DISTRACTION.(The Talk of the Town)

For five days last week, the White House and its Capitol Hill allies did urgent battle against what they perceive, or say they perceive, as an attack on the institution of marriage. It's a strange sort of attack, to be sure: a wonderfully pacific attack, a supportive attack, an attack without the slightest intention or capacity to cause harm, consisting, as it does, of the earnest wish of certain loving couples to join themselves to that very institution and thus to feel themselves, and be accepted as, full members of the American (and human) family. The counterattack--beginning on Saturday with a radio address by President Bush, continuing on Monday with a nearly identical Presidential speech, this one to "religious leaders" and such, and climaxing on Wednesday with a Senate vote on a proposed constitutional amend-ment--was widely viewed, even by many of its nominal supporters, as a performance piece, a political pageant aimed at energizing the Christianist wing of the Republican "base" for the midterm elections while distracting public attention from the Iraq war, whose most recent numbing horror, the revelation of an apparent My Lai-like massacre of twenty-four civilians by American marines in the town of Haditha, had been dominating the news.

By the end of the week, quite unexpectedly, the second of these aims, at least, had been rendered politically (if not morally) moot. On Thursday came two pieces of genuinely good news from Iraq. After seven months of post-election paralysis, the country's most sensitive Cabinet posts--the ministries of the interior, defense, and national security--were finally filled. And, equally important for the safety of Iraq's citizens and more so for the morale of American troops, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian thug who had been the most brutal and nihilistic terrorist in the land, was killed by an American air strike on his hiding place north of Baghdad.

Bush, in his remarks on both subjects, gay marriage and Zarqawi, struck a restrained, almost subdued tone. On Saturday he said, "As this debate goes forward, we must remember that every American deserves to be treated with tolerance, respect, and dignity. All of us have a duty to conduct this discussion with civility and decency toward one another." On Monday he said, "America is a free society which limits the role of government in the lives of our citizens. In this country, people are free to choose how they live their lives." (Never mind that he was proposing to use the very taproot of American government, the Constitution, precisely to prevent people from choosing how to live their lives.) And on Thursday he said, "Zarqawi is dead, but the difficult and necessary mission in Iraq continues. We can expect the terrorists and insurgents to carry on without him. We can expect the sectarian violence to continue."

Bush's sobriety on Iraq was simply what the realities of the situation called for. In this war, as even he now realizes, too many missions accomplished, too many turning points, too many decisive moments have ended in blood and mire for triumphalism to be warranted or believable. His tonal restraint on marriage was not so straightforwardly motivated. He wishes to placate certain overlapping constituencies (social conservatives, the religious right, anti-gay bigots) while not unnecessarily alienating others (libertarian conservatives, tolerant suburbanites, friends and families of gays and lesbians). And there is a possible additional explanation: ...