Friday — March 12, 2004

The right marriage

Commentary by MICHAEL AMES

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Michael Ames is an unmarried child of heterosexual divorced parents, and former publisher of The Street.

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President Bush is caught up in linguistics. "Marriage," as defined by Webster’s Dictionary, is "the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex." In attempting to make such a definition an amendment to the Constitution, the president is setting a strange precedent not only of exclusion, but also of shortsighted linguistics. Marriage is a word, an abstract though noble idea, but not a natural law.

What the president fails to understand is that society changes and with it, so does language. In raising this issue of gay marriage to a constitutional level, the president reaches to his Republican base with a message of shared fear: fear of change, fear of the different and fear of what some see as the immoral pairing of man and man or woman and woman. Bush reaches out to all those harmoniously heterosexually married Republicans peppering his lands from sea to shining sea.

Coincidentally and irrelevantly, Webster’s also defines the term "republican marriage" as "a method of execution practiced during the French Revolution consisting of binding a man and woman together and throwing them into the water." Compared to the dictionary’s definition of gay as "excited and merry," most polled would probably choose gay wedlock.

The president’s wish to permanently enshrine the definition of a word in the constitution is nothing short of fundamentalist. Fundamentalist: "one who attacks any deviation from certain doctrines and practices he considers essential."

When asked by Diane Sawyer, "Are homosexuals sinners?" the president responded, "We are all sinners." A clever dodge by a skilled politician. But with his proposed amendment, Bush aims to clarify this position. Not only are they sinners, Diane, but they don’t get to use his sacred word. Like a strict parent punishing the kid playing loud rock music, the president seems to be saying, "If you live under the roof of my country, you’ll obey my rules and my definition of words! If you want to be gay and married, move to the People’s Republic of Massachusetts."

Past constitutional amendments have opened doors for women, people of color and minors. The president’s proposed amendment would make history as the first amendment to limit freedom.

The essence of the Constitution is that of inclusion, not exclusion. The Constitution guarantees openness in society. It promises safety from intrusion of government, from restraints on personal freedom and from restrictions on everything from worship to guns. The last time an amendment tried to prohibit something, we incurred Prohibition and everyone knows how well that went.

The Bush Doctrine permits preemptive strikes against nations thought to pose a threat to America. The president has been accused of using this doctrine to wage war while ignoring problems at home.

There is a belief among the Right that rogue gay marriages somehow threaten the state of heterosexual marriage. Oblivious to adultery and a towering 50 percent divorce rate, it seems that conservatives would sooner point the preemptive finger at these "unholy unions" than face domestic issues in their own homes. If you can’t make your marriage work, might as well attack others’.

To codify discrimination into law is far more "un-American" than legalizing same-sex love into marriage. There is something about adding an exclusionary amendment to the Constitution that seems, well…unconstitutional.

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