by Johanna Neuman
For more than four years, the Bush White House has run against any changes in the law that would allow gay Americans -- even his vice president's daughter -- to marry.
Under the guidance of political maestro Karl Rove, George W. Bush even ran against gay rights in his 2004 re-election bid. The strategy: push a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman and thereby stir the base of evangelicals to the polls. It worked.
Now, four years later, the climate has changed, (as the Swamp's colleague, Johanna Neuman is reporting at Countdown to Crawford ). Both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, while not embracing the still-politically-radioactive concept of gay marriage, support rights.
Obama and his running mate Joe Biden back civil unions, along with spousal visits in hospitals, insurance benefits as partners and rights of inheritance and adoption. At some political cost, McCain voted against the Bush administration's proposal for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, arguing that states, not judges or the federal government, should make these decisions. He also backs legislation to ban workplace discrimination against gays.
Both presidential campaigns have reached out to gay Americans, seeking their votes. Even Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, an evangelical, sounds inclusive toward gays. "(N)o one would ever propose, not in a McCain-Palin administration, to do anything to prohibit, say, visitations in a hospital or contracts being signed," she said during the vice presidential debate. That's one reason the Log Cabin Republicans, the largest gay Republican organization, who did not endorse Bush four years ago, are backing McCain-Palin this year.
But Bush remains passionately opposed to any movement on the issue.
