Patterico's Pontifications

11/4/2009

Gay Marriage is 0-for-31

Filed under: Civil Liberties,Obama — DRJ @ 8:56 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

The voters of 30 states have refused to legalize gay marriage, and those states that do recognize it have done so by judicial or legislative fiat. Maine makes it 31:

“The stars seemed aligned for supporters of gay marriage. They had Maine’s governor, legislative leaders and major newspapers on their side, plus a huge edge in campaign funding. So losing a landmark referendum was a devastating blow, for activists in Maine and nationwide.

In an election that had been billed for weeks as too close to call, Maine’s often unpredictable voters repealed a state law Tuesday that would have allowed same-sex couples to wed. Gay marriage has now lost in all 31 states in which it has been put to a popular vote — a trend that the gay-rights movement had believed it could end in Maine.

“Today’s heartbreaking defeat unfortunately shows that lies and fear can still win at the ballot box,” said Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.”

Gay leaders blame Obama, who will no doubt blame Bush.

— DRJ

35 Responses to “Gay Marriage is 0-for-31”

  1. “Today’s heartbreaking defeat unfortunately shows that lies and fear can still win at the ballot box,” said Rea Carey.

    I guess that is what free speech is all about but the left should really stop lying about what the right thinks and start making their case in a logical and reasonable fashion.

    tyree (bf0ee2)

  2. Maine should now ban remarriage.

    One Man. One Woman. One marriage.

    steve (135d6a)

  3. Typical lib thinking: when things don’t go your way, play the ‘hate’ card.

    No different than JC saying that Obama’s harshest critics are racist.

    And that’s why they head straight to the courts, as they did in California, to ‘make things right’.

    Because the people, in their opinion, are too stupid and ignorant to make decisions for themselves.

    That’s the ‘party of compassion’ for ya.

    Icy Texan (71e58b)

  4. Mainers simply followed Barcky’s position. I blame the Mormons.

    JD (fecec9)

  5. These people clearly aren’t informed enough, and need more federally funded “awareness” campaigns to show them the light.

    Because there are only two reasons why voters would down such an enlightened measures: 1) They’re a buncha haters, or 2) They don’t really undertstand the issue.

    Right?

    Steve B (5eacf6)

  6. Isn’t it interesting how gay rights groups and their friends in the media naturally assume that Obama supports gay marriage, even though (as JD points out) he is on the record as opposing it? The sheer cynicism of liberal groups thinking that Obama’s position is simple political expediency and really a bald-faced lie is breathtaking though, come to think of it, it is what most conservatives suspect too.

    JVW (d32e06)

  7. JVW – The most breath-taking part is that Barcky is Teh One that told us that his religion informs his politics. Under Bush, this would have been prima facia evidence of his desire to create a THEOCRACY.

    JD (1ecb57)

  8. If I ran the committee, I would automatically award a Pulitzer to the first reporter who points out that Obama has professed his opposition to gay marriage.

    JVW (d32e06)

  9. The fact that to be a good “progressive” in today’s era means one has to support same-sex marriage is the very essence of how far to the left that liberalism has shifted over the past several decades.

    Mark (411533)

  10. When/if activist gays realize they would have better off with McCain/Palin, their heads will explode.

    Jim R. (5a6360)

  11. Jim R., many slaves fought for the democrats in the civil war against the republicans.

    Many blacks don’t even know that MLK was a registered republican. They don’t know that bull Conner was a democrat, much less who he was. My friend, a civil rights history buff, by her estimation, couldn’t even tell me who Al Gore’s father (Al Gore Sr) was, or what he did to blacks.

    These people only see and hear what they are given by NBC, Disney, USA Today, the AP, and fucking amazingly, Comedy Central, MTV, and Fark.com. They just know, in their hearts, that the democrats won the civil war, the civil rights battles, and fight for legal racial equality in the supreme court. They just KNOW it in their fragile little minds.

    Dustin (bb61e3)

  12. Oh, my point being, while the gays I know are all well educated and highly successful, I do not have much faith that they will ever realize that they are being used by the democrats in the way blacks are being used. They will not tread into the unfriendly waters of free journalism in order to find out that Obama’s not their friend.

    Personally, and as a hard core Republican, I think gays should be treated the same as straights. It’s really simple. Civil unions or whatever… just let people do what they want. If they find a church that will call their life a marriage, I honestly don’t care. But forcing everyone to call that marriage? That’s not necessary. I’m sure lots of democrats out there still don’t call interracial marriages ‘marriage’. They didn’t think Arabs could have a democracy, either. They are sick people, who need to stop playing groups off eachother. They crave political power first, which is why conservatives crave limited government first.

