One Down, One to Go
EDITORIAL, NYTimes on
the Web, June 8, 2006
Now that the Republican leaders in
the Senate have finished wasting the nation's time over a constitutional ban on
gay marriage, we're bracing for Act Two of the culture-war circus that the White
House is staging to get out the right-wing vote this fall.
Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, plans to continue to set aside work on
pressing issues facing the country to vote on yet another unworthy
constitutional amendment — a prohibition on burning the American flag.
If the gay marriage amendment was a pathetic attempt to change the subject in an
election year, the flag-burning proposal is simply ridiculous. At least
there actually is a national debate about marriage, and many thousands of gay
couples want to wed. Flag burning is an issue that exists only for the
purpose of pandering to a tiny slice of voters. Supporters of the
amendment cannot point to a single instance of anti-American flag burning in the
last 30 years. The video images that the American Legion finds so
offensive to veterans and other Americans are either of Vietnam-era vintage or
from other countries.
Nevertheless, flag burning remains one of those "wedge issues" that Republicans
use to denigrate the patriotism of Democratic candidates or to get the party's
base out to vote.
The other big difference between the two amendments is that the ban on gay
marriage was never going to get the two-thirds vote in Congress required to send
it to the states for ratification. Yesterday, the Senate rejected it by 49
to 48, with the help of seven Republicans.
The flag-burning amendment, on the other hand, actually could pass. A
realistic nose count based on members' public statements and how they voted when
the measure last came up, in 2000, suggests the Senate may be just a single vote
short of punching a hole in free speech.
Senator Harry Reid, the minority leader, should be rallying Democrats to join
the small handful of principled Republicans so far willing to oppose the
amendment. But as things stand, he is among the Democrats who plan to vote
for this constitutional vandalism. Opponents of the amendment, like
Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, are standing on firm ground in
trying to protect the Bill of Rights from an election-year stunt.
It is the patriotic thing to do.
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