Pam Spaulding points to Gabriel Malor of the “arch-conservative blog” Ace of Spades quietly outing himself as he mourned the passage of Prop 8:
On Prop 8: I know most of you disagree with me about it. But could we have a moment of silence for those poor fools who were happily married or engaged yesterday and today are finding out that they don’t have squat? Prop 8 was much more personal than some silly high-speed train or hospital funding. People are hurting today. And I’m one of them.
I, too, have continued to be uncharacteristically melancholy about the election results. There are now 29 states that have same-sex marriage prohibitions in their constitutions. And with fifty-seven percent of voters approving their measure, Arkansas joined Florida in prohibiting unmarried partners from adopting.
Glenn Greenwald proposes an appealing answer — Repeal DOMA:
With their newly minted control over the White House and Congress, Democrats can easily provide a vital (if not complete) antidote to Proposition 8: repeal of the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act” (.pdf). Enacted in 1996, DOMA’s principal effects are two-fold: (1) it explicitly prohibits the Federal Government and all federal agencies from extending any federal marriage-based benefits, privileges and rights to same-sex couples [Section 3]; and (2) it authorizes states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages from other states [Section 2].
While Section 2 is symbolically wrong (though ultimately inconsequential), it is Section 3 which is especially odious and damaging. Opposite-sex couples receive a whole slew of vital marriage-based benefits and entitlements from the Federal Government which DOMA expressly denies to same-sex couples.
Andrew Sullivan comments:
[M]y own view is that the advocacy work should take precedence. I’m uncomfortable with a legal strategy alone. We need to do a much better job of communicating the moderate, conservative reasons for why marriage equality is a great thing for all of us. We need especially to get more serious about the African-American community.
There was no Bradley Effect keeping white voters from Obama; but was there black homophobia boosting Prop 8?
Seventy percent of African American voters approved Prop 8, according to exit polls, compared to 53% of Latino voters, 49% of white voters, 49% of Asian voters.
I’m not sure what to do with this… I do know this, though: I’m done pretending that the handful of racist gay white men out there—and they’re out there, and I think they’re scum—are a bigger problem for African Americans, gay and straight, than the huge numbers of homophobic African Americans are for gay Americans, whatever their color.
Ta-Nehisi Coates responds:
Groups of people who end up on the bad end of history aren’t heroic, they aren’t better for it, they’re just down–and, in most cases, they’d put the victors down if they could. What’s the old saying? Black folks didn’t object to slavery, they objected to being the slaves. Heh, we don’t regret the Middle Passage, we regret the Sahara Desert. We regret not having guns and ships. We regret not being first. And so it is for most of humanity. It’s true that individuals sometimes draw wisdom from suffering–but nations tend to be all about the zero-sum.
He points to some numbers that question how decisive the black vote was. But to answer Andrew’s first point — that advocacy work should take precedence — I don’t get that Greenwald is saying do one at the expense of the other. In an update he points to Digby reminding people of something that’s very important for successful governance:
FDR was, of course, a consummate political leader. In one situation, a group came to him urging specific actions in support of a cause in which they deeply believed. He replied: “I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.”
He understood that a President does not rule by fiat and unilateral commands to a nation. He must build the political support that makes his decisions acceptable to our countrymen. He read the public opinion polls not to define who he was but to determine where the country was – and then to strategize how he could move the country to the objectives he thought had to be carried out.
With that, here’s Larry Lessig on the passage of Proposition 8:
Let us launch, now, a new petition movement. Let us spend a year talking to people who disagree with us. Let us win this battle by persuading the other side. I volunteer to do whatever would help, including traveling to every church or community in this state to make the case for equality. But please, let’s not try to win this battle by summoning the Supremes. Even if it is right that this Amendment is contrary to the best interpretation of Equal Protection, let us bring the ideals of Equal Protection to life, by getting people to support them.
We ought to take him up on that offer! To close let’s return to Pam’s post in which she quotes PajamasMedia founder and CEO Roger L. Simon. A member of the Republicans Against 8, he said this about his support for civil equality:
The preeminent social issues – gay marriage and abortion – are quite separate. Lumping them together, as is often done by the media and by ideologues on both sides, is insulting to our intelligence.
For me, same-sex marriage is by far the simpler issue. I am one hundred percent for it on moral, civil rights and scientific grounds. (Sexual orientation is not elective.) And I am surprised so many of my fellow citizens would want to deny others a chance to experience a life of recognized love and commitment, something I have found, through hard experience, to be easily the most fulfilling and socially useful way to live. It would seem almost, dare I say it, unchristian.
RELATED: Eugene Volokh reposts his Is California’s Repeal of Same-Sex Marriage an Unconstitutional “Revision” by Initiative? and speculates on the on what will happen to those married between June 16, 2008 and election day. The California Attorney General, Equality California, and the nation’s leading LGBT legal groups agree those marriages are still valid.
LATER: Dale Carpenter on losing California:
Counting the losses for gay marriage in Arizona and Florida yesterday, we are now 0-30 in ballot fights. In California, we lost under circumstances that were as favorable to our side as they are likely to be for some time. We lost in deep blue territory on a blue night, when Obama carried the state by an astonishing 61% (running ahead of the opposition to Prop 8 by more than 13%). We lost despite being on the “no” side in a ballot fight, with the built-in advantage that gives you among those who vote “no” on everything out of understandable proposition fatigue. We lost despite the state attorney general changing the ballot title to reflect that it “eliminates rights,” something most Americans don’t like to do no matter the subject.
All of this suggests to me that actual support for gay marriage in California is something less than the 48% vote we got. My best guess is that actual electoral support for gay marriage in California is somewhere in the low 40s, when you factor out ballot fatigue, the blue tide, and the favorable ballot title – all of which you would have to presume in trying to reverse Prop 8 in a future initiative requiring an actual “yes” to gay marriage. And, of course, to reverse Prop 8 we’ll have to raise lots of money and put together a petition drive just to get to the ballot. My estimate is that last night’s loss – barring federal or state judicial intervention to undo Prop 8, which I regard as unlikely – means there will be no gay marriage in California for at least a decade.