Story by Andrew Knapp

Observer Photo by Wah-Hui Ong
At the National Press Club in Washington on Wednesday, Bob Benenson, politics editor at the Congressional Quarterly, said the Rep. Mark Foley issue is less of a priority than Iraq and the economy for vvoters on Nov. 7.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 – Despite the Mark Foley scandal and Wednesday’s court ruling in New Jersey permitting same-sex unions and possibly marriage, gay rights won’t play a starring role on the national electoral stage in 2006, experts said.

Gay rights only slightly impacted the 2004 election, according to a five-member panel of advocates, educators and journalists who gathered Wednesday at the National Press Club. And on Nov. 7, even with eight states voting on constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, candidates’ stances on more pressing topics like Iraq and the economy will determine which party will control the 110th Congress.

Gay marriage is last on the priority list for registered voters, according to a Gallup poll. Another survey conducted by the Center for American Values in Public Life showed that 5 percent of Americans think it’s an issue in the 2006 midterm elections.

Although it’s a singing endorsement of equal rights, the New Jersey Supreme Court’s relatively vague ruling Wednesday allows civil unions for gays, but it charged the state Legislature with either rewriting marriage laws to include gays or devising a statute to permit same-sex unions. Defining and distinguishing a civil union and legal marriage is key in the overall debate, the experts said Wednesday before the ruling.

The absence of typical moral stimuli that drive ultra-conservatives and evangelicals to the polls has kept gay marriage out of the political limelight; however, courts continue to hear gay-rights cases.

The latest judicial development in New Jersey embraces full equality for gays but stops short of mandating “marriage” laws, per se. Public-opinion polling indicates large portions of the U.S. population favor civil unions but not gay marriage – what the panel dubbed the moderate stance.

In New Jersey, a class-action suit filed by seven gay couples was premised on an argument that the state constitution allows same-sex marriage.

State lawmakers must act within the next six months, according to the 4-3 opinion.

But the ruling likely won’t change anything on the national political scene, experts said. The decision doesn’t favor any particular candidate in the New Jersey race for U.S. Senate between incumbent Democrat Robert Menendez and his Republican challenger Thomas Kean Jr. A more stanch ruling demanding same-sex marriage might have driven evangelicals to vote for Kean on Nov. 7.

Gay-rights advocate Jonathan Rauch said during the panel at the press club that in the 2004 presidential election, gay marriage didn’t help or hurt President Bush, a steadfast gay-marriage opponent. And this time around, Rauch said, voters again won’t pay attention to candidates’ moral compasses.

“The moral credit card has maxed out,” said Rauch, a magazine writer for National Journal and The Atlantic Monthly. “Conservatives can’t use it anymore.”

Bob Benenson, politics editor at Congressional Quarterly, said his Web site has been observing a “national political crisis” in recent months. Hurricane Katrina could be a more galvanizing issue for voters, he said, because the nation is still dealing with the Bush camp’s purported ill handling of the storm’s aftermath.

“Social issues come up in years when people have time to think about them,” Benenson said Wednesday morning during the gay-rights panel. “We just don’t hear discussion of gay marriage as a driving force in the election this year.”

Analysts are debating whether the Foley scandal will be another force affecting voters’ decisions this year.

ABC News revealed late last month that Rep. Foley (R-Fla.) exchanged lewd instant messages with a 16-year-old house page. The report prompted Foley’s immediate resignation and subsequent statement that he was gay.

House ethics committee members are interrogating key players in the Foley case, including Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.) and top Republican aides. Their objective is to find out which party leaders knew about Foley’s behavior and how long ago they knew it.

FBI investigators also are determining whether Foley committed a crime.

But the Foley scandal is only a minor component of far-reaching troubles for the Republican Party, said Marty Rouse of the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based advocacy group. The Foley case is only subsidiary to the larger scandal involving aides of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was sentenced in January to six years in prison for fraud and public corruption.

Iraq is the hottest issue, Rouse said, while unemployment and Social Security continue to be thorns in the party’s side.

“Voters are really fed up and don’t want side issues,” Rouse told a contingent of reporters Wednesday. “Foley is just a side issue. There’s no relevance.”

Before the New Jersey ruling, Rouse said a court decision in favor of the plaintiffs wouldn’t affect the election. After the opinion was released Wednesday afternoon, he declined to comment on that topic. Press agents for the campaign were also unavailable.

Rouse did say by telephone, however, the group is “pleased that the court is requiring states to provide same-sex unions.” He wouldn’t say whether the ruling fell short.

In June, the U.S. Senate rejected a constitutional ban of gay marriage. That intense political discussion generated at the Capitol has brought more Americans to accept civil unions for gays, according to Maggie Gallagher of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, who spoke at Wednesday’s panel. While Gallagher said many accomplishments have been made, more has to be done to solidify gay-marriage rights in the United States.

“It’s certainly true that gay marriage isn’t taking center stage, but we’re fooling ourselves if we don’t think it’s still a substantial political issue,” she said.

Forty-five states have statutes or constitutional amendments outlawing gay marriage. New Jersey is one of five states without such a provision.

After a 2003 state Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts became the only state to sanction it.

Panel members said most of the eight states voting on anti-marriage amendments will approve them. Wisconsin, Arizona and South Dakota referendum questions are the only ones considered to be in play, according to local and regional polls. In Virginia, a state that’s home to a large Christian bloc, the amendment is expected to pass with relative ease.

Twelve state constitutions already ban civil unions for gays. Gay-rights activists believe civil unions are the first step toward full marriage rights. Rauch, who is also a guest scholar at The Brookings Institution in Washington and has authored books about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues, expects at least six of the eight states to adopt anti-civil union amendments.

“That makes 18 states,” he said. “I don’t call that victory.”