Dahlia Lithwick, in Slate argues thus:
The reality is even more compelling: A Defense of Marriage Amendment would enshrine, for the first time, language of intolerance and exclusion in a document that was intended to set forth basic rights. Does President Bush really want to be remembered as the guy who first used the Constitution to codify bigotry?
No, I don’t think so; presumably Bush doesn’t see opposition to gay marriage as bigotry. “Bigotry” is generally the term we use for irrational or unfounded disapproval. Bush and other anti-gay-marriage forces presumably see their opposition to gay marriage as quite well-founded and morally proper, and thus not bigotry at all.
Say you’re a libertarian arguing against an amendment that authorizes the income tax; and say that you think the income tax is theft. What kind of argument would it be to say “Does [Senator X] really want to be remembered as the guy who first used the Constitution to codify theft?” Not much of an argument, it seems to me — the argument that the income tax is theft might be sensible, but a query about whether someone who obviously doesn’t see the income tax as theft wants to be remembered as being pro-theft doesn’t make much sense. Likewise, I think, with the rhetorical question being asked about President Bush.
UPDATE: Some people e-mailed me to argue that (1) whether someone is a bigot is an objective judgment, and (2) even if Bush doesn’t think of himself as a bigot, he might still worry that posterity will remember him (wrongly, from his point of view) as one. But I think that’s rather beside the point: Bush doesn’t think of himself as a bigot; he knows that most of his countrymen agree with him, and don’t think that a heterosexual-marriage-only position policy is bigoted; it’s highly unlikely that he’ll think he’s on the wrong side of history.
The trouble with the argument I’m quoting above is that it assumes the thing it’s aiming to prove, and it thus only works for the already converted. Of course if a heterosexual-marriage-only is bigoted, Bush shouldn’t support it. You don’t need a slate.com column to show that. But such an argument ignores the reality that lots of our fellow Americans (those outside that very broad spectrum from Sullivan to Sunstein) disagree on that point. And it ignores the likelihood that self-righteousness — asking “Does President Bush want to be remembered as the guy who first used the Constitution to codify bigotry?” without considering the obvious answer “Uh, he doesn’t think that will happen, because he doesn’t think it’s bigotry or that future generations will see it as bigotry” — isn’t going to be terribly persuasive to those Americans on the other side, or to those who are in the middle.
There are actually arguments that deal with this reality of diverse attitudes, that argue from a position that’s at least facially respectful of the other side’s views (and thus more likely to appeal to them), and that go beyond near tautology. Actually, Lithwick makes some of those arguments: For instance, she appeals to the rights of citizens of each state to decide what to do (see also Jacob Levy’s posts above). She also points out that Dick Cheney seemingly supported such a view in 2000 (“The next step then, of course, is the question you asked of whether or not there ought to be some kind of official sanction, if you will, of the relationship or if these relationships should be treated the same way a conventional marriage is. That’s a tougher problem. That’s not a slam dunk. I think the fact of the matter, of course, is that matter is regulated by the states. I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions and that’s appropriate. I don’t think there should necessarily be a federal policy in this area.”).
But the “does he want to be remembered as a bigot?” argument strikes me as an argument that’s simply premised on the assumption that one is right, and that of course everyone else should just see that, since, well, I’m right, darn it.
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