Thursday, January 20, 2005

Bitter Sweet Victory: What do you do when a candidate you support suddenly and unexpectedly changes position on a key issue, even if it's one you didn't agree with? I'll give an example: Let's say, the president of the United States was running for re-election. Overall, you thought he was doing a good job (stay with me, here). But you were upset over his pushing a hot-button issue, say, wanting to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

You rationalize that such an amendment will probably never pass, so you hold your nose and vote for the prez. Next thing you know, with re-election secured, the president comes out and says he now doesn't see a need for such an amendment and is happy with the Defense of Marriage Act (which I believe is another problem, but not quite as evil as a constitutional amendment).

Surprise, surprise, that's exactly what happened. While I'm happy that the one issue that upset me the most is no longer a problem, I'm now even more pissed that such an amendment was brought up during the campaign at all.

Conservatives say that they weren't making it a campaign issue, that all the "homosexual activists" were creating the issue by daring to fall in love with each other and wanting to spend the rest of their lives together in a legally recognized relationship. While that may be true, conservatives overreacted with a call to reintroduce bigotry into our Constitution. And President Bush was more than happy to use it as a wedge issue for the campaign.

Bush advertises himself as a man who says what he means and means what he says. But when push comes to shove, he's not much different than all the other Washington politicians who say anything to get what they want.

So, the fact is, Bush is a politician. While it shouldn't surprise us that a politician would lie to get elected, politicians also shouldn't be surprise when the rest of us steadily lose faith in the system.

I support gay marriage (not just civil unions, but 100 percent marriage). And I'm happy that Bush has decided not to continue his path of carving bigotry into the Constitution. But I'm not happy about the way he did it.