Gay Marriage Backlash
Megan McArdle reflects on the success of Proposition 8 in California and offers a familiar backlash narrative:
I do think, though, that the success of anti-gay-marriage initiatives reinforces something I strongly believe: the issue was pressed too quickly, and in the wrong venue. Using the courts to establish a right to gay marriage made opponents feel threatened, and railroaded. If socially conservative voters hadn’t felt they needed to protect themselves from activist judges, we wouldn’t be seeing these provisions written into state constitutions. Few of them would probably have bothered to vote out legislators who voted for gay marriage five years from now. But with it on the ballot, in front of them, and worries that judges would make the decision unless they did, they shot it down even in California.
In general, courts are the wrong place to press these sorts of claims. The courts were appropriate for civil rights because blacks were literally denied the right to participate in the legislative democratic process. And on a practical level, they worked because a majority of people in the country were more than happy to force civil rights on an unhappy white southern minority. Unfortunately, too many groups have decided that the success of civil rights can be widely applied to circumvent the electorate on issues where there is no public consensus. Now widespread gay marriage seems quite a bit less likely for the near term than it would have been had we attacked the issue legislatively.
The narrative is familiar because it’s often offered as an account of the politics of abortion. But efforts to study the issue empirically, as opposed to just opine from the armchair, never actually adduce evidence of this kind of effect.
That aside, granting the backlash hypothetically, I never quite understand what the upshot of this sort of analysis is. Say you’re living your life with your partner and you want to get married. But then the local legal authorities tell you that you can’t get married. That seems like unfair discrimination to you, so you inquire with an attorney. The attorney says, yes, your state has never allowed a man to be legally wed to another man, but he agrees with you that it’s unfair. And not just unfair, illegal, a violation of your state constitution’s guarantees of equal rights. So you sue! Then the case comes before a judge and the judge thinks, yeah, the local authorities’ action is a violation of the state constitution’s guarantee of equal rights. Is the judge supposed to rule against you even though he thinks your case has merits, offering as his reasoning “it would be counterproductive to the long-term political strategy of the gay rights movement for me to offer the ruling I believe to be correct”? That doesn’t sound right.
And is Gay Rights Central Command suppose to somehow stop you from suing? How would they do that?
The fact is that as best I can tell most gay rights organizations agreed with Megan about this. As of a few years ago, their big idea was to push for what they saw as practical legislative goals — hate crimes laws and an Employment Non-Discrimination Act — to help slowly but surely continue to build legislative support for full equality before the law. But they had no ability to prevent various individuals in Hawaii, Massachusetts, California, and elsewhere from pursuing their legal rights as they saw fit.
92 Responses to “Gay Marriage Backlash”
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November 6th, 2008 at 8:45 am
Agreed. Actually, if you want to make a sophisticated meta-process argument about Prop 8, I think it shouldn’t be about judicial vs. legislative remedies . . .
But about the insanity of allowing voters to amend the state Constitution via a simple majority in a referendum.
November 6th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Megan McArdle recently wrote a post admonishing her readers to vote, while admitting that she could not vote because she, Megan McArdle, forgot to register.
Megan McArdle is the definition of an unserious person.
November 6th, 2008 at 8:52 am
Independent of the question of what the leaders of the gay movement are likely to do about it, is the fact that the above argument about gay marriage seems to reach the limits of how evidence free such arguments are.
If one had suggested ten years ago that by now two states would have full marriage rights for gay couples (I suppose that is jumping the gun for Connecticut by a couple of weeks) that civil unions would be established as the moderate position in other states, and that the acceptance of gay marriage by the young is as thorough as it is, it would have seemed a ridiculous guess. Some of the change in attitudes has been due to more prominence to homosexual issues in the media. But the advances with regard to same-sex marriage have been through the courts. (And as I understand it New York gay couples are free to get married as long as they can get to Massachusetts or Connecticut to have their ceremonies).
Without the Vermont decision it is unlikely we get the Massachusetts decision. Without the Massachusetts decision it is unlikely that the state would have adopted gay marriage through the legislatures (although the attempt to overturn the court ruling was defeated when opponents could not get 50 of 200 legislators to support a referendum).
In other words we have seen a dizzying degree of advancement pushed almost entirely by the courts. And yet we still have the argument that the use of the courts has slowed progress on this issue. 10 years ago as a prediction that might have made sense. But now looking back it seems just ludicrous.
November 6th, 2008 at 8:53 am
speaking as the official spokesperson of gay rights central command, i’d just like to tell megan mcardle to shut her pig-ignorant piehole and not talk about things she doesn’t know anything about.
oh. but then she’d have to close her blog.
oh well–that’s the order from gay rights central command, so it must be obeyed.
November 6th, 2008 at 8:55 am
Just so long as they keep showing the Will and Grace reruns, I’m happy.
