Backstory: The art of diversion

By Michael Green

If you want to understand George W. Bush's position on gay marriage, you need to know about Bob Brown and Ned Day.

In the late 1970s, Day wrote for the Valley Times, which Brown ran. Ned's reports on mob control of the Strip and the streets were brilliant. In any case, no one doubted he was underpaid. All of us who worked for the Times were underpaid, except for a mobster who was paid $500 for a weekly column.

Ned made less than that and wanted a raise. Bob explained his cash flow was poor, but he would see what he could do. A couple of evenings later, Bob was in the newsroom praising Ned and declared that Ned deserved a title. How about associate editor? He could put that in his byline and on his business cards.

Ned was pleased. Time passed, because it must. Ned was typing his latest story when he looked at Bruce Hasley, the paper's managing editor and as sharp a newspaperman as ever edited copy or swigged beer. Ned said, "I blew the raise, didn't I?" Bruce said, "Yes."

Well, let's not fault Bob. The paper went bankrupt, after all. He never had much money to work with. But he diverted Ned from the main issue.

Which brings us back to Bush, who is such a compassionate conservative that he wants the first constitutional amendment that would openly discriminate against a societal group. He'd rather not, of course, but the Massachusetts Supreme Court and Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco allowed gay marriages, so the federal government must step in.

If you believe that, you believe Saddam Hussein was behind Sept. 11 and Fox News Channel is fair and balanced. But in this way, Bush appeals to his base, which is base: right-wing homophobes, professional haters who claim to act according to the teachings of Jesus Christ, who loved everybody, including Mel Gibson.

Yet Bush also alienates those among his base who prize intellectual consistency. Conservatives supposedly believe the less the federal government does, through the Constitution or the statute books, the better, unless the Supreme Court has to stop a state from letting a Democrat become president. This is the kind of logic that prompts some to say the federal government should let private businesses protect our airports but must act to save us from seeing Janet Jackson's breast.

Some principled conservatives--and conservative independents--question Bush's expansion of the federal government. They shudder at the monstrous deficits Bush has created--not so much by fighting terrorism as through a regressive, unnecessary tax cut that served himself and his upper-class supporters. They also worry that many who blanch at gay marriage will react as strongly--if not more so--to making it a campaign issue.

More to the point, Bush is trying to divert our attention from the soldiers dying in an unnecessary war he lied the country into, from his lies about the number of jobs he has created and from an opponent who didn't spend the war in the National Guard (but, then, maybe Bush didn't, either).

Some need no diversion. After making an unsuccessful political career of hounding Assemblyman David Parks, who at least had the guts to declare his homosexuality and leave it at that, Tony Dane organized a large-scale phone bank to accuse Mayor Oscar Goodman of promoting a gay agenda. Hoping to oppose Harry Reid in the general election, Richard Ziser actually questioned the senator's commitment to keeping marriage heterosexual--a senator who belongs to the Mormon Church, which strongly backed Ziser's effort to amend the Nevada Constitution to define marriage in 2000 and 2002. But homophobia has nothing to do with it.

To be sure, some think homosexuals should stay in the shadows and deny any claim or right to the kind of marital status that heterosexuals enjoy, because to do otherwise is offensive. Some who believe this certainly mean well. But too many are promoting discrimination and bigotry by pigeonholing a group of people on the grounds of sexual orientation, just as other well-meaning people saw nothing wrong with blacks and women accepting their lot, even if it happened to be racist and sexist.

Marriage is a meeting between two souls, an act of love. Because those two souls happen to belong to the same sex, that makes it offensive?

Uh oh. The diversion worked. It worked for Ronald Reagan when 239 Marines died in Lebanon and he suddenly felt the need to invade Grenada, which happened to belong to Great Britain. This column could have focused on how Bush and his cowardly minions deserve not impeachment but indictment for fraud and felony murder.

But diversions usually do work. See, the Valley Times also had a kid on staff putting out the newspaper each night for $150 a week--when he was paid. Bob called him in and appointed him news editor because he deserved a title. I fell for it. That's all right. At least Bob wasn't diverting attention from getting soldiers killed by promoting bigotry.