[Mb-civic] Lee Atwater et al

[Charles Kaiser]

Dear Bob,

          I agree with every word of your fine column about Atwater 
and the Republican party.   The only thing I would add is, as racism 
has declined, the need for a new Republican bogeyman has 
increased.  Hence their focus on gay marriage.  This is a transition 
I wrote about last year.   (see below)

          Congratulations & All Best

Charlie

>BROADSIDE by Charles Kaiser
>
>Civil marriage, civil rights
>
>The uproar over same-sex marriage is the greatest thing to happen to 
>the Republican Party since Richard Nixon's handlers perfected the 
>art of demonizing the black underclass in 1968-a strategy that 
>helped the Republicans win five of the next six presidential 
>elections, culminating in George Bush I's notorious Willie Horton 
>ads, which helped to ensure Michael Dukakis's defeat in 1988.
>
>Thanks in large measure to a majority of sensible judges on the 
>supreme judicial court of Massachusetts, lesbians and gay men have 
>now displaced African-Americans as the favorite bogeymen (and women) 
>of the Republican Party. Faced with a jobless recovery, 
>disintegrating conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the worst 
>poll numbers of George W. Bush's administration, cynical Republicans 
>are desperate to change the subject. Who can blame them for trying 
>to get us to focus on manned space flight to Mars and same-sex marriage?
>
>Barney Frank identified the crucial question years ago, when 
>Congress passed the notorious Defense of Marriage Act. If gay 
>marriage is finally legalized in America, he asked, are married men 
>going to "smack themselves on the head and say, 'Wow, I could have 
>married a man!'?"
>
>That's not the reason the Republicans are offering for their newest 
>preoccupation, which includes "semidaily" contact between Republican 
>strategists in D.C. and chief aides to Massachusetts governor Mitt 
>Romney, a fervent opponent of the decision of his state's highest 
>court. The Republicans' reason, as comedian Bill Maher explained, is 
>that gay marriage "does something to the 'sanctity of marriage,' as 
>if anything you can do drunk out of your mind in front of an Elvis 
>impersonator in Las Vegas could be considered sacred. Half the 
>people who pledge eternal love are doing it because one of them is 
>either knocked-up, rich or desperate, but in George Bush's mind, 
>marriage is only a beautiful lifetime bond of love and sharing-kind 
>of like what his Dad has with the Saudis."
>
>All this would be hilarious if wasn't so deadly serious. While the 
>Democrats have so far managed to muster remarkable energy in their 
>effort to defeat a disastrous president, gay marriage is widely 
>perceived as the only issue that might generate comparable 
>enthusiasm within Bush's base. "I can't emphasize how big this issue 
>is for us," Glenn Stanton, an analyst for Focus on the Family, told 
>a reporter. He added darkly that candidates should not try to have 
>it both ways by backing civil unions and opposing gay marriages. 
>That's "like tipping your hat to gays while trying not to antagonize 
>other voters," Stanton explained.
>
>Fortunately, wisdom resides on our side, and no one has articulated 
>it more elegantly than Peter Gomes, the gay Harvard chaplain who is 
>a genuine national treasure. Gomes redefined the terms of the 
>religious debate about homosexuality in his landmark volume The Good 
>Book. When the Massachusetts legislature first tried (and failed) to 
>approve an amendment to the state constitution to ban gay marriage, 
>Gomes parsed the issue this way: "It is not about polygamy. It is 
>not about 'special rights.' It is not about the defense or 
>definition of marriage. It is not about the future shape of the 
>family. It is not about 'hearing the voice of the people.' It is not 
>about the judiciary. It is not about religion, yours or mine.
>
>"It is about civil rights, the stuff of Adams, Lincoln, Gandhi, 
>King, and Mandela. It is about discrimination by the majority 
>against a minority, an act of discrimination ruled unconstitutional, 
>and hence illegal, by the supreme judicial court. The amendment is 
>not about 'hearing the people,' but rather finding a politically 
>rational way to legalize that which is illegal and unconstitutional."
>
>He asked, "Why should Massachusetts acquiesce in an insidious 
>'southern strategy' where civil rights are now to be bartered away 
>on the grounds of sex rather than race?... When Massachusetts 
>struggles to advance liberty, she fulfills her destiny."
>
>And when we turn George Bush out of office, we will have fulfilled ours.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Charles Kaiser
Charles at charleskaiser.com  
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