JB

Andrew Sullivan finally wakes up and smells the intolerance. Wait, where's that odor coming from? Oh my, it's coming from the right wing of the Republican Party and its leader, George W. Bush!

WAR IS DECLARED: The president launched a war today against the civil rights of gay citizens and their families. And just as importantly, he launched a war to defile the most sacred document in the land. Rather than allow the contentious and difficult issue of equal marriage rights to be fought over in the states, rather than let politics and the law take their course, rather than keep the Constitution out of the culture wars, this president wants to drag the very founding document into his re-election campaign. He is proposing to remove civil rights from one group of American citizens - and do so in the Constitution itself. The message could not be plainer: these citizens do not fully belong in America. Their relationships must be stigmatized in the very Constitution itself. The document that should be uniting the country will now be used to divide it, to single out a group of people for discrimination itself, and to do so for narrow electoral purposes. Not since the horrifying legacy of Constitutional racial discrimination in this country has such a goal been even thought of, let alone pursued. Those of us who supported this president in 2000, who have backed him whole-heartedly during the war, who have endured scorn from our peers as a result, who trusted that this president was indeed a uniter rather than a divider, now know the truth.

NO MORE PROFOUND AN ATTACK: This president wants our families denied civil protection and civil acknowledgment. He wants us stigmatized not just by a law, not just by his inability even to call us by name, not by his minions on the religious right. He wants us stigmatized in the very founding document of America. There can be no more profound attack on a minority in the United States - or on the promise of freedom that America represents. That very tactic is so shocking in its prejudice, so clear in its intent, so extreme in its implications that it leaves people of good will little lee-way. This president has now made the Republican party an emblem of exclusion and division and intolerance. Gay people will now regard it as their enemy for generations - and rightly so. I knew this was coming, but the way in which it has been delivered and the actual fact of its occurrence is so deeply depressing it is still hard to absorb. But the result is clear, at least for those who care about the Constitution and care about civil rights. We must oppose this extremism with everything we can muster. We must appeal to the fair-minded center of the country that balks at the hatred and fear that much of the religious right feeds on. We must prevent this graffiti from being written on a document every person in this country should be able to regard as their own. This struggle is hard but it is also easy. The president has made it easy. He's a simple man and he divides the world into friends and foes. He has now made a whole group of Americans - and their families and their friends - his enemy. We have no alternative but to defend ourselves and our families from this attack. And we will.

What I want to know is, why is Sullivan surprised? *Now* he gets that the president is not a uniter but a petty tyrant only interested in his own political survival? *Now* he gets that this guy is a shill for the worst sort of politics? *Now* he figures out that the motto of the Bush Administration is: Dissemble as long as possible, but when the chips are down, never piss off the right wing base?

Gee Andy, you *really* must have wanted to invade Iraq to support the guy for this long. Well, your favorite warmongerer just brought the war home to you. Hope you're happy now.

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Note that, as you will see in the posts below, I actually don't think that its as bad as Sullivan thinks. I think that Bush is in an untenable position; he's now trying to avoid saying that civil unions should be outlawed as well, contrary to what the hard right wants. The FMA won't pass, and Bush is going to get squeezed from both sides. When his political strategy fails-- as it ultimately will- all that he will be left with is the reputation as a divisive, intolerant, and opportunistic politician, who demeaned a whole class of American citizens just to stay in power. But all of this will be cold comfort to Sullivan, who simply refused to believe what was always in front of his eyes and now has been tossed in the garbage as expendible by his Great Leader.