I view the definition of marriage different from legal arrangements that enable people to have rights. And I strongly believe that marriage ought to be defined as between, a union between a man and a woman. Now, having said that, states ought to be able to have the right to pass … laws that enable people to you know, be able to have rights, like others.

So, nobody to whom you might have to give half your worldy goods after some future disagreement?

[...] Cheney and Bush diverge in their view of the gay-lesbian questions. Early in the campaign, Cheney said that he believed any gay should have the identical rights of non-gays. Bush travels in that direction, but balks at marriage, which he holds to be a social institution devised to unite man and woman.

• The proposed constitutional amendment supported by Bush reads "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups." (emphasis mine; the wording works against the recognition of alternative arrangements like civil unions)
• Bush's favorite justices on the Supreme Court are Scalia and Thomas, who dissented when the court struck down homosexual sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas.
• When campaigning for Governor of Texas, Bush had promised to veto any attempt to repeal Texas' gay-only sodomy law, calling it "a symbolic gesture of traditional values". Note that such laws have effects beyond criminalizing sodomy; before Lawrence v. Texas, they were cited to support arguments for denying rights to gay people.

[...] the argument we are having about international relations is the same argument we are having about domestic affairs, just on a larger scale. It's a conflict between two value systems. One is based on a presumption of a world in which individuals and nations should be self-reliant and free to develop their own capacities - forming voluntary associations when they want - without being overly coerced by national or global elites. The other is based on the presumption of a crowded world, which emphasizes that no individual or nation can go off and do as it pleases, but should work instead within governing institutions that establish norms and provide security.

[...] How do we conceive of an international order in the post-9/11 world? Bush, the conservative, conceives of a flexible, organic, spontaneous order. Kerry, the liberal, conceives of a more rationalist, planned and managed order.

... the United States was targeted, hit, or violated on its own soil for the first time in almost two centuries--since 1812 to be exact ...

Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges, years ago, said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights.

The question is simply this: can a negro whose ancestors were imported into this country and sold as slaves become a member of the political community ... ? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.

The Constitution does not define "person" in so many words. ... But in nearly all these instances, the use of the word is such that it has application only post-natally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible pre-natal application. ... All this, ... persuades us that the word "person," as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.