    It’s amazing how social libs and moderates and conservatives all are coming together under the same principle of limiting government.

    Dustin (bb61e3)

  13. #7 JD: For some reason I read that first phrase as “The mouth breathing part…”

    Probably because the mouth breather’s first response at comment #2 there is to give us a display of unreasoned and uncalled for hatred.

    EW1(SG) (edc268)

  14. Me, I blame everybody involved. I think permitting civil SSM (while not requiring religious institutions to involve themselves in it) is good public policy, and demonstrably so. But both the proponents and the opponents focus on the touchy-feely aspects of it, with demonstrable lack of success for the proponents. It’s a hard sell to tell folks the only reason you’d vote against it is because you hate people like us when they know that they don’t hate people like you, but have other reasons (inadequate in my opinion; obviously not, in others’) for the opposition.

    In the long run, though, it’s a done deal. Even Michelle Bachmann, who built her political career out of the attention to her opposition on the issue, has never pushed for legal sanctions to punish same-sex couples for having sex with each other, or living together, or anything except the label, and Washington State’s SSM-without-the-name initiative passed.

    Joel Rosenberg (677e59)

  15. Are the people of those 31 states really that prejudiced, or is there something about marriage that homosexuals are not getting?

    Maybe like that sexually diverse and typically fertile heterosexual couples are inherently different from same-sex couples.

    Amphipolis (b120ce)

  16. there something about marriage that homosexuals are not getting?

    Voters still have enough sense to know that even if legislatures pass a law that says all pigs are collies, ontologically it’s still a pig.

    quasimodo (4af144)

  17. There are a ton and a half of things about gayness that straights are not getting — and probably never will.

    Still, I strongly reccomend y’all see A Single Man — Tom Ford’s surprisingly superb adapation of Christopher Isherwood’s greatest work — when it opens next month. It’s about gay love and loss.

    David Ehrenstein (2550d9)

  18. is there something about marriage that homosexuals are not getting?

    I wonder, too. PMS, nagging, and menopause, with no escape, just for three things? 😉

    nk (df76d4)

  19. Still, I strongly reccomend y’all see A Single Man — Tom Ford’s surprisingly superb adapation of Christopher Isherwood’s greatest work — when it opens next month. It’s about gay love and loss.

    Are there going to be any kung fu battles or car chases?

    JVW (d32e06)

  20. The things David E doesn’t understand would fill the Grand Canyon.

    A legislature should pass a law that makes beef a vegetable so vegetarians can eat cheeseburgers.

    JD (d787ac)

  21. A big part of the problem, or so it seems to me, is that the gays pushed much too far, much too fast, and now are facing a backlash. If they’d been willing to settle for civil unions, with most of the privileges of marriage, I don’t think they’d have had any trouble, but they ran into the fact that for many religious folk, marriage is a term-of-art…and homosexual pairings do not, cannot, qualify under that term.

    Here in Iowa, I am sure that at the next general election, gay marriage will be on the agenda, and I do think that the proponents of it will be horribly disappointed.

    If they hadn’t pushed for it right f#cking now, and had been willing to wait and consolidate their very real gains, they would probably have had gay marriage down the line. As things stand, they’ve now got to deal with several states that have amended their constitutions, and I wouldn’t be too surprised to see a Federal amendment specifically defining marriage as being between one man and one woman. And getting an amendment out of the Constitution is something that’s only ever happened once in all our history, so repealing that amendment would be a real problem.

    technomad (0b1234)

  22. David, I doubt I could sit through a movie about gay love but there is an excellent novel that depicts gay life and love in a very sensitive and attractive way. That is Mary Renault’s The Mask of Apollo. I think you and I have talked about it. That’s about as far as I could go but it is one of my favorite novels.

    I practiced surgery in Laguna Beach for 30 years. I think the whole gay marriage thing was born of the AIDS epidemic. There is fear and a desire to try to ensure faithfulness in relationships that have a very high incidence of promiscuity by one or both partners. I respect the desire but I don’t think we should tear down thousands of years of religious belief to accommodate it. Civil union would accomplish 95% of the agenda.

    One of the hardest things I had to do in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, back when it was still 100% fatal, was to tell a man that he had AIDS after he told me that it couldn’t be because he had been in a committed relationship for 10 years.

