LA TIMES POLL GETS IT WRONG

Asks about a fictional amendment that nobody proposed

The LA Times just did some polling on the issue, and produced these results:



There's a problem with these polls. A big one, actually. In the first question, 47% of those asked would favor "an amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning same-sex marriages".

In the second question, a whopping 70% of those asked said that same-sex couples should be allowed to either "marry" or "form civil unions".

Here's the problem with this poll: The LA Times is asking about a fictional, bullshit amendment that, simply enough, doesn't exist and has never been proposed, not by George W Bush, not by Mrs Musgrave of Colorado, or by anyone else.

The amendment that IS being proposed bans both same-sex marriage AND civil unions. Read the text of the proposed amendment:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups. (emphasis mine)

This means that state civil-union legislation, such as the bill Howard Dean signed in Vermont, might not be enforceable based on this language. Jack Balkin has more.

What the LA Times is doing, amazingly, is promoting an outright falsehood that will stay in people's minds. And it's not like the Bush administration is going to do anything to clear up this issue. They thrive on political ambiguity. You know all those polls that showed 50% of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks? And how incredibly reluctant they were to even whisper that Saddam had no solid links to Al Qaeda? (even after admitting as much, Cheney continued to spout such nonsense) This is exactly the sort of ambiguity that they're too advantageous to clear up for the greater good.