Backers of Gay Marriage Ban Find Tepid Response in Pews
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Just four months after an alliance of conservative Christians was
threatening a churchgoer revolt unless President Bush championed an
amendment banning same-sex marriage, members say they have been surprised
and disappointed by what they call a tepid response from the pews.
Most of the groups supporting the proposed federal constitutional amendment
concede that it appears all but dead in Congress for this election year.
As Massachusetts prepares to become the first state in the nation to allow
same-sex marriage on Monday, several high-profile conservatives say they are
now pinning their hopes mainly on reaction to events there, betting that
scenes of gay weddings in Provincetown may set off a public outcry.
In a last effort to publicize their cause before the impending wave of
same-sex marriages, conservative Christian groups are organizing an
emergency telecast to churches around the country, bringing African-American
clergy members to Washington to lobby the Congressional Black Caucus, and
sending members of a group for people who say they are formerly gay to make
the rounds of Capitol Hill as well.
Still, the opponents of gay marriage say they are puzzling over why such a
volatile cultural issue is not spurring more rank-and-file conservative
Christians to rise up in support of the amendment. They are especially
frustrated, they say, because opinion polls show that a large majority of
voters oppose gay marriage.
"Our side is basically asleep right now," Matt Daniels, founder of the
Alliance for Marriage, which helped draft the proposed amendment, said in an
interview last week.
The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition,
said: "I don't see any traction. The calls aren't coming in and I am not
sure why."
Some conservatives warn that the Christian leaders rallying behind the
amendment may now face a loss of credibility. Their influence with
evangelical believers is a subject of keen interest in Washington, in part
because the Bush campaign has made ensuring their turnout at the polls a top
priority.
"The danger from the beginning was that if you make your stand on the
amendment and you don't win, then you may have undercut your position," said
Richard Lessner, the executive director of the American Conservative Union
and a former official of the Family Research Council, a Christian
conservative group. "They have staked so much on it, they have put all these
eggs in one basket and now they are going to lose."
Gay rights groups argue that social conservatives in Washington
overestimated the level of anxiety about gay marriage among their
supporters. "Other issues are far more important to most Americans,
including evangelicals - issues like the economy, jobs, health care, the war
in Iraq," said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and
Lesbian Task Force.
The amendment's backers contend that the reason people are not responding
more vocally is that many grass-roots conservatives do not yet understand
how same-sex marriages affect them personally. Although gay groups argue
that same-sex marriages involve only the couple marrying, many Christian
conservative leaders argue that recognizing such marriages will undermine
cultural support for traditional families.
The amendment's backers say that they always knew approval by Congress would
be difficult, but that they had expected to get far enough that every
candidate in the country would have to take a position on it in the fall.
But although the amendment is bogged down, some opponents of same-sex
marriage say they see evidence of support for their cause at the state
level.
Some noted that Ohio, a traditional swing state, recently passed a law
blocking not only same-sex marriage but civil unions. And five states that
are considered reliably conservative - Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi,
Oklahoma and Utah - have put state constitutional amendments banning gay
marriage on the November ballot.
"The thing that we keep focusing on is, there is no place that people have
voted for same-sex marriage," said Gary Bauer, a social conservative who
unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. Mr.
Bauer, the founder of the organization American Values, noted that it was a
court that ordered Massachusetts to recognize same-sex marriage.
Conservatives are also trying to put state constitutional amendments on the
ballot in several states that are considered pivotal swing states in the
presidential election: Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Oregon, North Carolina and
Arkansas. Missouri's Legislature voted Friday to add a ballot measure, too.
The ballot questions could help motivate traditionalists to go to the polls,
which would be a boon for President Bush and lower-level conservative
candidates.
Cheryl Jacques, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group,
called the ballot initiatives a political stunt, which she said was "all
about the president energizing his base and dividing and conquering in this
election," adding, "Gay and lesbian people are just being used as pawns."
But Mr. Bauer said that if conservative candidates receive a boost, it will
not be by design. "It wasn't conservative judges on the Massachusetts
Supreme Court that forced this issue; it wasn't a pro-Bush mayor of San
Francisco who forced the issue," he said. "We didn't pick the timing. The
gay rights movement picked the timing. Obviously our side is going to
respond, and it happens to be an election year."
Although the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on the federal marriage
amendment last week, staff members said the committee was unlikely to have
time to vote on a bill by the end of the year. And several prominent social
conservatives said Republican leaders of the House had indicated that they
do not want to bring the measure up for a vote unless it appears likely to
pass the Senate, which is more moderate.
Both conservatives and gay rights groups say there is not enough support to
approve the amendment, although that might change if its text were somehow
revised.
In an interview, Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who supports the
amendment, put the chances that the Senate might try to bring it up for a
vote at "better than 50-50."
"I think people are in shock," Senator Cornyn said. "I think people are
still having a hard time believing this is real. One of the most common
responses I hear is, `This is just in Massachusetts, why does it concern us
in other states?' "
Like most of the amendment's supporters, Senator Cornyn is betting that the
spread of Massachusetts marriage licenses will drive the issue home. "When
people understand that there are same-sex couples that will get married
under Massachusetts law and then move to other states and demand that those
marriages are recognized by the laws of other states, that is when people
will understand this," he said.
But Mr. Foreman of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force suggested that
watching gay weddings in Massachusetts would make people more accepting, not
less.
"The minute you pose the question to somebody, `How will this hurt you?,'
they never have an answer," he said. "As this discussion has gone on and
people have seen these images of regular people thrilled to be married, it
has dispelled the myth and a lot of the fear around same-sex marriage."
Not that the opponents of gay marriage are giving up on the amendment.
Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of
the Southern Baptist Convention, said the amendment's supporters wanted
votes in Congress so they could work to replace anyone who voted against it.
For months, Dr. Land has told President Bush's political adviser Karl Rove
and members of Congress that no issue has upset ordinary evangelical
Christians as much as the threat of gay marriage. Last week he stood by that
view, but he acknowledged that parishioners around the country might not
have voiced their opinions to elected officials as loudly as he had
expected.
"We need to do a better job of educating our base," Dr. Land said, "although
I don't think we can do better than Massachusetts is going to do for us."
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