By Andrew Sullivan
Washington Post
Sunday, December 7, 2003; Page B07

It has become almost a cliché that the issue of marriage rights for gays is a wedge issue for Republicans. It divides Democrats, the argument goes, because they don't want to endorse marriage for gays but equally can't afford to alienate their gay base. It unites Republicans, it is claimed, and helps them win over some conservative Democrats who aren't too comfortable with homosexuality.

There's some truth to this, but it's a largely dated analysis. Since the last major battle -- over the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 -- the country has changed, and so have the issues. People are far more comfortable with gay neighbors, friends and family than they were seven years ago. The culture has moved on from fear to almost excessive interest. The result is that the issue of same-sex marriage -- most specifically the issue of a constitutional amendment to ban it -- is now dividing Republicans while uniting Democrats. That's one good reason the president hasn't endorsed it so far. And if he's sensible about maintaining his own electoral coalition, he won't.

Here's why. Polls show the public much more evenly divided now than it once was on marriage for gays. In Massachusetts, the most recent polls even show a majority for it: 50 percent to 39 percent. Nationally, 37 percent now support it, with 55 percent against, according to a recent ABC News poll. But when you ask the 55 percent opposed whether they would go so far as to amend the Constitution to ban such marriages, only 36 percent say yes. That amounts to 20 percent of the entire electorate. Most constitutional amendments, even those with overwhelming public support, fail. What chance is there for one to succeed with a mere 20 percent?

Worse, many leading conservatives oppose the amendment. George F. Will, for example, opposes it because he shares many conservatives' view that the Constitution should be amended only sparingly -- and certainly not to resolve a contentious social issue on which public opinion is in flux. David Brooks opposes it because he wants gays to be included in societal norms of monogamy and fidelity. Former congressman Bob Barr opposes it because his own Defense of Marriage Act already prevents one state from forcing another state to recognize a same-sex marriage. House speaker Dennis J. Hastert has argued that DOMA needs to be tested in the courts before he is ready to press forward with an amendment. Conservative activist David Horowitz sees amending the Constitution as an opportunity for the radical left to try to amend the Constitution in turn, bringing the unifying founding document into disrepute. Others, such as Vice President Cheney, have said they believe that marriage should remain a state matter, as it always has been.

And even among the hard right that supports an amendment, there is no consensus about what should actually be in it. Some have argued that a simple statement reserving marriage for a man and woman is enough. But others are concerned that this simply protects the word "marriage" while allowing civil unions -- which give many but not all the benefits of civil marriage -- to be enacted. That's why the most-cited version of the amendment would ban not just gay marriages but all "the legal incidents thereof," i.e. even civil unions or domestic partnerships. Yet another faction wants to allow civil unions -- but only if they don't explicitly involve sex. One version of the amendment puts the word "sexual" in the Constitution for the first time -- and not in a good way.

These are just some of the many rifts within the Republican coalition. On the Democratic side, there are no such rifts. Every single candidate opposes the constitutional amendment. And most leading candidates oppose gay marriage but endorse civil unions. So raising the amendment issue actually divides Republicans while uniting Democrats.

Democratic position is more appealing to most of the country, which is not anti-gay and has few qualms about civil unions but still gets queasy about full marriage rights.

If the president were to endorse the amendment, the Republican splits would widen. It would make the position of gay Republicans essentially untenable, and Bush would lose almost all the million gay votes he won in 2000. The Republican Unity Coalition, founded to make sexual orientation a non-issue in the GOP, would fold. The Log Cabin Republicans would refuse to endorse the president. And such a position would be an enormous gift to the Democrats, as gay money, enthusiasm and anger rallied behind their candidate. The amendment would do to the gay community what Proposition 187 did to Latinos in California: alienate them from the GOP for a generation. And it would send a signal to other minorities: The Republicans, at heart, are the party of exclusion, not inclusion.

That's why the president has remained so quiet on this subject. Any decision he takes could tear his coalition apart. He does have one viable option. He could restate his personal view that civil marriage should remain exclusively heterosexual while saying that the states should decide for themselves. As a last resort, he might even endorse an amendment that would simply reiterate and underline part of the Defense of Marriage Act and ensure that states wouldn't be forced by courts to recognize gay marriages from other states. The genius of federalism, after all, is that social change can be tried out in one state before it is enacted elsewhere.

Will the president follow this middle, conservative course? For the sake of Republican and American unity, let's hope he will.

Andrew Sullivan, a senior editor at the New Republic and columnist for Time, writes daily at www.andrewsullivan.com.