It’s Hollywood propaganda but it is funny propaganda
November 6th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Aside from the points made by Matt and others, I don’t understand the logic behind “Few of them would probably have bothered to vote out legislators who voted for gay marriage five years from now.” Why would the people ranting about how same-sex marriage invalidates their own marriages and leads to the downfall of Western civilization be okay with having legislators pass it?
And yes, being able to amend the constitution with a simple majority vote on a referendum is insane. The whole point of a constitution is that it’s supposed to be stable and not easily changed at whim.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:02 am
It’s the segragation argument all over again, isn’t it? The South was getting along to supporting civil rights, in it’s own time, but then all those uppity types starting making a fuss and provoked a backlash. it’s not our fault we’re bigots, it’s your fault for not being understanding of our folkways.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:03 am
“And yes, being able to amend the constitution with a simple majority vote on a referendum is insane.”
Unfortunately, the concept of needing a complex majority vote on a referendum to amend the constitution is maddeningly difficult to define.
—–
I’ll marry Tony Parker if he can keep putting up lines like that.
And where is the backlash over Grunfeld letting Roger Mason Jr go?
November 6th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Tangent
The backlash has gone from merely puritanical to rat-brained. The Arkanasas measure to prohibit unmarried people from adopting is an attack not merely on gays: it’s an attack on orphans. I will guarantee you that 99.9% of its advocates never worked in an orphanage. Kids want to be adopted and don’t farkin’ care about the marital status of any adult so inclined. Arkansans, you’re a disgrace. Shame on you.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:06 am
What are the courts for if not to protect the right of a minority to get equal protection under the law? What seems out of whack here, is how easy California made it to amend the constitution. I am glad the US Constitution is not so easy to amend, what if 50% + 1 voted to take away voting rights and ability to serve in government postions from men. The next year they could take away some other groups rights, until only a small minority could vote and run the government. Seems a bit unstable to allow the document which outlines basic protections to be modified by a simple majority.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:13 am
who taught you to use emdashes? this isn’t just a spelling mistake or laziness — you have to go to real effort to use them, but then you use them incorrectly. it looks stupid. use an endash if you’re going to put spaces around it.
In my second sentence up there, it would have looked weird if i wrote like this — and then this. but that’s exactly what you’re doing.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Unfortunately, the concept of needing a complex majority vote on a referendum to amend the constitution is maddeningly difficult to define.
Such obtuseness is below your standard, Petey. Even Florida managed to figure out how to do it.
Florida.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:17 am
It is particualrly asinine to complain about “judicial activism” in the California context, where the Legislature passed a statute allowing gay marriage, and the governor–ostensibly pro-gay marriage himself–vetoed the statute on the grounds that the issue ought to be decided by the courts first.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:19 am
You’re not on the Atlantic staff, Matt; you don’t have to link to that reactionary twit any more.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Unfortunately, the concept of needing a complex majority vote on a referendum to amend the constitution is maddeningly difficult to define.
Really?
All you’d need to do is to say it needs a 2/3 supemajority, or whatever.
Beyond that, California’s whole referendum policy is generally mad. It would be better to just abolish the whole thing, or to go to a system where amendments to the constitution have to be passed by the legislature before they go to the people for a vote.
Also, I don’t get the backlash argument here. If there hadn’t been a court case, the situation for gay couples in California would be exactly the same as it is now. What exactly has been lost?
November 6th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Megan says: “I do think, though, that the success of anti-gay-marriage initiatives reinforces something I strongly believe: the issue was pressed too quickly, and in the wrong venue.”
Really? Where exactly would the issue of gay rights be without the courts?
Megan thinks we should lobby the legistature. OK, if that had been our only route, gay people would have made absolutely no progress. Any news discussion would have been at the end of a local newscast where the anchors are telling a “funny” story about how some crazy whack-job is lobbying to get passage of “gay” marriage.
There is nothing like a good lawsuit to make people sit up and pay attention to an issue. The lawsuits have driven discussion of the topic of gay rights. The vast majority of people wouldn’t even have thought about the subject without the lawsuits.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:24 am
Re “It is particualrly asinine to complain about “judicial activism” in the California context, where the Legislature passed a statute allowing gay marriage, and the governor–ostensibly pro-gay marriage himself–vetoed the statute ”
————-
I may be wrong but I suspect some interesting photos of Arnold are going to surface in the near future.
