White House Word Play

In the course of the last 24 hours, the President and the Pope seemed to signal the beginnings of a vigorous conservative counteroffensive against the idea that homosexual unions should be legally sanctioned.

In a statement released today by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican reaffirmed that "The homosexual inclination is.'objectively disordered'" and went on to state that "there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family." In fact, the Vatican stated, politicians who support gay marriage are "gravely immoral."

President Bush Wednesday responded to a question about the morality of homosexuality by stating, "I believe a marriage is between a man and a woman, and I think we ought to codify that one way or the other."

But look closely and there's an important difference between the approach taken by the Vatican and by the Pope. While the Papal statement refers not only to marriage but any "legal recognition to unions," the President used only the word "marriage."

Actually, that's not so conservative. Most of the Democratic candidates for president said the same thing in their debate before a leading gay rights group. President Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which stated that marriage was "between a man and a woman." Even Howard Dean, the Vermont governor who has signed the most far-reaching gay union law, opposes "gay marriage".

In an interview with the gay newspaper The Advocate, Dean explained the Vermont "civil union" law like this: "What the bill says is that marriage is between a man and a woman but that same-sex couples have all the legal rights of marriage if they enter into a civil union. So it's not gay marriage. The difference is really about religion. Marriage was a religious institution until the evolution of civil law. What the legislature did, which I thought was very smart, was to divide the concept into civil and religious marriage. We don't tell churches who they can and cannot marry. But we do say with civil unions that everybody is equal."

The Vatican left no room for ambiguity, attacking all forms of legal sanction. U.S. conservatives' proposal for a constitutional amendment is quite clear also, banning not only marriage but "marital status or the legal incidents thereof."

Why was Bush more vague? Is it because the White House has thrown in the towel on civil unions? Is that now viewed as the moderate middle ground?

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