The Battle Over Gay Marriage

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By the late '90s, Daniels was working for the Boston-based Massachusetts Family Institute, an independent conservative group loosely affiliated with Focus on the Family. In Boston, he became friendly with the Rev. Dr. Ray Hammond, a physician turned pastor who had won national plaudits for helping inner-city youths in Boston. Eventually Daniels--with the help of Hammond and several other minority ministers--founded the Alliance for Marriage.

Although the alliance has a modest budget of $900,000 a year, compared with $120 million for Focus on the Family, it has influence beyond its means. Just as Wolfson was promoting gay marriage when gays wouldn't listen, Daniels was suggesting a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage when conservatives wouldn't listen. When the alliance held a press conference to announce the idea in the summer of 2001, Daniels says, "there wasn't any debate going on about a marriage amendment." But by the following May, the alliance had lined up a Congressman--a Democrat, actually--to introduce the Federal Marriage Amendment. Today it has 109 co-sponsors in the House and five in the Senate.

The amendment would limit marriage to opposite-sex couples, but it would not outlaw civil unions, which Daniels believes should be available to states. His moderation on that point is considered apostasy on the right, and Daniels has had to battle more powerful groups that want the amendment to go further, explicitly banning not only gay marriages but any state's recognition of gay relationships. For the past few months, about 20 serious movement conservatives--stalwarts like former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition and Don Wildmon of the American Family Association--have strategized on how to toughen the language. Daniels, who says one conservative leader told him his multicultural alliance "looks like the bar scene from Star Wars," has not been invited.

Calling themselves the Arlington group because they first met last summer in that Washington suburb, these conservatives feel that "ideally," as Bauer said last week, "we would like an amendment that would make it unconstitutional to have gay marriage or fake marriage, the civil unions." Realistically, however, they have concluded that such a sweeping amendment probably won't pass. It's very early in the process, but the White House seems to be leaning toward the more flexible language.

The proposed amendment got a big push last week, and it is likely to get another in May, when pictures of lesbians kissing their brides will be broadcast round the world. (One caveat: there is still a slim chance that gay-marriage opponents in the Bay State--including G.O.P. Governor Mitt Romney--will find a way to stop the marriages before May. But the state's highest court is not likely to approve any delays, so stopping gay weddings would probably mean outright defiance of the court. Most observers don't think Romney would risk his future on an Orval Faubus ploy.)