REACTIONS TO BUSH'S FMA ANNOUNCEMENT

Claremont's Ken Masugi is opposed to the proposed amendment because it might allow civil unions.** Jack Balkin has a post here noting that Bush's endorsement of civil unions is an "admission of defeat" in the "culture wars." Oliver Willis calls Bush's move "a naked attempt to repair his battered image," and Atrios notes that even Tom Delay is not sure that an amendment is the right route (because it is a political loser). Steven Taylor has two posts with links to a wide range of reactions, most -- but not all -- of them negative.

This is the first major, high-profile constitutional amendment that can be debated on the internet, and so far, I think, the results are good. Non-experts can learn easily, quickly, and cheaply that the text of the Amendment is vague enough to encompass a ban on civil unions. My hunch would be that the dissemination of this kind of information will make the amendment much harder to pass. Folks who were interested in the debate when it started last year did not have to look very hard to find high-quality commentary on the subject. Now the long time frame of the amendment process allows time for research and study, so perhaps one might say that the contribution of the internet is less important here than in areas where quick coordination is needed. One sure effect of the extended on line debate about the amendment is that lots of people have already gotten a basic sense of the issues involved, so that much of what was said in the news commentary today will have seemed unsurprising, inaccurate, or incomplete to a large number of people. That was my experience. At least there's a research project here for someone who's interested. I suppose the jury is still out on whether or not the main effect of the on line commentary has been to polarize opinion (which would itself make the amendment harder to pass, I would gather).

**MORE (2/26): Ken Masugi argues that he "does not oppose the same sex-marriage amendment," but comparing his latest statement with the one I linked above, what he seems to mean is that this particular amendment does not clearly bar civil unions, and some congressional attempt to ban civil unions is necessary before an amendment is passed. Masugi's basic position is that civil unions should be banned as well, and that any ban on same-sex marriage is irrelevant without a ban on civil unions as well, as far as I understand him.