Today in California, gay men and lesbians will line up at county courthouses across the state and prepare to take marriage vows. In the long run, this moment certainly marks a moral victory and will one day come to be seen as such by a clear majority. In the short run, some liberal politicos worry.
In early June, those opposed to gay marriage were certified by California in their effort to get a measure revoking the court's ruling on the November ballot. This gives some Democrats the heebie-jeebies, because it was precisely these kinds of initiatives in 2004 that supposedly helped George Bush win re-election.
With the prodding of the White House (ie Karl Rove), right-wing activists placed anti-gay marriage measures on 11 ballots. They went 11-0. Notable among them was Ohio, where the initiative is presumed by some - others dispute this bit of conventional wisdom – to have produced a big conservative turnout that helped Bush, who won the state narrowly.
So some ask: Could this new initiative spur conservative turnout even to the point of making California competitive? It should be obvious that without the state's 55 electoral votes, Barack Obama is done for. But Democrats don't merely expect that he'll win the state. They expect that he'll win it easily, without having to spend much time or money there. If he has to do either, he's thrown off his game plan a bit.
So what's the situation? Well, for starters, California isn't Ohio. It's far from a toss-up: Obama currently leads John McCain there by 14 or 15 points.
A Field poll (the gold standard of California polls) came out in late May showing that Californians support gay marriage by a 51-42% margin. That was pretty fascinating. Imagine what it would say if, on the morning of November 5, the ban failed and analysts were able to conclude that the presence of a same-sex marriage ban on the ballot actually helped the Democrat by bringing more pro-gay-marriage progressives to the polls?
But the signals so far are mixed. Around the same time another poll showed a majority supporting the ban by 54-35%.
So as things stand now, it's going to be a close call in November. A close call is probably fine for Obama and down-ticket Democrats - if about as many supporters of gay marriage come to the polls as opponents, the initiative probably won't have decisive impact on other elections.
The next question is the extent to which what happens in California ricochets across the country. Will conservatives in other states, under GOP direction, move to put initiatives on their November ballots? Will the images of gay people kissing and shoving a slice of wedding cake in each other's mouths, broadcast repeatedly across the cable spectrum, take root and somehow make a certain number of straight people in key states think that a vote for Obama is a vote for licentiousness? I should note that Obama himself, like most Democrats, opposes gay marriages and will go only as far as civil unions. But certainly the Democrats are linked to gay marriage in the public mind.
On the first question, it seems that the likely answer is no, for the simple reason that most states have done this already. Check out these maps. Fully 41 states have passed laws opposing same-sex marriage, while 27 have constitutional bans on the practice and 24 states have both. A few key swing states stack up like this. Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, Virginia and Colorado have both a statute and a constitutional ban. Florida, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and New Hampshire have statutes but no constitutional ban. Nevada has a constitutional ban but no statute.
In any of these last five states, it's possible that anti-gay forces could seek the proscription that their state doesn't yet have. This is in fact the case in Florida, where a proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage qualified for the November ballot back in February. I haven't seen any current polls from the state, and it's hard to say how passionate anti-gay voters will be in a state that already has a statute on the books.
As one looks around at states where an initiative could conceivably have the kind of impact the 11 initiatives of 2004 did, there seem to be two possible candidates, but even they aren't much for the right to hang any hopes on. New Jersey is a state some think of as a battleground state – Obama leads there by around 10 points. It has a civil-unions law on the books. Though moderate-Democratic, there are enough conservatives in New Jersey (and enough Catholic voters) for a well-financed drive to have some possible success. But lo and behold, New Jersey seems pretty liberal on the issue. Slim pluralities support not just civil unions but marriage, something that can't be said of very many states.
Finally there's New Mexico. It has no current law defining marriage. Gay couples who married in states where gay marriage is legal – now including next-door California – have full recognition as married couples in the state. Also, a domestic partnership bill passed the state house earlier this year and awaits action in the state senate. In sum, it seems like a pretty tolerant atmosphere, although we can't yet say what kind of impact the experience of gay couples hopping across the border and coming back with marriage certificates might have.
As for my second question, one can't really measure it. If Fox News gets all hysterical and has the "right" visual to whip its viewers into a frenzy, I suppose it can influence things. But overall, it doesn't seem today as if 2008 will be like 2004, assuming you accept the idea that the 11 initiatives helped Bush in 2004. It's only four years, but it's a pretty different country than it was then, and there is a sense that these right-wing scare gambits may have played themselves out for now. Another cautiously encouraging sign.
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