (or 
 expected to be) or marginal are not on gay-friendly turf, either, like 
 Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Illinois (where half 
 the state is rural and the urban areas are heavily devout Catholic) 
 and Alaska. Moreover, the high negatives for gays among blacks and 
 Hispanics in the polls reinforced by the ladling out to conservative 
 minority churches of political patronage disguised as faith-based 
 initiatives play into Roves Southern-Southwestern game plan for both 
 Congress and Bush. 
  
 The Federal Marriage Amendment which has been introduced in the Senate 
 by a dozen GOPers would, of course, not simply ban gay marriage. It 
 would also deny to same-sex couples the legal incidents of marriage, 
 meaning that civil unions would be swept away not only in Vermont but 
 in any state that followed suit. The Senate Republican Policy 
 Committee, chaired by hard-line conservative Jon Kyl of Arizona, on 
 July 29 issued a policy paper describing gay marriage as a threat and 
 laying out a road map, dripping with homophobia, for how to block it. 
 And a Senate Judiciary subcommittee headed by John Cronyn of Texas has 
 announced that after the August congressional recess it will take up 
 gay marriage which, Cronyn thundered, We must take care to do whatever 
 it takes to stop. 
  
 Rove & Co. are privately rooting for a victory by the plaintiffs in a 
 lawsuit by gay couples demanding the right to marry that Massachusetts 
 Supreme Court will decide this summer. If, as Bay State court watchers 
 think is likely, the court decides for the plaintiffs, that will make 
 gay marriage the social issue of the 2004 campaign. And if Gallup is 
 right, it just might work. 
  
 Of course, after every great national debate about gays like the one 
 over dont ask, dont tell theres a sharp increase in physical, violent 
 gay bashing, as expressions of anti-gay prejudice leak from the TV 
 screen to confirm the bigotry of the primitive. Bushs anti-gay 
 demagogy is, quite literally, dangerous. Sadly, it may take a few more 
 dead Matthew Shepherds to swing the pendulum back to the good old 
 American principle of live and let live. 
  
  
       *** 
  Ah! They are playing the Matthew Shepard card! 
  One has to wonder if they ever heard of Jesse 
  
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