Gay Rights Pro-Con Frank Rich And Cal Thomas Debate The Supreme Court’s Decision On Gay Rights.

It’s hard to say which was more moving: Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Romer vs. Evans or the joy in my friend’s voice as he cited it over the phone.

My friend, a gay man and a Democrat, couldn’t quite get over the fact that a conservative justice, a Ronald Reagan appointee to the nation’s highest court, had pronounced a gay-bashing amendment passed by Colorado voters illegal. So illegal, Kennedy wrote, that “the amendment seems inexplicable by anything but animus toward the class that it affects.”

You don’t have to be gay, you need only believe in an inclusive America, to share my friend’s rekindled faith in a system that works.

But the two most conspicuous leaders of that system wanted to run from - rather than embrace - the court’s judgment. Republican Bob Dole greeted the news with no comment. President Clinton sent forth his press secretary to describe the ruling tepidly as “appropriate.”

While the court struck down the gay-bashing law in Colorado, it cannot protect gay Americans from becoming political fodder in an election year.

A desperate Dole once again is toying with playing the “gay card” - despite the previous derailment of his campaign after it returned a contribution from the gay Log Cabin Republicans. Clinton, wary of another gays-in-the-military debacle, resolutely is wimping-out in response to the court ruling.

The vehicle for Dole’s mischief is the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, of which he is a lead co-sponsor in the Senate. The bill purports to head off same-sex marriages in the other 49 states should Hawaiian courts recognize them. But the outcome of the Hawaii case is at least two years away, and this legally dubious bill, which would circumvent the U.S. Constitution by statute, isn’t going to affect the fate of same-sex marriage. The bill not only is gratuitous but also, for the GOP, hypocritical, says Rich Tafel of Log Cabin Republicans, because it calls for the federal government to usurp powers the states have had for two centuries.

The legislation’s only real agenda, of course, is to turn same-sex marriage, hardly the year’s most pressing issue, into a flash point for a polarizing cultural war in which gay people become the Willie Hortons of 1996.

The bill also forces Clinton, who says he opposes both same-sex marriage and anti-gay discrimination, into a corner. If he vetoes it, his opponents can portray him as a proponent of same-sex marriage; if he signs it, he endorses the gay-bashing that the bill transparently is. He’s presumably praying it never will reach his desk.

If Dole’s cynicism is deplorable, so is Clinton’s cowardice, which fans the flames. A politician can be against same-sex marriage and still lead by speaking out forcefully - and not through intermediaries - against GOP pandering to homophobia. In a tough battle to succeed Republican Bob Packwood in the Senate early this year, Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden even proved it’s possible to endorse same-sex marriage and win. “Here’s a chance for more responsible behavior, commitment and personal responsibility,” said Wyden, making his case again in an interview this week. “If that’s not the family values we want, what is?”

Clinton also pales next to Roy Romer, governor of Colorado, who was nominally on the losing side of this week’s Supreme Court decision but who, in fact, vehemently fought his state’s anti-gay-rights amendment before the voters passed it. Even more daringly, the 67-year-old Romer became the first and only governor to veto his own state legislature’s bill against same-sex marriage. Though he opposes same-sex marriage, Romer simply wouldn’t countenance a law he viewed as a “mean-spirited and unnecessary” attempt “to single out and condemn the lifestyle of gay and lesbian people.” Furthermore, he says, “those of the same sex who want to have a partnership should have some way of having that acknowledged or accepted by the state,” even if it’s not “marriage.”

Romer says “bumper-sticker solutions,” typified by unconstitutional, animus-driven legislation, can’t adjudicate any of these thorny issues, and he’s right. But his rational voice, like Kennedy’s, soon may be drowned out in what threatens to be, for gay Americans, a particularly vicious bumper-sticker year.

Frank Rich is a New York Times columnist.

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