Richard Goldstein
By Amending the Constitution, the Right Hopes to Ban What It Canšt Stop
Ralph Reed, who put the Christian Coalition on the map, gave that group some surprising advice when he left it to become a political consultant in 1997. Reed urged his co-religionists to stop making repression of gay rights the centerpiece of their politics. His conservative clients'most notably George W. Bush'have done just that, pursuing policies that advance homophobia by stealth rather than statute. But in the past month, the Republican right has shown how productive an overtly antigay agenda can still be. )
First, Congress passed a law denying federal funds to school districts that withhold support from the Boy Scouts. Then the House passed a bill that exempts programs run by religious charities from state and local antidiscrimination laws. This resolution, now pending in the Senate, is the most regressive labor law since the 1950s. It would allow a Christian group that denies jobs to Jews to qualify for federal money. Yet the debate over the bill focused on homosexuals. It shows how far most of us are from understanding that gay people are canaries in the coal mine when it comes to civil rights.
Now comes an attempt to amend the U.S. Constitution, not in order to expand liberty but to deny it to a whole group of Americans'guess who? The proposed 28th Amendment would not only define marriage as a bond between a man and a woman, but deny the legal incidents of marriage to anyone else. On July 12, a group of conservative scholars and religious leaders'with black ministers up front'held a press conference to launch what they expect to be a 10-year campaign. Its object is not just to outlaw same-sex marriage but to undo the rights that gay couples have gained.