David Geffen is such a Beee-aatch. Just ask Hillary.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:25 am
I thought we had this feature in the USA: a few rights are so basic that the majority can’t gang up on you and take them away. We rely on the Judiciary branch to identify and define those rights. Once that happens, as it has done in California, the mob cannot abrogate the rights by amending a constitution or by any other means. I must have dreamed it.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:32 am
NPR ran a bit this morn on the issue. Interviewed a pastor of some predominately African-American megachurch. He was emphatic the nation needed to restrict marriage to a man and a woman due to Biblical teachings. I’m an atheist and am a tad uneducated on the teachings of the Bible. Doesn’t it in various places command restrictions on several types of behavior and personal choice that society nevertheless ignores? Should anyone eat an animal of cloven hoof if adhering to Biblical teachings? Should anyone work on a Sunday? Leaving aside the Old Testament/New Testament debate wouldn’t our society be radically different and far more restrictive in what we permit if we lived a strictly sanctioned Biblical existence? Why do Christian churches presume to pick and choose which behaviors they want our civil laws to address while ignoring others? What would the reception be amongst Baptists and Lutherans if Jews succeeded in getting a state to ban the sale of pork? Not for legitimate safety or medical dietary concerns but because THEIR Biblical teachings commanded it? Deuteronomy’s Chapter Fourteen, Verse Eight clearly states, “The pig, because it has a split hoof but doesn’t chew the cud, is unclean to you: of their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch.” How is this Biblical command any less valid than Biblical prohibitions against same sex marriage? I don’t understand. Which of the following admonitions do Christians want us to follow in addition to the ban on gay marriage?:
Leviticus 20:13
“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them”
Exo 21:17
And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death.
Deut 21:18-21
If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die
Lev 20:10
And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
Lev 24:16
And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the LORD, shall be put to death.
Josh 1:18
Whosoever he be that doth rebel against thy commandment, and will not hearken unto thy words in all that thou commandest him, he shall be put to death: only be strong and of a good courage.
Exo 31:15
Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.
Deuteronomy 22:21-24
“But if the thing is true, that the tokens of virginity were not found in the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father’s house, and the men of the city shall stone her to death with stones
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oh? You wouldn’t advocate strict adherence to any of the above? Why? They’re in the Bible. Of course even discussing this assumes our laws have anything to do with following religious edicts. Why in the hell does a discussion of civil laws even include a nod to religion? Why does NPR care what the pastor of a black megachurch has to say about gay marriage unless it’s his views as a single, private citizen and not as a pastor? His Goddamn views as a pastor don’t matter. And now, per Lev 24:16, you can proceed with stoning me to death.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:35 am
So under which conservative rubric — jeopardy, perversity, or futility — does “backlash” fall? I suppose its a form of perversity.
Megan McCardle — peddling the same old shop worn conservative tropes. What a snore.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Megan “2×4″ McCardle, the libertarian who never met a liberty she wasn’t willing for someone else to sacrifice!
November 6th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Re: the potential for a backlash, I think it’s worth noting that in Canada there was no such backlash when two appellate courts (Ontario and Québec) ruled that preventing gay marriage violated the constitution. In fact, the ruling Liberals turned right around and introduced a bill to Parliament legalizing gay marriage. It was generally felt that the judicial rulings had put an end to the debate, and only a small fringe minority thought it would be appropriate to go back on the courts’ ruling.
So I don’t think that judicial intervention in social policy will, in and of itself, provoke a backlash. Mind you, the conservative movement in the US has a long history of building political opposition to judicial rulings it doesn’t like, beginning with de-segregation. So the social context is quite different from Canada’s.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Apparently there’s some question as to whether Prop 8 was a legitimate amendment to the California constitution–see:
http://www.alternet.org/sex/106161/
November 6th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Steve, the reason NPR cares about what some blowhard ignorant pastor thinks is due to the fact that he has the word “Reverend” before his name, something Christopher Hitchens has pointed out.
“Jerry Falwell’s foul rantings prove you can get away with anything if you have “Reverend” in front of your name.”
http://www.slate.com/id/2166337/
November 6th, 2008 at 10:02 am
It’s unfair, but the standard the gay rights movement is being held to is the remarkably well-coordinated legal/political strategy the NAACP used to push for desegregation.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:03 am
McCardle is a charlatan and in this case a liar too. The legislature passed a bill allowing gay marriage and The governor vetoed it saying he wanted the courts to decide.
McCardle is beneath you Matt. You demean yourself by linking to her.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Look, it lost by a little. Structurally, the problem was that tons of first-time voters, largely Black and Hispanic, came into the process for the sole (and most wonderful) purpose of voting for Obama, but there was insufficient attention to the overall attitudes of those voters. The most evil-genius-progressive thing to do would have been *not* to bring in those new voters, who in any event weren’t necessary for the CA presidential vote, *or* bring them in and work hard on their cultural conservatism. Instead, my sense is that they were brought in as-is.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:12 am
The flip side to being able to change the constitution with a simple majority vote is that it is possible to change it back with a simple majority vote. Does anyone think that in 10 years this amendment will still be there? I find it unlikely.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:24 am
What the population is clearly saying is that so-called “gay marriage” is a phony, contrived, ridiculous issue that is being pursued by selfish people for no good reason.
The problem with gay marriage is that it defies biology. If you have a problem with this point, then there is something wrong with you. You are trying to deny your own biology. Get real.
Gays, like other people, have the right to advance their merits. They have the right to live in peace. They do not, however, have the right to transform society; while sociey has every right to sustain itself. Nor does it have any obligation to respond to every interest group that asserts that it has been “victimized.”
