Andrew Sullivan has often ripped President Bush for not using the word “gay” – I wonder if he saw Friday’s USAToday interview (only an abstract is now available online, but the cached version is here for now), Bush addressed the same-sex marriage issue:
Bush said he has not discussed the amendment with Mary Cheney, but “of course I’ve heard from people that are my friends who are gay. … I will encourage a debate in a way that doesn’t divide people into camps and doesn’t disparage anybody.”
Not that this really makes a huge difference, but since Sullivan has marked this as an important yardstick in his estimation, it’s worth noting.
I’m not sure what Sullivan is looking for with that anyway. Is he holding out the smallest hope that he can swing back over to the Republicans? Would even the slightest acknowledgment help him to do so? Does the use of the word “gay” actually mean anything? To Sullivan it does, but what? And I doubt it’s use means anything significant to Bush.
I’d like to give Bush a bit of leeway here and think that he actually is a more inclusive and enlightened guy than his handlers allow him to be. I think he’s prety comfortable with the word gay and would use it more readily, but perhaps he’s been instructed to avoid it. (Of course that cancels out any respect he might earn for having independant thought, if he so willingly suppresses it)
Does using the word undo any of the treatment the gay community has recieved at the hands of the far right (and implicitly by Bush)? I think not, and Sullivan is a fool to think otherwise.