Gear up! As suggested in the previous diary, events and political machinations have intersected to force a showdown on unfavorable ground (where the same showdown five years later would have been a piece of cake).
Without even waiting for the current explosion of cases to grind their way thru appellate and SCOTUS disposition, W announces support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
The ploy is obvious enough in its surface appeal to the Christian Right and its wedge effect on socially conservative interest groups in natural Democratic spheres of influence.
The timing is only slightly less obvious. It's no coincidence that this announcement arrives the morning after W's opening salvo in the presidential campaign proper.
W's primary agenda is to bear-bait the presumptive Democratic nominee (Kerry) into one or more awkward votes and even more awkward explanations -- the kind calculated to reinforce the "Bush decisive, Kerry indecisive" theme when pared down to soundbite or attack-spot length.
Key suggestions:
(1) Label FMA as what it is: a PROHIBITION amendment.
(2) Force the debate into detailed discussion of exactly what "legal incidents thereof" we're prohibiting with respect to same-sex couples. Dependent health benefits? Visitation? Survivorship? Get the details into the record and into the public discussion.
(3) Don't fulminate. Don't alienate. Educate.
Educate, educate, educate. Most of those who disagree with you do so by virtue of ignorance and sloth. Here's your chance to appeal to their own common-sense family values ... usually with "poster child" points of reference among their own freinds and families.
Bush has struck at a time and place of his choosing, and with his choice of weapons. What he can't control is the process of choosing up sides ... and in that domain we may have some surprises for him.