A new Newsweek poll shows that despite the controversy in San Francisco and start of gay marriages in Massachusetts, the majority of Americans approve of some form of legal recognition for same-sex couples. But is “despite” the right word? Or should I say the majority supports this recognition “because of” the controversy? For years, anti-gay marriage groups have been promoting their caricature of gays as depraved, sex-crazed, diseased freaks. They claimed that allowing these creatures to marry would lead to a corruption of society and traditional marriage. But now that actual gays are getting actual marriages, people see that they’re the same as everyone else. They look just like straight people, they act just like straight people. Anyone who saw pictures from San Francisco, or has seen pictures from Massachusetts, knows what I’m talking about. There are no men in leather leading each other by a leash. There are, however, professional middle-aged men and women. And, despite the predictions of society’s collapse from anti-gay marriage groups, heterosexual marriage appears stable, and society is yet to fall.
Am I right? Will the legalization of gay marriage turn public opinion in favor of it and lead to the fall of anti-gay marriage groups?
Not yet. Until the laws are accepted at the Federal level (and signed by Congress, not just ruled on by the Supreme Court) there is still “a last line in the sand” that those opposed can rally around.
If the Supreme Court overturns a law forbidding gay marriage, you’ll have the same situation you have with Roe v. Wade, where a finding can constantly be smacked around like a political hockey puck, and the groups hold on to the hope that with enough zeal, patience, and lobbying cash, eventually the finding will be overturned.
So, it depends on the next steps. If other states begin to recognize gay marriages, then the Federal government will have to choose whether or not to recognize it. I predict that if President Bush is re-elected, he won’t have anything to fear, and will be able to press for an Amendment to ban it. Such an Amendment would have to pass in the states, but it would also have to pass muster with the courts.
The real trouble is if an Amendment passes, but then the Courts overturn it. The perception that the Court acted to snatch away the will of the people would be a powerful seed for protest.
The Courts can’t overturn an amendment. But, also, if Bush is reelected, he won’t have any reason to press for an amendment to ban it. He won’t need to pander for votes anymore.
I sincerely doubt it. I think it would be a lot more like Loving v. Virginia, in that there’d be a lot of furor for a couple years, and then the fuss would die down and a decade later people will wonder why it was ever even a question.
Several states have already passed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, and more are headed that way (including MA). AFAIK, there has never been a [state-wide or larger] vote in favor of gay marriage in the US. I don’t think the country is ready for it, and we’ll see more and more state amendments passed as a result of the MA court ruling.
Not to chage the subject, but on our local news, they showed a demonstration by the Unitarian Universalist Church (west side).
Some eldery man was saying no one chooses this, all you need is to educate people.
They didn’t show any opposing protests if there were any.
I think a court decision in favor of gay marriage would be much stronger then Roe v. Wade. It’s one thing to try and prevent people from marrying, but its another to work to overturn marriages that have already been made legal. I doubt the “preservation of marriage” arguement, for example, would play as well once gay couples have already been married, and passing an amendment would effectivly void the marriages of several thousand happy couples. On the other hand, if groups tried to exempt already married couples from the amendment (with a grandfather clause type thing), then they’d appear to be willing to compromise, and their sincerity would be in question.
Which isnt to say that groups won’t still try, but I think their arguements would get a lot less sympathy from Joe Voter.
Of course, with the first legal gay marriage taking place today, we’ll get to find out if this is infact the case
That’s right, Salviati. Which is exactly why the Massachusetts Supreme Court set the timetables it did, in a bad faith effort to prevent legislators from making any changes until it was too late.
I am open to reasonable civil unions, open to heterosexual and homosexual couples alike. I think a lot of people are prepared to accept such a commonsense approach to people’s householding arrangements. But I don’t think the country is ready for gay marriage. Recent political events are proving that out.
