Opinion

Bush’s October holiday

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For many Americans, Columbus Day kicked off an event-laden week. In Madison, homecoming activities commenced and will culminate this Saturday with the Badger/Boilermaker football game. On a national level, Oct. 12-18 denotes National School Lunch Week, which works to promote a healthy diet for American schoolchildren. This 57-year-old tradition began during the Kennedy Administration through a Congressional resolution in 1962.

Unbeknownst to many, President Bush is attempting to instill his own tradition into the third week of October. Bush threw his support behind “The Coalition to Protect Marriage” Oct. 3 and formally declared Oct. 12-18 “Marriage Protection Week.” The official proclamation (viewable at www.whitehouse.gov) reads, “Marriage is a sacred institution, and its protection is essential to the continued strength of our society. Marriage Protection Week provides an opportunity to focus our efforts on preserving the sanctity of marriage and on building strong and healthy marriages in America … Marriage is a union between a man and a woman.”

“Marriage Protection Week” (MPW) was not Bush’s bright idea. Bush jumped on a bandwagon of conservative leaders and 25 organizations, including the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Christian Coalition. The MPW alliance (www.marriageprotectionweek.com) has a clearly defined purpose, as displayed across its homepage’s banner — “A Week Dedicated to preserving the sacred institution of marriage.” This language, also found in Bush’s proclamation, attests to Bush’s support for the alliance.

The MPW expresses its purpose more clearly one click away from its homepage:

“The sacred institution of marriage is under attack. There are those who want to redefine marriage to include two men or two women or a group of any size or mix of sexes: One man and four women, one woman and two men, etc. If they fail to secure legal protection classifying these arrangements as ‘marriage,’ they want to include all these mixtures under the definition of ‘civil union,’ giving them identical standing with the marriage of one man and one woman.

They have gained the support of the national media and many politicians. Their efforts are intended to force, by law, 97 percent of Americans to bow down to the desires of the approximately 3 percent who are homosexuals.”

Marriage Protection Week appears to be little more than a rallying call to the constituents of the religious right to speak out against “civil unions.” The website does not list any organized activities, but it calls on individual citizens to write letters to newspaper editors and organize church group rallies.

Perhaps the most significant suggestion is one that instructs visitors to sign a petition to urge Congress to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment. This amendment, echoing the language of MPW and President Bush, would ensure that all marriages in the United States be a “union of a man and a woman.”

These efforts have been spurred by a growing concern amongst neo-conservatives that federal judiciaries have an unwarranted scope of power that is unjustly crafting law under the guise of personal protection. Republicans, such as Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.) and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), believe the court has overstepped its boundaries in decisions on abortion, the Ten Commandments and the Pledge of Allegiance. They are afraid the judiciary will “legalize” civil unions between homosexuals before the legislator has a chance to formalize marriage with the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Despite clamor and petitions, the Federal Marriage Amendment has little support in America. According to Terry McAuliffe, chairmen of the Democratic National Committee, “only 20 percent of Americans favor this anti-gay amendment.” Furthermore, the press’s refusal to provide Marriage Protection Week with any significant media exposure indicates that these types of conservative, religiously-based laws have little sustenance in American society.

Still, the perils of Bush’s actions should not be ignored. A man who ran as a “compassionate conservative” is now, possibly because of falling poll numbers, leeching on to a fervent conservative base that is indisputably anti-abortion, anti-gay and unafraid to skew the separation of church and state. Of course, Bush was always these things, and no one needed MPW to uncover the “true” Bush. Nonetheless, presidential rhetoric is remarkably powerful and the more support Bush errantly throws behind non-secular programs, the more influential they will become.

Earlier this week, Dr. Phillip Jenkins, a British Scholar, offered a European take on what motivates Bush’s policy. He told The New York Times, “In Europe, they think he must be a religious nut” because of the frequency in which Bush invoked morality and religion in his speeches on terrorism. Now, Bush is injecting religion and morality into a greater number of domestic issues, from welfare to civil rights. Religion and morality are apt to serve the greater good in American society. But not when the president is manipulating them as a means to discriminate against the over 600,000 American same-sex couples.

Thomas Lang (tlang@prospect.org) is a UW alum interning for the American Prospect in Washington, D.C.