'The times they are a changing'

[beccastareyes]

Yesterday, Vermont's House of Representatives overrode its governor's veto to become the fourth* state to legalize same-sex marriage, and the first to do so through the legislative branch. It's not terribly surprising -- Vermont has had civil unions for a decade. The District of Columbia's city council also moved to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere -- it also has civil unions. According to Wikipedia, this makes four states with same-sex marriage laws, four (plus DC) with civil unions designed to be identical to same-sex marriage, four with limited civil unions, and three that recognize same-sex marriage but do not perform them.

That makes a total of 24% of states with at least some way for same-sex couples to get some of the legal rights of marriage, and another 6% of states where they can go elsewhere and come back and live. (And two of those three states border areas that permit same-sex marriage.) If you go by population, it may well be more than 30%, since California has civil unions and New York recognizes same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.

The times they are a changing'

A friend posted a video of the Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, responding to the Minority Leader's request to start the amending-the-constitution procedure to do away with same-sex marriage in Iowa. (Iowa apparently needs the amendment to pass in two different legislative sessions, separated by an election, then for it to pass a vote. If they started now, the earliest it could be voted on is 2012... but that requires the majority party care to put it on the agenda. Otherwise, it will be until 2014 at the earliest.) The full video is here, but I want to highlight this quote.

One of my daughters was in the workplace one day, and, in her particular workplace at that moment in time, there were a whole bunch of conservative, older men. And those guys were talking about gay marriage—they were talking about discussions going on across the country—and my daughter Kate, after listening to it for about 20 minutes, said to them: "You guys don't understand. You've already lost. My generation doesn't care."

Nate Silver, blogger at 538.com, did an analysis of all the Defense of Marriage Amendment votes that ran statewide (from 1998 to 2008) -- whether they passed or failed, and by what percentage, and attempted to model them. He noticed that three factors could predict most of how a state would vote:

• The average self-identified 'devoutness' of the people in the state -- enough religions have staked a position on same-sex marriage and homosexuality in general that in-general religiousness helps model the state's attitude on same-sex marriage.
  
• The percentage of white evangelicals in the state -- even when corrected for religiosity, states with more evangelicals tended to be more opposed.
  
• The year the vote was held.

Basically, Mr. Silver's model predicts that the ban-same-sex-marriage crowd loses about 2 points per year. In Iowa, for example, a ban in 2012 would get a tied vote, and any vote held after that would fail. He also lists exactly when his model predicts a ban would fail (whether this means a repeal to an existing ban would pass isn't stated -- it would be hard to model that, since it hasn't happened yet.) 2012 seems to be a magic year there -- 24 states (48%) would be predicted as failing to pass a ban. It grows to 30 states in 2013.

Someone in the comments suggested that it was possibly due to age. It's been pretty well documented that folks in my (and Kate Gronstal's) generation don't feel as strongly against same-sex marriage as our parents and grandparents did. If only folks under 30 voted in 2008, California would still have same-sex marriage. We don't care -- or, we're less likely to care -- who a random stranger loves. We do care about fairness.

This isn't an excuse for proponents of marriage equality to get lazy -- after all, the reason attitudes are changing is because we know these things exist. But it is a hopeful sign.

*Okay, technically fifth, since it was legal in California for a bit, stupid Prop 8, stupid California Constitutional Amendment procedure.

Comments

[yuuo.insanejournal.com]

stupid Prop 8, stupid California Constitutional Amendment procedure.

Worst part is, that wasn't even proper legal procedure for a state constitution amendment. It has to pass through the legislature at one point or another, and it requires more than a bare minimum majority vote, like it got.

So by legal procedures, Prop 8 is completely legally null and void. They just have to get a ruling on it to throw it out.

[beccastareyes.insanejournal.com]

I think the problem is that California has two ways to amend their constitution -- one for adding new things, one for changing things. Adding new things is easier and doesn't require legislative action.

The Prop. 8 ballot campaign was starting before California ruled that the equality provisions meant same-sex marriage had to exist, so then it could be argued that it wasn't changing things. After the courts ruled, it could be argue that it was changing the Constitution to say that equality didn't apply to marriage laws. No one bothered to change anything, though, so now folks are arguing over whether it's legit -- but as long as they're arguing no same-sex marriages can happen, so until things are settled, it might as well have passed.

Why California has this bloody mess is beyond me. Stupid California.