THE MARRYING KIND

By MARGARET CARLSON

Last Wednesday, Speaker Newt Gingrich announced that he was giving up on passing the "crown jewel of the Contract with America"--tax cuts--before Congress recesses in October. Indeed, the Congress has given up on doing much of anything before the election, except for one piece of business--the Defense of Marriage bill, a pre-emptive strike at the possibility that a Hawaiian court may recognize unions between homosexuals. It's not immediately apparent why this bill should jump the queue ahead of the potential bankruptcy of Medicare and bills to keep the government running. The Hawaiian courts will not rule until the end of the year, and it will be 1997 before same-sex couples wed in the islands could wash up on these shores, expecting shoes and rice, not to mention Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Yet Georgia Representative Bob Barr, who led the fight that resulted in passage of the bill in the House, 342 to 67, spoke with great urgency: "The flames of hedonism, the flames of narcissism, the flames of self-centered morality are licking at the very foundation of our society, the family unit."

For many of us, the thought of matrimony between two members of the same sex requires an emotional and cultural leap that we find hard to make. Republicans pushing the bill hope to play on that difficulty and grab a wedge issue for the election.

The good news may be that this is all the gay bashers have left. Recognition of a near marriage equivalent--domestic partnerships--is now official at more than 450 U.S. corporations. Even the Coors Brewing Co.--long associated with a right-wing, antigay agenda thanks to Coors family members' generous support of the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation--began offering gay partners the same benefits as spouses in 1995. Coors had previously been the target of boycotts by gay-rights groups, but claims it changed its policy simply because, in the words of spokesman Joe Fuentes, "Peter Coors [Joseph's son] said, 'It's the right thing to do.'"

There is no evidence that the new Coors policy is "licking" at the foundations of Golden, Colorado, one of the most heavily organized Christian communities in the U.S. It has not caused the Rocky Mountains or the share price to tumble, and a Silver Bullet is still a Silver Bullet. Indeed, the fact that some in the Coors family continue to fund antigay organizations while adopting partner benefits tracks the state of play on the marriage- preservation bill. Many Senators, though inclined to vote for it rather than step into a conservative trap, also support an amendment offered by Senator Edward Kennedy that would guarantee gays equal rights on the job. Even some Republicans, like Senator Alfonse D'Amato, embrace the measure--which is being considered as a separate bill this week--which says, in effect, we will go along with this gratuitous marriage thing, but only if you are not using it as a smoke screen for wholesale discrimination against homosexuals.

If all goes according to plan, Congress will leave Washington knowing that marriage is safe. Listening to debate about the bill, one began to wonder how America's foundation had survived so long without legal protection from gay couples indulging in adjustable-rate mortgages and life insurance. That is an interesting question for Congressman Barr, as is this: Which of his own marriages is he trying to protect: the first, the second or the third?

--With reporting by Lisa McLaughlin/New York

With reporting by Lisa Mclaughlin/New York