Hating same-sex marriage ‘doesn’t seem to be salient’ this year

October 14, 2006

There’s some debate as to whether anti-gay amendments on 11 state ballots helped Bush beat Kerry in 2004, but I think it’s clear that the issue struck a chord with far-right activists. Playing the hate card effectively, proponents of these amendments got what they wanted — millions of mobilized conservatives.

This year, eight more states are considering similar bans on equality. Unfortunately for the right, the results aren’t the same — as the NYT noted, “Some of the proposed bans are struggling in the polls, and the issue of same-sex marriage itself has largely failed to rouse conservative voters.”

“As it stands right now, conservative turnout is not going to be as strong as it has traditionally been,” said Jon Paul, the executive director of Coloradans for Marriage, which is supporting a ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriage.

Some pollsters say people might just be burned out on the subject of marriage and its boundaries.

“It doesn’t seem to be salient to what most Tennesseans are concerned about right now,” said Robert Wyatt, the associate director of the Middle Tennessee State University poll. The ballot proposal there will almost certainly pass, Dr. Wyatt said, but few people think it will drive turnout or swing the tight race for the Senate between Bob Corker, a Republican, and Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., a Democrat. Both candidates support a ban on same-sex marriage.

Dr. Wyatt said efforts to stir enthusiasm among conservatives have mostly fallen flat. “It’s one of those things that’s like preaching to the choir,” he said.

What’s different? The Times pointed to a series of factors, including more important issues dominating the public’s attention, court cases that have against same-sex marriage that have removed some of the urgency for the right, and opposition to the far-right that is larger and better organized than in 2004.

I think the Times neglected to mention one other factor.

Shakespeare’s Sister gets it right:

The Bush administration and Congressional GOP leadership basically blew its load by repeatedly bringing up the Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage for a vote when they knew it had no chance of passing. As the homobigot base wakes up to the fact that they’ve been used and abused like a falafel within arm’s length of Bill O’Reilly, and finally clack onto the fact that it was just a big sham to get them to the voting booths, they’re starting to feel yawntastic with the whole thing. If it looks like the measure on your ballot is going to pass, anyway, what’s the ding-dang point of dragging your ass to the polls to vote?

And there’s the rub for the GOP. Their once-reliable Get Out the Vote card — hatin’ on the gays — has been overplayed.

Quite right. You can only go to hate well so many times before it goes dry.

Gay is not a topic the Republicans want to bring up right now, when whispers of highly placed closeted GOP staffers foreshadow possible new outings. It highlights the growing split between the fundamentalist faithful and the worldly politicos. Fitting that this wedge issue has turned on the those who wielded it.

  • I’d like to think there is more to it than that. I’d like to think other people have had experience like I have had, with a similar insight.

    My oldest friend, from kindergarten, “came out” at our 40th year HS reunion, bringing his life partner with him (who was the driving force in doing this). David and Fred have been together since 1985, making them at a minimum twice as successful as this heterosexual in maintaining one committed relationship, and for longer than all of my two marriages and two “committed relationships” combined (though I’m “catching up”). I think we all know just how hard that is, whatever the sex of the partners.

    They live in Dallas (I’m always asking why they live in Tex-ass of all places, when they could live around civilized humans anywhere else almost). And David tells me that their neighbors, most of whom are straight and “Texan”, have changed their minds about them over the years, just watching them.

    Like I said, it’d be nice to think that some number of the opponents of gay marriage among the “uninformed” have had life come along and “inform” them, and have managed to demonstrate their intelligence by changing their minds in light of further facts.

    But unfortunately I doubt it’s very many.

  • I think kali has it right: the Foley Chickenhawkgate scandal is probably the biggest factor driving evangelical disengagement from the GOP machine.

    I, too, would like to think that the tide of modern enlightenment is working its magic on evangelical individuals one by one — but without critical mass and economies of scale, that’s a monfactor on a national level.

    But that gives me an idea: how about a sub rosa national introduce-an-evangelical-to-a-homosexual viral-marketing scheme?

  • OT
    This just in Studds has died.
    I wonder if this will stop the Rethuglicans harping on him during the Foleygate: Week Three (?). And if not, will the Dems say: Hey, have a little respect for the dead, dirtbag!

    RIP Mr. Studds. If you can, haunt Hastert until he croaks.

  • Just the other day at work the topic of gay marriage came up in a conversation at work. My colleague, who is a rather conservative Christian funadmentalist, was bewailing the fact that his ex-wife’s divorce lawyer has taken him to the cleaners and basically impoverished him. When I expressed my sympathy, he laughed at me and said “Steve, I should tell you I’m all in favor of gay marriage. That way, when you get divorced YOU guys can get screwed by the lawyers too! So there!”

    Tom Cleaver is right….. for those of us who happen to be gay, simply living our lives as exmplars of normalcy changes minds more than anything else.

  • OT
    This just in Studds has died.
    RIP Mr. Studds. If you can, haunt Hastert until he croaks.

    Comment by The Answer is Orange

    Amen. Studds fought his censure all the way, even having a joint news conference with the 17 year old page (a few years later). He kept getting re-elected. Obviously Republican operatives have now murdered him to change the subject in the Foley case. Spread the word.

  • I don’t often read our weekly rag now that my son’s no longer in school here but, with the elections coming up, I was curious to see what position it would take on November issues.

    I assumed the position would be reliably conservative, since that’s what the majority of the town is. Never assume… 🙂

    I was *stunned* to see the editorial — twice as long as usual and very strongly worded — come out against the amendment on gay marriage. The editorial pointed out that there are already laws in place in VA which prohibit marriage between people of the same sex. But the amendment is formulated in such a way, that it would also strip heterosexual but unmarried couples (and their children) from any protection as well. So, “vote NO to ballot question one”

    So, OK. I may disagree with the grounds of the argument; personally, as long as I don’t *have to* enter a homosexual relationship or have an abortion, then I’m comfortable enough if other people do because they want to. Neither of these issues is harmful either to me or to the society at large, certainly less so than total lack of gun control. So I’d rather see an argument built on the grounds of inequality before law.

    But, hey, this is a red state… And, whatever the grounds, the final *message* of the article is the same — vote NO. I’ll take whatever I’m given, in this situation 🙂

  • There’s a second sub-issue to the “ain’t enough hate” concept….

    I’ve been asking these nattering ninnyhammers (the xenophobic homophobes) for years now—“Explain to me how a marriage between two people of the same gender is a threat to ‘the institution of’ MY MARRIAGE?”

    They never did answer me.

    I’ve a pretty good feeling that large numbers of people have asked this very question—and, they’ve received the same non-answer in reply to that question.

    My marriage is ten-and-a-half years old. It’s still on solid ground. Other people I know—who ask the same question I do—are in the same position. At the same time, the “institution of marriage” in Jee-Zuz-Land seems to getting a bit rocky, when you need preachers and elders and deacons and great big bunches of congregation members and professional counselors playing the “beat-the-dead-horse-until-it-moves” game, to convinve each couple who’s relationship has crumbled to “stay together” for the sake of—what? “The Church.”

    The Reich will go the way of the dinosaurs. They may try playing the freakazoid militant card—a domesticated version of the Taliban, for example—but they will eventually encounter their “rapture.”

    The scientific community, however, possesses a more technical term for it:

    Extinction Event….

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