Bush kicks gays.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: George W. Bush

When he was about to run for resident the first time around, George W. Bush confided to a friend that he was under pressure from James Dobson and other rightwing evangelicals to attack gays and lesbians.

Bush assured his friend: "I'm not going to kick gays."

But that was then.

And this is now.

And now the Republicans have nothing else to run on, so Bush is kicking away.

In his weekly radio address on June 3 and in a speech two days later, Bush threw his support behind the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, knowing full well that it was doomed.

"Marriage," he insisted, "cannot be cut off from its cultural, religious, and natural roots."

But it's not up to the government to defend marriage as a religious institution. That's up to the church or the mosque or the synagogue. And "natural" roots are not necessarily normative ones. Humans have natural aggressive impulses, for instance. We don't enshrine those in our laws. To make a cultural claim is also tricky, since prejudice can be in the water of a culture. White supremacists and anti-suffragists often talked about the "sanctity of our culture" to justify their attitudes.

Simply put, there is no rational, secular reason why a lesbian couple that's been together for two decades can't get married but two drunk heterosexuals who met last week on a bender can stagger down the aisle in Vegas.

Bush and other rightwingers tell us that same-sex marriage would undermine the family.

But how would letting two gay men who fell in love last year undermine anybody's family?

What is undermining the family is poverty, infidelity, and wife beating, none of which has anything to do with same-sex marriage.

The merits of the case didn't interest Bush, though. He was playing to his far right evangelical base. Joining him by his invitation in Washington on June 5 were, among others, Tony Perkins of the Family Research...