I would guess that if it becomes legal, it will eventually become more accepted. Would anyone disagree that, say, anti-women’s-vote or anti-black-vote or anti-death-penalty stances have declined in countries since the legislation has been passed?
Sadly, I don’t think it will, at least not very quickly at all; on failing to see their specific predictions come true (no slide towards legalisation of paedophilia, human/canine marriage; no fire and brimstone falling from the heavens), they will pick out some other evils (regardless if they were present all along) and blame them on the changes.
Not many people change their minds readily on such emotive issues and some things only change for real as the intolerant, set-in-their-ways people grow old and die, replaced by younger generations for whom the new system is just another part of the background (of course, it is not at all unlikely that the newer generations will become set in their own (different) ways).
I couldn’t help but contrast the groups last night on TV – the estaticly happy faces and cheering crowds of those getting married and their supporters vs. the angry, vengeful faces of those opposing.
As someone said, if a consitutional amendment is passed banning gay marriage, it will be the first time a serious legal trend was started to institutionalize and increase discrimination towards a special group.
It is unlikley that SCOTUS would nationalize gay marriage, even a liberal SCOTUS. Determining who can and cannot be married in an individual state has historically been left to the states themselves.
What is more likely is that SCOTUS will at some point in the future strike all laws which bar recognition of gay marriages performed in other states as “invidious discrimination” that targets a certain group illegally. The result of such an action would be that gay marriages performed in states like Massachusetts would become portable – you could be married there and move to Texas and still have the state (and probably Federal government) recognize your marital status – but that no new states would be compelled to perform them. This is similar to the situation that exists with heterosexual marriage, where certain states have rules not present in other states, such as stricter limitations on cousin weddings, but still recognize marriages from other states which could not be legally performed in said state.
So a gay couple couldn’t get married in Texas, but if they got married in Massachusetts, then Texas would have to recognize their new legal arrangement.
He would be stupid to. It would do nothing but burn political capital; the amendment will never pass, not unless he can muster an 80-seat majority in the Senate for the GOP. While Democratic senators might have voted for the paper tiger of the DOMA as a bit of electoral song and dance in 1996, you’re not going to get them to vote for a truly hateful piece of work in 2006.
Already there are enough Democrats who’ve publicly stated they will vote “no” to kill the Hate Amendment. On top of that, there are a handful of Republicans who will vote “no.” This amendment is as dead as the Reagan Life Amendment, only its sponsors don’t realize that now.
Within 20 years, gay marriages will be recognized, but not performed, in every state in the Union. Within 50, they will be performed in every state of the union.
Good God, this is a sad statement. Pick up a copy of the Constitution sometime.
The New Republic had an excellent article that pointed out that while the pro-choice cause has been harder to argue for since legalization, the pro-marriage cause will become easier. Why? It’s all about the TV.
Prior to Roe vs. Wade, pro-choice activists could wave bloody hangers and call out for attention the dangers inherent in the pre-legalized abortion world for women with unwanted pregnancies. Thirty years removed from back alley abortions, these images no longer have the same resonance as they did before. Also, with the advent of technology which lets people ooh and ahh over their unborn children on sonogram monitors, the status of the fetus has become more contested. In other words, all sensory elements of the abortion debate have slanted in favor of the pro-life movement in recent years. The pro-choice side has lost its imagery, and had to rely on less-persuasive intellectual argumentation as its main tool.
For gay marriage, the opposite will happen. Prior to yesterday, all pro-gay marriage notions were primarily theoretical and philosophical in nature. So were all anti-gay marriage arguments. However, as of yesterday, the pro-marriage side now has a bevy of visual and tangible symbols – happy faces, delighted children, visible, loving couples who are legally married – to help it make its case. The anti-marriage argument remains speculative, and that speculation dims in its impact as time passes and the sky doesn’t fall. Every gay couple wed in America is another straw on the camel’s back, so to speak.
