Wedding Church and State
By Susan Jacoby, TomPaine.com
March 2, 2004
Editor's Note: This article is adapted from Susan Jacoby's forthcoming book, 'Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism' to be published in April by Metropolitan Books.
In 1773, the Rev. Isaac Backus, the most prominent Baptist minister in New England, observed that when "church and state are separate, the effects are happy, and they do not at all interfere with each other: but where they have been confounded together, no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued."

If only that reverend manqué, President George W. Bush, had consulted the Reverend Backus' "An Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty" before endorsing the mischief implicit in a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman and "prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever."


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Gay GOP groups lobby against amendment
By Bob Kemper
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON - Gay activists who helped deliver more than a million votes for George W. Bush in 2000 are so outraged the president endorsed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage that they are setting up organizations and plotting advertising campaigns against the amendment that could undermine Bush's re-election effort.


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COLUMN: PAT CUNNINGHAM
Bush can’t stop the tide of history
Remember where you heard it:
Legalization of same-sex marriages in America is inevitable, and there’s nothing George W. Bush or Pat Robertson can do to prevent it.
Oh, they may be able to slow the march of gay rights a little, but they and others of their ilk will fail in the end. They apparently don’t recognize that they’re up against the irresistible tide of history.