Thursday, February 26, 2004
Bush and the Fred Phelps clones.
I may be distracted by Mel Gibson, but let it not be said that I have abandoned the other pressing issues of the day. Nicholas Confessore writes that President Bush's advocacy of a U.S. Constitutional ban on same-sex marriage is a gamble he'll most likely lose. For one thing, "right-wing antigay activists are scarier than left-wing pro-gay-marriage activists":
[I]t's hard to imagine that having a couple of thousand Fred Phelps clones running around the country agitating for a constitutional amendment against gay marriage is going to win Bush a lot of swing voters. Give your average American a guy screaming "God Hates Fags" versus a gay couple in business suits hoping to get married and grow old together, and I think the gay couple wins most of the time. Not all, or even most, social conservatives who oppose gay marriage are as virulent as Phelps. But Bush would obviously rather not have the Phelpses of the world coming out of the woodwork, and now they will.
So much for "compassionate conservatism."
Copyright © 2004 by Philocrites | Posted 26 February 2004 at 6:25 PM
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Philocrites
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Commentary by Chris Walton on Unitarian Universalism, liberal Christianity, American religion, and liberal culture. Contact me.
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1 comments:
James R MacLean:
February 28, 2004 04:37 PM | Permalink for this comment
I certainly hope you're right. It seems the more plausible since Gays aren't necessarily left-wing or even political. I doubt even this wil alter that much, since LCR's are acustomed to being a minority within a minority, and tend to accept that they need to wait for social approval before emerging another centimeter from the closet.
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