But non-gays who support or purport to support “gay rights” are more interesting. Apparently they are out to prove that they are not one of the degraded, evil “homophobes” or “rednecks” that oppose gay marriage. And by so doing, they do not assert their moral virtue but rather deny their common humanity with those “homophobes” and “rednecks.”
And let’s talk turkey about “hate.” If “homophobe” is part of your vocabulary, then YOU are a hatemonger. And we had better hope the ad homenem comes to an end – for there is no “liberal immunity” in this arena.
We have serious problems in this country: the economy, energy, healthcare. These need to be fixed and gays are entitled to full participation and benefits from these solutions. But if an overriding obsession with gay marriage and other PC esoterica diverts from these solutions, then those who trumpet these issues will themselves have very tough and very fair questions to answer.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:29 am
I’ve noticed that MM has gradually inched closer to William Kristol territory, in that she is wrong about everything. This, consequentley, should be very good for her career.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Of course this has to be a court issue!! Almost by definition, civil and minority rights should not be referendum issues. The role of government is to protect its citizens… not protect those in the majority.
If minorities are not present in large enough numbers to protect their own rights on a referendum, that does not mean they should be stripped of rights.
As an example, interracial marriage did not garner popular support in a major poll until 1997… and that was even with years of the electorate being exposed to it. Should we have waited for ballot measures that could have passed to allow that to happen. Of course not.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:47 am
But non-gays who support or purport to support “gay rights” are more interesting. Apparently they are out to prove that they are not one of the degraded, evil “homophobes” or “rednecks” that oppose gay marriage. And by so doing, they do not assert their moral virtue but rather deny their common humanity with those “homophobes” and “rednecks.”
No need for scare quotes around homophobes or rednecks, dear.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:49 am
My hunch is that the only reason prop 8 passed is because a fair number of non-wingers felt that the courts did an end-run around public opinion (as expressed in prop 22).
This, by itself, was not a problem as long as people felt marriage was a private matter between consenting adults. Then the “Yes on 8″ side successfully used Gavin Newsom’s comments, the grade school field trip to a Lesbian wedding and a Massachusetts court decision on teaching gay marriage in schools, to highlight that the ruling may have social consequences.
I don’t think anybody believes this is anything but a temporary setback.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:03 am
I’d say the backlash is going to be against the anti-gay side, as they overreached legally on the initiative: voiding 18,000 already executed same-sex marriages is going to be hard for the CA Supreme Court to swallow. This has a good chance of being struck down, IMHO.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:06 am
If I voted in California I’d have voted against this reactionary initiative. I support gay marriage wholeheartedly. That said, I don’t think the McArdle point is crazy.
Is the judge supposed to rule against you even though he thinks your case has merits, offering as his reasoning “it would be counterproductive to the long-term political strategy of the gay rights movement for me to offer the ruling I believe to be correct”? That doesn’t sound right.
The judge is supposed to say “it’s controversial in our society whether this is a right, and for the courts to insist that it is in the face of this controversy is bad for democracy”
is Gay Rights Central Command suppose to somehow stop you from suing?
No, but many cases of this sort (not this one apparently) are “test cases” deliberately solicited by advocacy organizations, and the claim is that this is a bad strategy. (Wasn’t that Obama’s point in the infamous SF Chronicle interview?)
November 6th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Just wanted to say great post steve duncan.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:20 am
David, since when did “controversial in our society” become the an same thing as “ambiguous under the law as it is written”? To suggest some equivalence there is absurd.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:41 am
This was extremely unfortunate, and I’m actually surprised that 8 passed. I actually don’t think that this would have been able to happen without the poisoning of the public discourse by the pernicious Republican “activist judges” trope.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Opponents of gay rights via the courts ignore the fact that in California, activists did just what they wanted. Equal-access legislation passed the legislature, but Gov. Schwartzenegger vetoed it, saying that the courts should rule on it. So it went to court. If people like McArdle have a problem with it, they should be criticizing the governor.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:48 am
And let’s talk turkey about “hate.” If “homophobe” is part of your vocabulary, then YOU are a hatemonger. And we had better hope the ad homenem comes to an end – for there is no “liberal immunity” in this arena.
I love how the conservative meme now is if you accuse someone of racism or homophobia (even if you have good reason to do so), you are the one who are being racist and hate-mongering. How counterintuitive. And I loove how Ransom refers to gay marriage as “PC esoterica”. Yes, Ransom, gays want to get married because they want to be “politically correct”. Honestly, are you really serious?
November 6th, 2008 at 11:48 am
The most evil-genius-progressive thing to do would have been *not* to bring in those new voters, who in any event weren’t necessary for the CA presidential vote, *or* bring them in and work hard on their cultural conservatism
Right, because Blacks and Hispanics are peons. White progressives are capable of controlling their electoral turnout, and indoctrinating them (though it will take hard work!)
