The Math

With just 11 days until mid term elections, things are getting a bit touchy. Of course, Republicans are using the New Jersey court "same sex marriage" decision to reignite time tested scapegoating techniques to try to win voters. Again, President Bush used the phrase "activist courts" in a stump speech to mobilize the radical right to remember that we can't allow any redefinition of marriage. Yet I find it incredibly perplexing that the administration doesn't even understand the ruling or what the President has previously said he supported. The ruling gives equal rights to same sex couples but specifically doesn't state that they can get married - the actual use of the word marriage being held sacrosanct by the "activist court" for the good people of New Jersey. In effect they have paved the way, like Vermont of old, to create a state of civil unions that hold similar but not all (separate but equal) benefits for same sex couples in a committed relationship. In the last days of President Bush's 2004 campaign, he specifically said that he supported the formation of civil unions as long as it wasn't marriage; a last minute attempt to gain the support of social conservatives who have become disallusioned with the Democratic Party. For the record, I'm one of them but still voting Democrat. In essence then, this "activist court" ruling is exactly the kind of the thing that Bush said he would support. And I'm sure he honestly could care less about two fags tying the knot. After all, his wife and Condoleezza Rice recently used the word mother-in-law to refer to a gay man's partner's mother during his swearing in ceremony at the freakin' White House.

But it's hard for me to not feel defeatist. I mean, I want to sweat bullets on this fortnight before Nov 7th wondering if the Democrats are going to take the house, postulating about which states will be the swingers (Tennessee, Virginia, New Jersey), fretting about my own state's same sex marriage amendment bill. But I worry that, just like the 2004 presidential election, once again the Republicans have the whole thing planned out. They know who they can buy, who they can win, which polls they can rig, which polling places they need to fix down to the county. I know this because when confronted by early polling numbers showing that Democrats had the strength to take the Senate, Karl Rove responded:

"You have your math, I have THE math."