    I also fear that, in this frenzy that is going on, the churches would be the focus of this desire to force everyone to accept gay relationships as the exact equivalent of traditional marriage. I can see Andrew Sullivan right now filing suit against the Catholic Church. Except for that concern, I wouldn’t care.

    Mike K (addb13)

  23. “Today’s heartbreaking defeat unfortunately shows that lies and fear can still win at the ballot box,” said Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
    Boo-the freaking-Hoo!!! That’s democracy baby! Deal with it!!

    The Emperor (82e13a)

  24. Mike K.
    I’d hope that the First Amendment rights for religions would stop that Sullivanesque attempt to force gay marriage on the Catholic Church. What a whiner Sully is. If your religion doesn’t accept gay marriage, find one that does. There are plenty out there.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (0ea407)

  25. Brother Bradley – Simply hoping that the Courts honor our Right is kind of a gamble anymore.

    JD (6249ae)

  26. Bradley, I wish I could believe that but ministers are being fined and ordered to change their beliefs in Canada, a country with the same common law heritage as ours.

    Mike K (addb13)

  27. You know, it makes me sad when I see someone as smart and talented as David Ehrenstein write:

    “…There are a ton and a half of things about gayness that straights are not getting — and probably never will….”

    Because the fact is, there is even more that DE doesn’t understand about heterosexuality. Heck, or about straight women, for that matter—based on his postings for a long period of time.

    This “more better than thou” attitude is part of the problem of acceptance.

    But at least DE doesn’t whine, like Andrew Sullivan.

    Eric Blair (711059)

  28. I don’t know that the first amendment would impress people like these.

    In a defiant speech to several hundred lingering supporters, No on 1 campaign manager Jesse Connolly pledged that his side “will not quit until we know where every single one of these votes lives.

    CAIR may be right. There are non-Muslim terrorists in the US.

    Mike K (addb13)

  29. Dr. K., it is all about the idea that the Progressives know what is better more than you do, and they will try to force you to accept their ideas against your will.

    That is why there is this insultingly obvious attempt to link racial issues to gender preference.

    Civil unions will solve the supposed problems, but that isn’t good enough for the progressives. And when voters don’t agree, why, they are evil people, and a “wise” judge who knows better will decide for them.

    The ironic part is that those same folks don’t think that all judicial decisions by fiat are a good idea. Just the ones they agree with, when voters disagree with them.

    So they are only for democracy when they agree with the results.

    Eric Blair (711059)

  30. Mr. Connolly should be the poster child for a new edition of Jonah Goldberg’s book.

    Eric Blair (711059)

  31. Bradley, I wish I could believe that but ministers are being fined and ordered to change their beliefs in Canada, a country with the same common law heritage as ours.

    But not our heritage of making their Constitution the supreme law of the land. And Canada has adopted a group-rights view, which is opposed to individual rights. We need to reinforce our fundamental views on these issues, then gay marriage will simply be another extension of individual choice. Of course, that means getting a federal government that puts individual rights above group rights, and Obama is taking us in the the exact wrong direction.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (0ea407)

  32. I wish I could believe that but ministers are being fined and ordered to change their beliefs in Canada, a country with the same common law heritage as ours.

    Truly disgusting and so typical of “progressives” in today’s era. Even more sickening because I suspect a lot of the liberals who profess to being so tolerant and open-minded about homosexuality are analogous to, say, Al Gore and his professing to being so environmentally conscious—while living in his big hog mansion and depending on energy-wasting conveniences. IOW, scratch below the surface and you’ll find hollow, phony sentiment and various forms of hypocrisy.

    You’ll find the typical (hetero) liberal saying “there is nothing wrong with gayness!,” and “I heartily endorse the concept of same-sex marriage!,” while privately grimacing at the thought of their own son getting hitched to (and becoming intimate with) a dude, their own daughter getting hitched to (and making out with) a girl.

    Mark (411533)

  33. I’ll antagonize everyone by saying I favor eliminating all monetary perquisites of matrimony emanating from the government, specifically the IRS tax codes. Holy or unholy matrimony should stop at the point it favors tax preference or other governmentally determined monetary benefits that place non-married people at a disadvantage to those who choose to marry. Connube on your own dime. Civil or uncivil unions for all, as long as they pay their own way.

    political agnostic (09318c)

  34. political agnostic,
    You lose. I wasn’t antagonized. 🙂

    In fact, your suggestion sounds very libertarian.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (0ea407)

  35. Of course, repeal of the 16th-A would go a long way towards that equality.

    AD - RtR/OS! (89a0a7)


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