The problem with gay marriage is that it defies biology
Since adoption defies biology as well, you should have no objection to a gay couple adopting, then. Anyway, the 30% illegitimacy rate (or whatever) shows that biology defies marriage.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Gays, like other people, have the right to advance their merits. They have the right to live in peace. They do not, however, have the right to transform society; while sociey has every right to sustain itself. Nor does it have any obligation to respond to every interest group that asserts that it has been “victimized.”
Excuse me, sir, but gay marriage by definition can only apply to gay persons. It does not transform the status of any other marriage any more than the existence of interracial couples does. The right for gays to become married is the right to form a state-recognized legal contract with another person, and to receive state-defined benefits with a partner of your choosing. What is more fundamental to the concept of being allowed to live in peace?
It is this kind of confusion that does quite a bit of the work in justifying removal of the scare quote from the descriptor: homophobe.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Now that the NY state government has gone all democrat maybe they’ll move ahead on legalization. We could use the boost to the economy.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
since when did “controversial in our society” become the an same thing as “ambiguous under the law as it is written”? To suggest some equivalence there is absurd.
Not what I said. If the law is unambiguous then of course the judge should do what it says, damn the public views. But how many cases where the law is unambiguous make it to the supreme court? How many make it to court at all? The point is that when the law is ambiguous and public understanding of the relevant concepts is contested (is the death penalty “cruel and unusual?”) it is better for the legislature to decide the contest than for a judge to do so. Maybe you disagree but “absurd” is a little much.
In any case I’m making a general point about the type of argument; I don’t know enough about this case to know whether it fits here. Bruce’s interesting comment suggests it may not.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
“And on a practical level, they worked because a majority of people in the country were more than happy to force civil rights on an unhappy white southern minority.”
That ain’t the way it happened.
McMegan should read MLK’s Letter From a Birmingham jail about ten thousand more times. Particularly this part:
November 6th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Dammit, I think I merit a link on this one…
November 6th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Lon’s comment at 2 is spot-on. McCardle’s thesis wouldn’t be all that objectionable if she was right that the legislative process is better than the judicial for gay rights.
This whole debate is actually pretty developed in legal academia. On one side, you have people like Michael Klarman, whose backlash thesis says the desegregation of the South was well underway at the time of Brown, and that the Court’s decision there pushed progress from gradual, accepted change to the violent upheaval that marked the 60s. The more respectable William Eskridge, another backlash theorist, is not as daft as Klarman, but has always pushed to acceptance of same-sex civil unions as a necessary innoculation against subsequent anti-gay marriage backlash.
McCardle is stupid for exactly the same reason Klarman is wrong: a failure to compare her thesis to facts on the ground. Homophobes will NEVER back down on this issue until something as game-changing as a court decision forces a generational fight that they end up losing, just as Southerners would NEVER have integrated their schools if it weren’t for Brown and the unrest it unleashed.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Lon’s comment is at 3, not 2.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Listen, I understand that lots of people don’t like same-sex marriage and that fact makes it difficult to pursue a policy agenda, but unwise to use the courts to push an unpopular, blah blah blah.
I say to those who oppose same-sex marriage: “TOO GODDAMN BAD!”
It’s wrong to deny gays and lesbians the full rights of straight Americans.
The. End.
Abortion is complicated. Foreign policy is complicated. Taxes are complicated.
Gay Rights are NOT complicated. They are essential.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
“We have serious problems in this country: the economy, energy, healthcare. These need to be fixed and gays [blah blah blah].”
Exactly. Let’s not waste the electorate’s time bringing ridiculous intitiatives to amend the state constitution to take away people’s rights. Dimwit.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Prop 8 got majority white voter support, but blacks voted 70% against it. Also, both Biden and Obama came out against gay marriage, so maybe the result is no surprise.
Voters should decide this issue, not courts. In most states, the constitution can’t be amended by a simple majority referendum vote.
November 6th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
“Prop 8 got majority white voter support, but blacks voted 70% against it.”
Strike that, reverse it.
November 6th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
“Voters should decide this issue, not courts.”
And if we had left the voters to decide civil rights issues in the South, how far along do you think integration would be about now?
November 6th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
I was deeply distressed that Prop 8 passed. It was a very sad day in that respect.
But to ignore the backlash effect because it’s uncomfortbale to us progressives is silly. The backlash effect is real.
Here in Oregon you could not draw a clearer line between the Multnomah Co. council suddenly allowing gay marraige (Gavin Newsome style) and the banning of gay marraige statewide shortly thereafter.
It was a clear, unambiguous backlash and to pretend otherwise does the gay rights movement zero good.
November 6th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
“But efforts to study the issue empirically, as opposed to just opine from the armchair, never actually adduce evidence of this kind of effect.”
Use your eyes and common sense. Again, it does no good for a movement to deny the reality of a backlash. To eventually win we have to have a cold hard view of this reality, then overcome it.
November 6th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
“I say to those who oppose same-sex marriage: “TOO GODDAMN BAD!”
Too bad for all of us that care about something other than gay marriage that the tactics–not merely the goals–of the gay rights movement may have given Bush the White House in 2004.
