GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Bush & Rove Didn’t Put Marriage Amendments on State Ballots?

by

It has long been a media talking point that then-President George W. Bush and his evil henchman Karl Rove were behind the diabolical scheme to put marriage initiatives on various states’ 2004 ballots in order to increase social conservative turnout, thus generating more votes for Republicans.  Only problem is that they never came up with much evidence to support their claim, save their belief that Bush and Rove were horrible, no good, very bad men who would stop at nothing to secure a second term for the demon son of the 41st president.

Well, according to Jordan Lorence, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, a group which defends traditional marriage, those two weren’t much help. He recalls that back in 2004, he sat

. . . in meetings with pro-marriage leaders, hearing them lament the lack of support they were receiving from Rove and the Bush Administration.  Particularly, leaders from Ohio expressed frustration that the White House was ignoring their efforts to pass a marriage amendment in the state that put Bush over the top in 2004.

Let’s be clear:  Bush did publicly support a marriage amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but his officials did little, if anything, to help enact the state marriage amendments.

Even in 2006, when eight more states added marriage amendments to their constitutions, the Bush White House stayed out of the battles.  Perhaps Bush or Rove uttered some words of support for the state amendments, but they certainly did not initiate and lead the movement, nor do I believe they would claim to have done so.

Bush White House stayed out of these battles?!?  You mean, they weren’t determined to make gay people into a “wedge issue” as various gay leaders have breathlessly told us.

There goes another anti-Bush narrative.  Wonder if anyone in the media will take notice.

Comments

  3. This is an excellent post, GayPatriot.

    The key here is your use of the term “anti-Bush narrative.” One thing conservatives must do is this: We must treat all these liberal talking points as strategical weapons deployed against us, and dismantle them through calm logic and careful counter-arguments.

    I hope this most recent piece gets wider attention, also, because it makes it even harder for leftists to rationalize their vicious treatment of gay conservatives who came out of the closet (like Mehlman) or were outed (like some others). The whole basis for continuing to bash Mehlman, even after he came out and even after he started working for gay rights issues, is based on the notion that Bush/Rove, and all who worked with them, conspired tirelessly to deprive gay people of their rights. That is no longer a viable contention, and now, when the Left chases after gay rightists, they have to own up to the homophobia in what they are doing.

    This fits in with AElephant’s point about the subtext in the new liberal dismissal of gay conservatism: What they are really doing is trying to capture homophobic sentiment by calling Republicans fags, which they did to great success in 2006. They need to be called out on the tactic, since they are using wedge issues, not the Right.

  5. Rove, in his book, said that they didn’t and that the only evidence of it were two Op-Ed pieces (I forget by who) ASSerting that did. He said that the Massachusetts decision had more to do with mobilizing people than anything.

  6. I agree that left-liberals are idiots… in exaggerating Bush/Rove’s role in the anti-gay-marriage amendments, in believing the worst about those two men, and in many many other issues.

    Having said that: Bush, in the end, did propose a Federal (anti-gay-)marriage amendment. And that was a colossally dumb idea.

  8. Having said that: Bush, in the end, did propose a Federal (anti-gay-)marriage amendment. And that was a colossally dumb idea.

    Which is precisely what I objected to in 2004 and why LCR was correct in not endorsing him, even though I myself voted for the man because there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d ever support that putz John “Genghis Khan” Kerry.

  9. LCR was correct in not endorsing him

    …but quite incorrect in running ads against him. The ad I’m thinking of was so mushy that it was hard to tell what it was about… but it was, in the end, anti-Bush and thus implicitly pro-Kerry, a totally irresponsible position to take in view of Kerry’s incompetence and fecklessness on security matters.

  10. ILC: if the ad was “vote for Kerry” than I’d agree with you but that’s not what I remember. Considering the climate of 2004 that the GOP egged on, I have no problems with LCR running ads criticizing Bush.

  11. Google “Log Cabin” “Hope not Fear Television Ad”. It was run from *August* 2004 on. Not during a primary season, but during the general election. At that point, the only meaningful choice that the mysterious ad might be talking about, was Bush vs. Kerry.

    Like I said, a casual observer wouldn’t even understand what the ad was talking about – it was so mushy, so afraid to state what it was talking about – but to a politically aware viewer and in the context of the general election, the tag line “Our choice is clear” meant: vote Kerry, wink wink. That LCR National lacked the balls to actually come out and say “vote Kerry” is only further evidence of their moral cowardice. Make excuses for them if you must, but I won’t.