OUT ON A WEDGE

By CALVIN TRILLIN

I wonder if those who have been hoping that the 1996 presidential campaign will focus on the issues were heartened by the willingness of both Bob Dole and Bill Clinton to let voters know precisely where they stand on single-sex marriage.

No sooner had the two candidates recorded their opposition than Newt Gingrich, who has lately been making some Republicans nostalgic for that all too brief period when his policy was to remain in the background, said that if his half-sister, a lesbian, married another woman he would not attend the ceremony. In other words, he publicly turned down an invitation he hadn't been sent to a hypothetical event that could not, at this point, legally take place.

My own opinion is that this eagerness of politicians to take a stand on gay marriage is not an indication that a forthright discussion of something like the entitlements question is just down the road. What have become known as wedge issues--issues involving social concerns--have tempted politicians since the creation of Reagan Democrats in 1980. There is a particular appeal to wedge issues that affect few voters or (until a court in Hawaii rules on gay marriage, for instance) no voters at all. I've begun to think of those as wedge hypotheticals.

Wedge hypotheticals are opportunities for candidates to paste labels on their opponents in the guise of discussing issues. In 1988 flag burning didn't force its way into the presidential campaign because the burning of flags had become so widespread that public order, not to speak of air quality, was in peril. There were even fewer people involved in flag burning than there are in "partial birth" abortions, a 1996 wedge hypothetical. George Bush was merely looking for another way to call Michael Dukakis a "card-carrying member of the A.C.L.U."

Dole's sponsorship of an anti-gay-marriage bill is just another way of saying to Bill Clinton, "You're soft on gays," to which Clinton, in announcing his willingness to sign the bill, replied in effect: "Not if it costs me any votes in the center of the electorate I'm not."

Once politicians get onto a wedge hypothetical, citizens may find themselves mulling it over for the first time. I realized, for instance, that I had one hypothetical objection to gay marriage, at least in its Jewish version. At the end of the ceremony, how would you decide who stomps on the glass?

The groom's breaking of a glass is a joyous part of the Jewish wedding ceremony. What if instead the ceremony ended with both participants trying to maneuver themselves into position to be the one who did the stomping? What sort of way is that to begin a marriage?

This may seem a trivial objection on my part compared, say, with objections that are based on the belief that recognizing gay marriage would destroy civilization as we know it, but we all deal with these issues on our own level.

Then last week I went to a perfectly legal heterosexual Jewish wedding in Chicago, and at the end of the ceremony both bride and groom stomped on glasses. Apparently, that's done a lot these days, in the same spirit as having both parents walk down the aisle with the bride. I had simply been behind the times.

I was, of course, greatly relieved. Now gay marriage is back to being an issue I don't have to worry about any more than I worry about flag burning, at least until the next presidential election.