November 6th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
70% of the evangelical Black church vote supporting Barak Obama ALSO supported Prop 8.
Barak Obama refused to be photographed with Gavin Newsom.
Joe Biden told America in the VP debate that he and Barak Obama AGREED with Sarah Palin, in opposing gay marriage and keeping the definition of “marriage” as between a man and a woman.
Andrew Sullivan is probably in counseling at this very moment dealing with the fact that Obama/Biden do not accept that Andrew is anybody’s WIFE.
Choices have consequences, Yglesias.
Due respect.
November 6th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
“Too bad for all of us that care about something other than gay marriage that the tactics–not merely the goals–of the gay rights movement may have given Bush the White House in 2004.”
And the tactics of the civil rights campaign in the 60’s, culminating in the Civil Rights Act, lost the Democrats the South for more than a generation. Without that, Nixon probably doesn’t win and the modern conservative movement as we know it isn’t born. Now are you happy, Martin Luther King Jr.?
But in fact people’s fundamental rights can and should never wait for a convenient time. That time never comes.
November 6th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
I wish gun rights advocates would follow Megan’s advice. Apparently conservatives think that some rights should be adjudicated by courts, and others should not.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Stripping the tax-exempt status of the LDS by proposition? Why the heck not?
In all honesty, the No-on-8 campaign was insular, disorganized and lacked basic courage in advertising and the willingness to make their case on the ground. While its SF organizers were preaching to the converted, the Mormon and megachurch ground forces were spread out across the Bay Area.
Also, McArdle is a professional over-entitled dimwit.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Ian @11, opinions differ on the proper use of em dashes. The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage recommends em dashes surrounded by spaces. This was also the in-house style used by the small newspaper I worked for. It’s a matter of taste, and not a matter of right or wrong usage.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
I do hope and expect that the ACLU lawsuit against Prop 8 will succeed. But should it not succeed, perhaps the time has come for new religions to be established which endorse as a sacrament marriage by two loving people regardless of their gender. Any couples….male-male, male-female, female-female… could be married in these churches. Would not then interference by the state against marriages performed by these new institutions be an attack on freedom of religion, a violation of the First Amendment? How could the state legitimately uphold one church’s restrictive view of marriage against another’s more inclusive one? There need be no elaborate theology for these churches, nor would members who marry need to remain members to remain married. But hopefully these new churches would develop into spiritual homes for persons who clearly are rejected and abused by many of the so-called churches that exist today. Why let the mongers of fear and hatred and bigotry decide for our whole society what religion is and what it is not?
November 6th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Seems like they could fund a PR movement at the same time…
November 6th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
pseudonymous @60: While its SF organizers were preaching to the converted, the Mormon and megachurch ground forces were spread out across the Bay Area.
So why then did all but one of the Bay Area counties reject Prop 8, by fairly hefty margins? The main support for Prop 8 came from the Central Valley and the southern part of the state, not the Bay Area.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
@62, they’ve existed for years… there are several religions and churches which allow for equal marriage, but the State does not recognize those marriages, “freedom of religion” be damned.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Rich,
The Islamic faith recognizes both polygamous and consanguinary marriages: do you think that the state should also recognize those?
November 6th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I support gay marriage.
I note, however, that the same logic that validates same-sex marriage, also validates incest-marriage and polygamy.
If you disagree, please explain why you wouldn’t have the right to marry your mother or have both a husband and a wife.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
In regards to taking the matter of Prop 8 to the California Supreme Court, the court should actually feel obligated to act swiftly and decisively and strike down Prop 8. Our California State Constitution is quite clear that any amendment which alters existing language therein must be voted on and receive a 2/3 by the State Legislature.
This is part of the Constitution explicitly to prevent a very small part of the population — in this case only 1/8th — from altering it any time they see something in California they don’t like.
If the Supreme Court does not strike down Prop 8, they not only fail in their duties but also set a terrible precedent. Next year, the LDS-sponsored proposition could be “all teachers employed by the state must be born-again Christians.”
Would anyone telling us to stay out of court today argue to let that proposition stand and give it 10-20 years before really tackling the issue again? Would anyone telling us to stay out of court just concede that “a majority” 1/8th of the population of California had legal standing without such a rule having gone through the legislature?
Prop 8 is infinitely bigger than same-sex marriage and the religious right knows exactly how big and far-reaching a precedent has just been set.
November 6th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
So why then did all but one of the Bay Area counties reject Prop 8, by fairly hefty margins?
Santa Clara (South Bay) and Contra Costa (East Bay) were only 45/55. I’m just reporting what I heard from the ground in SF and Silicon Valley, from people in a position to know (and who compared it to the Dems in 2004) but the campaign went from early complacency to in-fighting and insularity once the LDS moved in, and one thing you can say about Mormons is that they’re not afraid to put boots on the groun in potentially unfriendly territory. Andrew Sullivan quotes a reader who contrasts the organization, and it bears out what I was hearing.
