Politics: Victories for same-sex marriage

Voters this week approved equal marriage rights for same-sex couples for the first time in the nation’s history. In Maryland and Maine, ballot initiatives allowing gay couples to marry passed by comfortable margins, and a similar referendum in Washington was expected to pass as final votes were still being tallied. Minnesota voters, meanwhile, rejected a measure to amend their state constitution to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Gay activists who crafted the winning referenda were careful to include legal provisions that allow religious institutions to refuse to marry same-sex couples, making gay marriage a strictly civil matter. Supporters called last week’s decisions “a historic turning point,” since state ballot measures to enable same-sex marriage had been voted down 32 times in the past.

Gay-marriage proponents won because they handled the issue “the right way in a democracy,” said Jennifer Rubin in Washington

Post.com. They took their case to their fellow citizens, and won their support. Add these victories to this week’s election of Tammy Baldwin—the first openly gay U.S. senator—and the end of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, and “you have a sea change” in attitudes toward gays. Republicans may not like gay marriage, but from now on they fight it “at their own risk.”

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The Democrats this week destroyed traditional marriage, said Maggie Gallagher in NationalReview.com. They outspent us 8–1, bringing in the entire Democratic establishment and the big guns of Hollywood. This really is a big loss, “no way to spin it.”

Supporters of gay marriage will have majorities in nearly every state within a decade, said Josh Barro in Bloomberg.com. Old people with anti-gay attitudes are dying, replaced by “accepting young voters.” If the Supreme Court does not throw out gay-marriage prohibitions as unconstitutional, advocates of gay marriage will have to keep going to the polls. “And they will have to get used to winning.”