After Bush, in his State of the Union address, spoke approvingly of a possible amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning same-sex marriage, none of the leading Democratic presidential candidates took him to task. Newspapers pointed to his somewhat periphrastic language (about “Constitutional process”) and suggested, optimistically, that he might have been making a gesture without any real political consequences.
Liberals were playing possum. It was feared, after all, that gays who marry might become the Willie Horton of the 2004 election. Maybe if Democrats didn’t show any sign of life on the issue, it would go away. Unfortunately for them, now that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has informed the state senate that nothing short of marriage for same-sex couples will be constitutional in that state, the possum may have to be discarded.