So it looks like Bush is set to endorse the amendement to the constitution that would ban gay marriage.

Part of me takes this as a good sign. His crack team must be running scared if they're already resorting to courting the fear and bigotry vote. Can't win on the issues, or leadership, or foreign policy? Better scare them into thinking the liberals will sell all their sons into gay sex slavery.

Bush is counting on the fact that conservative-leaning voters will respond viscerally to this subject. Well, guess what, motherfucker, so do I. Call me a John Edwards populist if you will, but nothing makes me angrier than politicians appealing to people's basest instincts, especially when it comes to gay rights and economic inequality. I remember nearly frothing at the mouth when a young gal in my economics class in college rolled her eyes about those living in poverty, "Well I'm so sorry that they might have to find a job farther away from their homes. They might have to actually get in their cars and drive somewhere rather than sit around collecting welfare." Cars? Drive? The prof had to tell me to take it outside.

This is Bush the "unifer" once again. This is Bush doing exactly what Dean accused him of: trying to make us debate religion and gays when we should be talking about education, jobs, and foreign effing policy. And the dems have been staying on message, they've not been getting distracted. Bush has a lot to answer for, and they need to make him answer. Don't let him respond to questions by pointing behind him and saying "Look over there! A gay!"

Besides all that, the thought of disgracing the document that gave women and african americans the right to vote, the document that enshrines our most precious freedoms with such bigotry is supremely distasteful. I can't put it better than the recent New Yorker article which commented on Bush's State of the Union:

The rest of Bush’s proposals were either ruinously expensive, socially poisonous non-starters (such as privatizing Social Security) or cheap cuts of wormy red meat for the conservative and evangelical base. Of the latter the cheapest was an exhortation to professional athletes to quit taking steroids, the wormiest a threat to deface the Constitution with anti-gay graffiti.

Hell yes. Just for good measure, here's the closer of that fine article:

In last year’s State of the Union, Bush’s buzz phrase was “weapons of mass destruction,” the threat of which justified the impending conquest of Iraq. This year’s speech subsumed that phrase into the longer, mealier “weapons of mass destruction-related program activities,” a usefully adaptable locution. Were teams of inspectors to fan out across Bush’s domestic policies in search of solutions to the nation’s problems, they would be less likely to return empty-handed if they settle for environment-related program activities (such as logging in national forests), education-related program activities (such as requiring tests without providing the funds to help kids pass them), and health care-related program activities (such as forbidding Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices). Like the speech itself, all this comes under the heading of winning the election-related program activities. Here’s hoping it will prove equally effective.

UPDATE:
On further reflection, I may have reacted with my gut a bit too quickly on that one. I should take the advice I dole out to the democratic candidates and not dignify this tripe with a reaction. So, Federal Marriage Amendment, I turn my nose up to you. Ha.