The Federal Marriage Amendment is Back; RELATED: McCain Courts Social Cons

I don't have a legacy media link on this, but a few lefty blogs are talking about the reintroduction of the Federal Marriage Amendment in the Senate on Wednesday. They are tittering because Senators Vitter and Craig are cosponsors. Because of course, to leftists, gays are monolithically in favor of gay marriage. Erm, not to imply anything about Vitter and Craig. Heh.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: ::Sigh:: I see that Allah's laughing about it, too. Also, Britt in the comments correctly points out that Vitter was in trouble for lady hookers, not laddy hookers. My bad.

Original Post Continued:
Anyway, social cons who support the federal amendment will have to be content with knowing that a few senators haven't forgotten their issue. It's not likely to get out of committee, thank God.

Meanwhile, John McCain sat down with social conservative leaders in Ohio in an effort to reassure them that he's better than Obama. I think he's striking back at Obama's similar effort two weeks ago.

And, according to participants, [McCain] indicated that he would take seriously their requests that he choose an anti-abortion running mate and would talk more openly about his opposition to gay marriage -- a pledge he carried out later in the day by endorsing a ballot measure in California to ban gay marriage.

"It was obvious there were a lot of changed hearts in the room," said Phil Burress, who led Ohio's anti-gay-marriage ballot measure in 2004. "We realized that he's with us on the majority of the issues we care about."

[...]

Many conservatives have been upset that McCain opposed a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, a position he said he took because he believes states should decide the issue. At the meeting, McCain sought to reassure conservatives by emphasizing his work on behalf of an anti-gay-marriage measure in his home state.

No one is sure how important the gay marriage issue was in 2004. Pro-traditional marriage groups claimed that the presence of so many state amendments and initiatives made a difference for the presidential and state races. But, exit polls showed that it wasn't high on the list of the average voters' concerns. I suspect that the issue is of more importance to social conservatives than the rest, and that McCain will need those voters.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 04:41 PM

| Access Comments