President Bush sends a little conservative compassion in Andrew Sullivan’s general direction:

Paraphrasing the president’s remarks, Mr. DeMint said: “He said he was not going to condemn anyone, that the need to have various types of agreement does not mean we need to redefine marriage. ‘If people want to have contracts on hospital visitation and benefits, that’s O.K.’ ”

Responding to questions on Sunday about the Time article, Claire Buchan, a White House spokeswoman, said:

“States, through their contract law, have the ability to address some of the issues that advocates of gay marriage are raising, such as hospital visitation rights and insurance benefits and the ability to pass on one’s estates to another. What the president has said is that he strongly believes in the sanctity of marriage, so that’s what he is saying.”

So, that’s what he is saying. Along with madman, terror, madman, September 11, threat, madman, terror, madman, war, what’s the difference?

Conservative groups are lobbying the White House to endorse a constitutional amendment defining marriage as something that can take place only between a man and a woman. At the same time, the White House wants to appear empathetic to gays who tell of hospitals forbidding them to visit partners on their deathbeds. [Emphasis added]

We think even Andrew Sullivan, the Maginot line of support for Bush in the homosexual community, isn’t going to be fooled much longer by this little production. How does that old line go again? Fool me once, shame on, shame on, the fool can’t get fooled again. Right, something like that.