They just need a little time to get used to it

September 15, 2005

Kevin Drum raised a great point yesterday that bears repeating — we’re seeing the beginning of the end for opponents of gay marriage. The cause? Gay relationships have received legal recognition and the sky has managed not to fall.

Massachusetts, for example, began allowing gay marriages last year under court order. Yesterday, state lawmakers were given an opportunity to undo the legal foundation of the ruling by endorsing a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and establish civil unions. The vote, however, wasn’t even close — the measure was defeated by a 157-to-39 vote, after less than two hours of debate.

A year ago, this outcome seemed far less likely. Fortunately, the politics changed.

Wednesday’s 157-to-39 vote by a joint session of the House and Senate partly reflected the fact that some legislators now consider same-sex marriage more politically acceptable, after a largely conflict-free year in which some 6,600 same-sex couples got married and lawmakers who supported it got re-elected.

…Saying he had heard from over 7,000 constituents, most against the amendment, [Senator Brian] Lees added, “Gay marriage has begun and life has not changed for the citizens of the commonwealth, with the exception of those who can now marry who could not before.”

I’m not entirely sure what the right expected to happen once gay people started getting married. Actually, scratch that, I do know what they expected: Last year, Rick Santorum said if gays start getting married, straight couples will stop getting married.

Perhaps the right’s biggest problem right now is that they built up expectations for disaster a little too high. It happened in Vermont a few years ago when the state passed a civil-unions law. Conservatives hyperventilated about the utter calamity that would destroy the state … and then nothing happened. Civil unions don’t even raise an eyebrow in Vermont anymore.

A similar problem for the right exists in Massachusetts. To hear the right tell it, the state would inevitably face locusts and plagues. Instead, as Kevin put it, the only thing that happened is “more people than ever can show off wedding scrapbooks with pictures of beaming partners and guests having a blast.”

Unfortunately for the Dobsons and the Santorums of the world, that just isn’t scary.

Time heals wounds. Our kids will look back at this time and ask why everyone made such a fuss.

In the long run, the right is always wrong (civil rights, women’s rights, etc.).

  • As usual with the GOP, harmless (even helpful) social change causes much alarm and confusion (not to mention exploitable fear-and-loathing).

    In California the legislature passed a gay marriage provision (the first legislature to do so without judicial directive). So the politically girly-weak Governator promises to veto it, saying the Court is the proper place for this to be decided.

    Meanwhile, in New York, Bloomberg’s lawyer is arguing that Court is not the place to decide gay marriage: it should go to … the legislature.

    Are the Democrats exploiting any of this? Not a bit. Not word. Their hero, who used to be “give ’em hell Harry”, now seems to be Hamlet.

  • That number is a little misleading, 157 legislators do not support gay marriage. The amendment, which would have been a 2006 referendum, would have banned marriages but legalized civil unions a la Vermont. There is an alternative ballot initiative for 2008 that would ban both, so the hard-core right wingers voted against the 2006 amendment along with the marriage supporters, giving you the 157 supermajority. The 2008 amendment, because it’s initiated via petition, only needs 50 out of 200 to appear on the 2008 ballot (the 2006 compromise needed 101/200), and I’m sure it will get that, despite the appearance that 157/200 support gay marriage. On a positive note, polls suggest that 57 percent of Mass. voters support marriage (sure to go up by 2008), so even if there is a referendum it will probably fail.

  • Good for Massachusetts.

    But if the gay cummunity thinks that theya re the real winners, they’re wrong. Who is the real winner in this?

    Divorce lawyers.

  • You ask, what dire things do the wingers expect to happen once gays marry? Nothing immediate, perhaps. But from their viewpoint, it’s all about the big picture. Gay marriage, and society’s acceptance of it, flies in the face of the wingers’ cramped view of the Bible, which leans heavily towards selected verses in Leviticus. Gay marriage will, sooner or later, bring the complete ruin of our civilization, along with all the other unGodly things on their list like abortion, contraception, nudity, dancing, secular humanism, pacifism, separation of Church and State, evolution, activist judges and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Their worldview informs them that gay marriage will eventually help turn us all into pillars of salt. It may not happen today, they say, but it WILL happen, and events like 9/11 and Katrina are signs that the Day of Judgment is getting ever closer. These folks are used to predicting the Apocalypse, after all, and if they say the world will end next Tuesday, and then nothing happens on Tuesday…well, there’s always Wednesday.

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