Because I’m at an airport, I bought a copy of USA Today, a newspaper I am trying to be unashamed of liking. It’s actually as serious as most regional papers.

So, today the front page feature was on the political impact of same-sex marriage. My take-away from it is: Man, is this issue complex! There arent that many different positions one can take — it’s a relatively small matrix of civil union vs. marriage, state vs. federal control, ammendment vs. statute. But the reasons for supporting the box you happen to X are as complex as our attitudes towards sex multiplied by our beliefs in the role of the government, divided by how we think God is immanent in the world, to the power of our experience of our parents’ marriage times our view of our own marriage modula the marriages we see on TV.

Yet, Bush is using it as a wedge issue to force a divide that brings the wavering to his side. But with the fault lines on this issue are like the marbelizing of a windshield when it runs into a truck. For a significant percentage of us Americans, the attempt to reduce this to a simple yes or no — the attempt to use it as a wedge — will pull us further toward a candidate who recognizes that nuance is the only thing that lets us survive as a society.

I hope.

Categories: Uncategorized dw