The only argument that requires a more complex answer is, I suspect, the truly fundamental one. Gay marriage calls into question established roles; it scrambles the basic coordinates we use to define ourselves. If married couples are to include "husband and husband" and "wife and wife" sets, or "husband and wife" sets from the same gender, what does being a husband or a wife actually mean? And if that becomes open to interpretation, what does being a man or a woman mean? A stand against gay wedding is, at its core, an insistence -- and as we shall see a rather desperate, frightened and "unmanly" one -- on traditional notions of masculinity. A man is he who is married to a woman, and who's the undisputed father figure, provider for the family, maker of important decisions. (A man is also physically strong, adept at sports, comfortable with bikes, horses and other means of locomotion, not too big a talker but good with one-liners -- all important qualities, but clearly subordinate to the ones expressed in the traditional family structure.)

In order to prevent gay marriage from becoming legal, Republicans have gone and will continue to go to far-fetched lengths. The knowingly futile attempt to amend the Constitution is a fascinating example. The Constitution provides no foundation for discriminating against gay couples. The implicit argument that the Founders would have supported the amendment creates a vicious circle, in which Republicans take a present-day issue, go back to the past and decide what the Constitution "must have meant" about it, then try to stop the present from changing using the supreme authority of the past, now adequately retrofitted. It makes no historical sense. But of course it's not about historical sense -- it's about claiming the legacy of masculinity.

For the Republicans, claiming traditional masculinity is a matter of existential urgency, not just a tactical move. With traditional masculinity beleaguered and uncertain of its future, conservatives are clutching with increasing desperation to the John Wayne version. The more anxious they feel about what it means to be a man, the more they tend to enshrine the archetype.

This anxiety, which tries to come off as macho toughness, is something the Democrats ought to exploit. Kerry has tried hard (perhaps too hard) to counter the Republican attack on his masculinity. But Democrats should also expose the anxiety and insecurity that motivates the Republican's macho campaign to begin with.

Schwarzenegger's remark, for instance, deserves to be derided as not only crass and sexist, but also completely dishonest, even ludicrous, coming from a man who made his name as a bodybuilder. Bodybuilders spend all their time, money and energy refining the way they look: The kind of vanity that sustains the endeavor is arguably unmatched by the girliest girl in the world. There is no practical application for a bodybuilder's muscles: They are not to be used to win a fight, or a race, or to prevail in any other match of strength and skill. It's strictly about appearing a certain way. Bodybuilding was born, in fact, as a method to beef up scrawny physiques, and it was originally marketed at insecure young men who felt all too easily dismissed by women and bullied by other men -- most famously in the Charles Atlas ad in which a voluptuous woman scoffs at the cowering "97-lb. weakling" tormented by a beach bully. It was, in other words, a self-help tool for "girlie men," one that replaced insecurity with vanity -- a different kind of "girlie" quality.

Bodybuilding competitions are essentially male beauty contests where bikini-clad competitors strut their stuff in front of jury and audience. Preparing for them, professional bodybuilders combine hard-core training with chemical self-abuse, extreme dieting, tanning, and the shaving of all visible body hair, while spending countless hours posing in front of mirrors to learn the angles, the lights, the twitches that display every part of their bodies to their best advantage. In short, bodybuilders train to preen; the whole pseudo-sport is a gigantic, shameless exercise in preening. Shall we talk about girlie men? (It should also be noted that bodybuilding magazines count on a vast gay readership, and the aesthetics of gay porn owe bodybuilding an obvious debt. I suspect Arnold is sophisticated enough to realize that full well, which makes his remarks all the more callous).

Ultimately, Arnold's ridicule of "girlie men" is not a sign of his great manliness, but of his insecurity as a politician. Lacking a sophisticated grasp of politics, he falls back onto Hollywood mannerism and cheap jokes.

The same goes for Bush and his cowboy affectations: Contrast them with his minutes of surreal stillness in "Fahrenheit 9/11," as he held on to his storybook after learning that the nation was under attack, and you see how thinly Bush the cowboy masks Bush the big baby. A big part of what makes Michael Moore's film so devastatingly effective is how the president comes off it thoroughly emasculated, a frightened child suddenly swimming in his daddy's shoes. Those minutes will remain a defining moment of his legacy; precisely because the moment is in such contrast to the trigger-happy months and years to follow, it reveals how the macho posturing, the "Bring 'em on" and "Mission accomplished" boasts, the top-gun masquerade, are rooted in insecurity.

And yet, the film inadvertently also shows Bush at his most attractive, at least to those Americans who respond to his appeal: a kind of joking good ol' boy, not afraid to look a bit like a buffoon, physically fit, informal, tough-talking when expected to be, and always engagingly simple. A good drinking buddy (before he cleaned up, anyway) you may call "partner" or "dude," depending on where you reside. Which Bush Americans will choose to see -- and which candidate they empower as the next four year's planetarch -- is ultimately a sort of national psychiatric test as much as a political question.

Clearly the Democratic Party has chosen to try to reclaim the flag, patriotism, and "manliness" from Republican hogging. This is a high-stakes bet. The Republicans start out with an advantage, because they get to claim masculinity without having to redefine it: Democrats are fighting on Republican turf. For Democrats, then, the trick is to challenge the GOP's concept of masculinity, even as they reclaim it. This is difficult. But it's doable, and it's worth doing. Just as the flag doesn't need to be used to smother dissent, so manliness doesn't mean opposing intellectual complexity, let alone fearing strong women or demonizing gays. Fear of difference and mistrust of complexity are the real weakness. They need to be exposed as such -- and that's when the game stops being defensive. It may not be politically correct, but the Democrats should come out and say it anyway: Republicans are the real sissies.

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