Would it have made a difference in the Central Valley? Possibly not. But if the California Supreme Court strikes down Prop 8, the No campaigners shouldn’t take it as a vindication of how they handled this.
November 6th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
There are a number of instances where I think the liberal legal industrial complex pursues cases on flimsy Constitutional grounds.
But you have to find the argument of the people suing to overturn Prop 8 – that you can’t adopt an amendment contrary to the letter and spirit of the California State Constitution – without at least a legislative super-majority compelling.
It would be nice to see a Michelle Obama brief on behalf of the plaintiffs.
November 6th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
In my list of churches in my previous comment (in moderation), I left off the Metropolitan Community Church, which is one of the biggest examples of a gay-friendly denomination. Sorry about the omission.
November 6th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
I agree with pseudonymous in NC: from everything I saw and heard of the No on 8 campaign (from a distance, because I didn’t get involved beyond donating money, so I realize I’m part of the problem here)… it was a very crappy campaign.
It seemed to have been planned on an entirely theoretical basis — here’s what we want to say, and since we’re right, people will understand it — without much regard for what the opposition was doing, and without any significant outreach to minority groups, or to conservative religious groups. There should’ve been a clear, strong, specific response to the ridiculous lies the Yes crowd was spreading. There’s no doubt in my mind that at least two of those lies (”they’re going to sue churches and force them to marry gays” and “Obama supports Prop 8″) were major factors in the votes of many people who are fairly conservative but not insane bigots, and who could’ve been reached.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
“But should it not succeed, perhaps the time has come for new religions to be established which endorse as a sacrament marriage by two loving people regardless of their gender. Any couples….male-male, male-female, female-female… could be married in these churches.”
This may’ve already been noted by the time this is posted, but such churches already exist.
The church to which I belong (the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica) has been performing such marriage sacraments for decades… long before same-sex marriages were recognized by our state, and certainly during the period in which same-sex marriages were not recognized by the state. And the Unitarian Universalist Church will continue conducting marriage sacraments for loving same-sex couples long past Tuesday’s result. If the State of California doesn’t like it, that’s too damn bad.
http://www.uusm.org/
Patrick Meighan
Culver City, CA
November 6th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Ransom,
You are causing my cock to throb.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
“In all honesty, the No-on-8 campaign was insular, disorganized and lacked basic courage in advertising and the willingness to make their case on the ground. While its SF organizers were preaching to the converted, the Mormon and megachurch ground forces were spread out across the Bay Area..”
The first question to come to my mind when I read online criticism of No On 8’s volunteer efforts is to wonder just how much personal effort the poster invested in defeating No On 8.
I’m a straight guy who’s been volunteering once or twice a week for No On 8 since July. It probably worked out to be about 20 or 25 shifts. And the truth of the matter is that the No On 8 campaign simply did not have access to the numbers of volunteers available to Yes On 8. Our side viewed this fight as very, very important. Their side viewed this fight as honest-to-goodness Armageddon. The Yes on 8 folks were genuinely convinced (at the base volunteer level, at least) that defeat of Prop 8 would result in their churches actually, truly being sued out of existence. And so their horrified base committed its time and energy accordingly.
Now, for sure, No On 8 spent months and months recruiting volunteers for as well. We probably ended up with tens of thousands of ‘em. Talented, committed, politically-savvy folks whose sheer numbers would be impressive by almost any measure… except in comparison to the army of folks we were up against.
Their side had enough manpower to put boots on the ground in every single neighborhood in the state, and to knock on almost every accessible door in the state. But our side had to make some choices. What our side evidently chose to do was:
a) phone bank, rather than knock-and-talk [in order to maximize the number of voter contacts possible per volunteer hour], and…
b) deploy in each region’s most gay-friendly areas, rather than the least gay-friendly areas [in order to maximize turnout amongst our base, in hopes that it'd push us over the finish line first].
Anyone reading this who disagrees with the above choices made with regard to volunteer deployment, well, you certainly are entitled to your opinions. But unless you, yourself, were also putting in the volunteer hours to defeat Prop 8 back when it mattered, well, I myself have no particular personal interest in entertaining those opinions. And I *really* have little patience for those who blame Prop 8’s passage on those who’ve devoted the past several months of their lives to defeating it, rather than on the great multitudes who worked so hard to pass Prop 8, and on the even greater multitudes who were sympathetic to our cause but who stood by and did nothing, under the premise that their $25 annual check to HRC was contribution enough, or that it was far more important to spend their weekends in Reno knocking on doors for a political candidate who submarined our cause by declaring that he does not believe in gay marriage, and that marriage is for a man or a woman. By all means, let’s exempt those folks and crucify Geoff Kors.
Patrick Meighan
Culver City, CA
November 6th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
“I agree with pseudonymous in NC: from everything I saw and heard of the No on 8 campaign (from a distance, because I didn’t get involved beyond donating money, so I realize I’m part of the problem here)…”
Yes, you are.
I spent every Thursday night since July trying to recruit people like you to get involved, doing In Person Volunteer Recruiting in West Hollywood for No On 8.