In an argument between a devoted few supporting marriage and a devoted few opposing marriage, the undecided middle has trended towards a preservation of the status quo, since there is no verifiable evidence to support either side’s supposition. As physical and emotional evidence in the form of married couples and happy, healthy gay families emerges from the Massachusetts decision, credibility will flow to the pro-marriage side as the Chicken Little proclamations of the anti-marriage movement prove to be nothing more than the sound and fury of a dying, detestable worldview.
This is one of the main things catching my eye, when there’s coverage of this issue. One person who stood out last night, was a guy holding a sign with the message, “Homosexuals are possessed by demons.” I’m sure there’s less radical opponents of gay marriage, but I wondered if the contrasts shown in the news sway fence sitters. I’m more emotionally invested in this issue than my SO, but I saw an eye roll from him, during the segment. Either way, I don’t really seeing the coverage hurting gay rights. Someone easily recognizable as a family member, coworker, or friend enjoying equal rights; rather than an over the top nun on rollerskates, menacing children, performing satanic fellatio on the court steps.
Why should the Massachusetts Supreme Court delay the ruling? Should Loving vs Virginia have been delayed to give the country time to amend the constitution to outlaw miscegenation? :rolleyes:
Sure, and there was a time in our country where we were ready to free blacks from slavery and give them the right to vote, but we weren’t ready to have them in our schools or marrying white people.
I don’t accept the current political situation regarding gays as anything other than the majority simply being wrong. So wrong that 30 years from now we will look back and wonder what the hell we were thinking.
It is a bit sad that someone actually thought the USSC could overturn an amendment to the constitution.
Definitely hope that guy was a foreigner, but I have a strong suspicion he was not. We need some stronger civics classes in our schools.
Anyways, no, I don’t think legalization right now is going to destroy anti-gay marriage groups.
These court rulings are all fine and well, but remember back to the Civil Rights movement. Effectively the important court rulings for civil rights all happened in the 50s. But it was not until the early 70s that civil rights and equality for blacks really started happening in any meaningful way. States that are hell bent on ignoring the USSC can do so through various mechanisms, they have in the past and they will in this situation too if the USSC would happen to rule that way. I mean hell, the South was able to basically ignore the XVth Amendment for 100 years.
The anti-gay marriage groups won’t lose steam until society as a whole is more accepting of gay marriage, which I think is around 15 years from now. We may have broad legalization by then, but there will probably be a lot of hurdles to jump over.
Worth noting is that in the poll, 64% of those in the 18-29 age group support either gay marriage or civil unions (41 marriage, 23 unions). Support for marriages/unions declines as age increases, with the 65+ age group being the only one in which there is more opposition to marriages/unions than support.
I didn’t pay that much attention to the Mass. ruling, so I might be mistaken, but wasn’t the legislature given 6 months to pass an acceptable compromise. The leg. tried a few things (up to and including trying to pass a constitutional amendment), but couldn’t agree on anything. If such a compromise was possible, why wasn’t 6 months enough time, and how much time would’ve been fair.
I think the slowness to adapt the Civil Rights rulings was due to how passionate large parts of the country were to fighting equality with blacks. Federal leaders were forced to slow down calls for compliance with the law because to do otherwise would risk massive violence and resistence (not to mention loosing a lot of votes) I don’t think that this sort of passion exists inside the anti-gay marriage crowd. No doubt their leaders and organizers feel very strongly and many will fight the good fight till the day they die. But to Joe Churchgoer, I’m not convinced that this is a huge enough issue for them to stage riots or lynchings or revive the Klan, especially as public opinion makes it increasingly clear that they’re fighting a loosing battle.
Granted that most of this is just my opinion of the “national mood”, but heres an article that suggests the leaders of the movement to pass the anti-marriage amendment are already finding some apathy in the ranks: click me
For whatever reason Massachusetts can’t vote a new constitutional amendment in until 2006. I think that is the earliest a vote on it could be legally scheduled, so that’s why the 6 months wasn’t enough time for that move.