Bush: "We Have No Choice But To Launch a Culture War"

Finally, something W and Al Qaida can agree on!

As has been the case over and over again over the past year, "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart had the best take on the gay marriage issue Monday night (and will probably have an even better response tonight). To anyone looking for a constitutional amendment on the "sanctity of marriage," then we should assume you're also for an amendment banning adultery, yes? Against Britney Spears-style quickie marriages?

Hmm?

(Thump, thump) This thing on? You got awfully quiet.

Listen, I can see how you might argue that the nation's not quite ready for gay marriage just yet. But a constitutional amendment? From the folks who supposedly preach less government intrusion in our lives? Nice.

Sometimes the most eloquent outrage can come from the offender's own allies. And so, following Brian Flemming's lead, we link to Bush supporter (and openly gay pundit) Andrew Sullivan:

The president launched a war today against the civil rights of gay citizens and their families. And just as importantly, he launched a war to defile the most sacred document in the land. Rather than allow the contentious and difficult issue of equal marriage rights to be fought over in the states, rather than let politics and the law take their course, rather than keep the Constitution out of the culture wars, this president wants to drag the very founding document into his re-election campaign. He is proposing to remove civil rights from one group of American citizens - and do so in the Constitution itself. The message could not be plainer: these citizens do not fully belong in America. Their relationships must be stigmatized in the very Constitution itself.

The document that should be uniting the country will now be used to divide it, to single out a group of people for discrimination itself, and to do so for narrow electoral purposes. Not since the horrifying legacy of Constitutional racial discrimination in this country has such a goal been even thought of, let alone pursued. Those of us who supported this president in 2000, who have backed him whole-heartedly during the war, who have endured scorn from our peers as a result, who trusted that this president was indeed a uniter rather than a divider, now know the truth.