Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Now D.C.'s Gays Don't Have an Excuse to Avoid Settling Down

Yesterday the D.C. City Council voted to legalize same-sex marriage, by a vote of 11-2. Hopefully this trend will bolster efforts in other states, though similar votes failed recently in Maine, New York and New Jersey. Which brings me to my point.

The gay marriage debate hasn't played out in simple ideological lines, with conservatives opposed and liberals in favor--if that were the case, we wouldn't have seen those defeats in the Northeast where liberals tend to flock and "Republican" has become a dirty word. In fact, Republicans who can win elections in the Northeast like Mitt Romney and Rudy Guiliani were pro-gay rights when they campaigned (though for Mitt at least that changed when he ran for President later). And what about the two votes against gay marriage in the D.C. Council? They came from Yvette Alexander and Marion Barry--not exactly right wingers in other areas. The only explanation is that there's a large subset of liberal voters who just can't abide by the idea that a gay couple could have marital rights. It is especially shameful for Marion Barry's voters, since they've shown that they arent' so judgmental that they'd vote against a guy just for being a crackhead.

Hopefully, though, the anti-gay marriage voters will in time see that living in a community where gays are marrying one another isn't the end of the world. Then maybe they can concern themselves with society's real problems.

Giant rabbit attacks.

2 comments:

  1. I can't speak for NY or NJ, but here in Maine, one of the main reasons same sex marriage was overturned was due to some very misleading ad campaigns. Not limited to, but including radio and print ads reminding everyone that if the law passed, they would start teaching children about gay sex in our school system.

    It's also important to note that much of the funding for the aforementioned campaign came from Christian interest groups located outside of the state.

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  2. Techdubb--misleading or not, and outside funding or not, the numbers still indicate to me a large number of otherwise "liberal" voters who oppose same sex marriage for some reason. After all, misleading ad campaigns and outside money can be used for a whole host of other "conservative" initiatives that don't succeed to the extent that the anti-gay marriage positions do. I think there's just a long lingering squeamishness towards gay marriage among a lot of people that tend liberal on a most other issues.

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