Thanks for donating money, but your check wasn’t enough. We needed your time.
People who don’t bother to get off their asses to fight for their civil rights have little cause to complain about the competence of those who do the fighting in their stead.
I hope the next time that the civil rights of Californians is up for popular consideration, you can find a few frickin’ hours to chip in for the cause.
Patrick Meighan
Culver City, CA
November 6th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
“from everything I saw and heard of the No on 8 campaign (from a distance, because I didn’t get involved beyond donating money, so I realize I’m part of the problem here)… it was a very crappy campaign.”
I wish you could read your words from the eyes of those who did get involved and see how crappy it makes you look.
For the record, I have my differences with some of the campaign’s tactics. But I’m not a professional political strategist (neither are you, I’m 100% sure), and so I can’t be sure: maybe they worked and we just fell short. Regardless, I knew that the helpful thing for me to do was not to debate tactics but to volunteer, so I did. The idea of you sitting on your ass, saying, “Man, they’re running a crappy campaign” and not actually working to help is not endearing, to say the least.
November 7th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Point of order: Someone said above that Biden and Obama were for Prop 8. Not true.
Biden said that he would vote against Prop 8 if he lived in CA. Obama said that, altho blah blah blah marriage between a man and woman, Prop 8 was a bad idea.
Yes. Obama was milquetoast on the subject.
November 7th, 2008 at 12:15 am
I’ve read several times before that the original Hebrew meaning of this passage is something more like,
“If a man lie with any person, as he would with a companion, both of them have committed an abomination.”
In other words, that the prohibition was against having sex without love, which was the kind of thing regularly going on in those wild towns of Sodom and Gammora; this seems reasonable especially as the story of Jonothan and David in the Bible is a homosexual romance.
However, the Leviticus translation was altered during the Inquisition as part of the movement to get coupled gay priests out of the church.
November 7th, 2008 at 1:58 am
Patrick,
I’ll simply convey what was related to me: that the No-on-8 people in SF were very angry at volunteers heading out of state to work for the Obama campaign (something that your comment about ‘knocking on doors in Reno’ somewhat backs up); that plenty of young gay men couldn’t give a fuck about the marriage issue, and that those who did were still more comfortable preaching to the converted in the Castro or Mission but not so willing to take the Caltrain to Sunnyvale and Mountain View; that in parts of the South Bay, unaffiliated pro-equality people showed up to vote, saw the LDS ground operation in full force without any contradictory voices, went home, made up signs and came back.
This was all provided as explanation after-the-fact, on election night, so I couldn’t really jump on a plane and fly across the country to make a difference.
I have worked for losing campaigns that did the right things in times when the popular mood was against them, but I also know a shitty top-down campaign from the stench that emanates from it, so while I appreciate that you are completely fucking gutted, now might be the time to ditch the moribund, HRC-led ‘don’t say “gay”‘ strategy for 2010, when you can simultaneously restore marriage equality and ban the Mormons. (The latter is a great American tradition.)
November 7th, 2008 at 7:46 am
hope that you keep reporting and following up on this issue. I signed the petition because I can’t think of anything that is more important to the long-term health of our country, our environment, and our economy than a smart transportation policy, and especially
November 7th, 2008 at 8:48 am
Marty,
Homosexual acts were condemned by Christianity from the beginning, and have never been accepted outside of a few heretical sects like the Carpocratians. This doesn’t mean the state should not recognize gay marriage, but it does speak to the moral issue.
We have texts of Leviticus that predate the Inquisition, you know. And the Epistle of St. Jude explicitly prohibits the pursuit of ’strange flesh’. You can’t claim that that was ‘mistranslated’ by the Inquisition.
November 7th, 2008 at 10:52 am
You know, any of you in CA could put out a ballot initiative to change the ballot initiative process. I would not be surprised if it passed. There has to be some smart CAians who could come up with a reasonable process.
And Megan is one of the reasons I stopped subscribing to the Atlantic.
November 19th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Politics makes strange bedfellows, indeed:
The CA initiative and referendum process was created during the PROGRESSIVE era in order to give citizens some control over out of order state governments. Now we have the spectacle of so-called “progressives” undermining this citizen power. Happened already last year in Oregon where initiatives were made more difficult by a Democratic state legislature. Now we have comments here advocated further weakening of citizens rights.
Joni Mitchell was right; you don’t know what you’ve got till its gone.
Silly, silly, silly. Civil Rights advocates calling for reducing Civil Rights.
The backlash is quite real – see the reference about to Multnomah County’s marriage ‘cram-down’ leading directly to a state referendum against gay marriage.
If the gay protesters continue to use intimidation and violence in their demonstrations and attacks on churches you should expect to see a different type of backlash – self-defense. This would be a terribly divisive thing to our civil society, so I hope saner heads begin to prevail in protests. Otherwise, the spectacle of burning churches and gunfire will turn back our society’s growth of tolerance. More divisive tactics will backfire…
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