Updated | 1:55 a.m.
Updated | 2:31 a.m.
SEATTLE
— In the debate over whether two men or two women should be able to
make the same kind of legally recognized commitment to each other that a
man and a woman routinely (and often cavalierly) do, opponents have
leaned with particular enthusiasm on one argument:
The American
people just aren’t ready for this. Progressives are getting way ahead of
them, showing contempt for true democracy and trying to subvert it.
Same-sex marriage has been enacted only where legislatures or judges
swooped in to make it happen. When citizens themselves, in referendums,
have had a voice, they have said no, no and no yet again, more than 30
times in all, even in feel-good, sybaritic California. They have
resisted.
Well, not anymore. Not even close. For making history
today, for providing what I think will long be remembered as a crucial
turning point,
Maine and Maryland
deserve a round of applause and our heartfelt thanks. They were among
four states with same-sex-marriage referendums this Election Day, and if
official projections are correct, they just approved it at the ballot
box, where it had never succeeded before. More than that, they
guaranteed an entirely different conversation from now on.
Opponents
can no longer broadly and blankly say that the growing number of
politicians who support gay marriage are outside the mainstream; that
President Obama is outside the mainstream; that opinion polls charting a
rapidly increasing favor for same-sex marriage are somehow not
reflective of the mainstream.
While
Maine may not be the most representative state in America, it’s also
not some goofy, freaky, Bohemian tributary of the mainstream.
Tuesday
night was what history looks like: the passage, for the first time, of
same-sex marriage by popular vote; the reelection of the president who
became the first to support same-sex marriage; the first-ever election
of an openly gay or lesbian person to the U.S. Senate. That last
distinction belongs to Tammy Baldwin, of Wisconsin, a Democrat who defeated Tommy Thompson, the state’s former governor and no political slouch.
The
other two states with same-sex marriage on the ballot were Washington,
where I watched the returns nationally and results weren’t expected
Tuesday night or even Wednesday morning, and Minnesota, where voters
were deciding not whether to approve gay marriage but whether to ban it
in their state constitution, as 30 other states have done.
Naysayers
will look at Maryland and Maine and claim that they’re exceptional, far
from the heartland. Don’t listen too hard to this. Maryland may be a
bluer-than-blue state, but it’s also a state where African-Americans,
who have been less supportive of same-sex marriage than whites,
represent 30 percent of the population. So the same-sex referendum was
far, far from a slam dunk there, and its success suggests that citizens
elsewhere may be ready at last to endorse same-sex marriage—that other
states are ripe. It may well be that a popular wave in this direction
began on Tuesday night.
And while Maine may not be the most
representative state in America or an incessantly ballyhooed bellwether
like Ohio, it’s also not some goofy, freaky, Bohemian tributary of the
mainstream. It’s largely rural. Has a Republican governor. And for the
last 18 years, both of its two senators have been Republican.
Just
three years ago, when Mainers previously weighed in on the question of
same-sex marriage, the vote was 53 percent against and 47 percent for.
The change owes much to proponents’ organization—they ran a focused,
determined, well-funded campaign, spending more than opponents and
putting advertising up much earlier. But it also reflects changing
attitudes among Americans as time passes.
So does Baldwin’s
election. I’m struck less by the milestone she represents, an inevitable
one, than by the campaign that preceded it. Her sexual orientation
never became a big issue, eclipsed by concerns about the economy and
misgivings about the lucrative lobbying career that Thompson had forged
by himself, exploiting former government connections. In an election
year of close attention to issues of economic fairness and income
disparity, Baldwin’s sexual orientation was peripheral, and she
steadfastly kept it that way, not inviting gay and lesbian advocacy
groups to speak up loudly for her or link themselves too visibly to her
bid. I liked all of that, because it tracked with who we gay and lesbian
people really are. Our sexual orientation is a part of us, not the sum
of us, and not always the focus of our social, legal or political
concerns.
In the wake of what happened in Maine, Maryland and
Wisconsin, there really is no turning back, and that’s because with the
exception of a band of religious extremists and theocrats who read their
ancient texts selectively and apply them inconsistently, displaying
nothing that I can recognize as the true Judeo-Christian spirit, most
Americans are coming to realize that to claim acceptance of gays and
lesbians as equals and then deny them state-recognized marriage is a
contradictory, untenable position. What makes us different is that we
form our romantic partnerships with people of the same gender. If those
partnerships are deemed less worthy and honorable than heterosexual
ones, then we’re being deemed less worthy and honorable than
heterosexuals. It’s that simple, and it’s the pained and accurate
assessment I’ve heard, in different language and various forms, from
gays, lesbians and our supporters in Maine last month and here in
Washington over recent days.
Our sexual orientation is a part of us, not the sum of us, and not always the focus of our social, legal or political concerns.
“That
says to me, ‘I’m OK with you existing, but you are not equal to me, I
do not consider you the same level of human being’,” said Molly
Fitzpatrick, 19, a college student in Spokane, Wash., who is lesbian and
began to accept that fact when she was 15 and realized that the intense
crushes she’d been having on other girls for weren’t going away. “And
when a government denies marriage, it says to me, ‘You are not actually
citizens. You do not get to participate in this country’s traditions the
way other people do’.”
That’s what’s still being said by the
federal government, despite Obama’s position. Same-sex couples cannot
file joint federal tax returns; are not treated the same way as straight
couples when it comes to estate taxes; do not get the same
consideration from immigration officials that heterosexual couples do;
do not get the same survivor benefits if one of the two of them was a
federal worker, with a federal pension.
And that remains the
separate-and-unequal status of same-sex couples in more than four out of
every five states. Maine and Maryland bring to eight the number of
states, along with the District of Columbia, that permit same-sex
marriage. Washington could—and, I think, will—bring the number only to
nine. There’s much progress still to be made.
But the trajectory
is clear, and on Tuesday night, as marriage-equality advocates here in
Washington absorbed the news from the East, cheers went up. I saw tears
in people’s eyes. And I recalled a visit I made early last month to an
80-year-old gay man in Maine who was stunned — just stunned — at the
prospect of his fellow citizens affirming his identity at the polls.
He’d lived through so many decades of lesser regard, of undignified
treatment.
He compared a successful referendum for same-sex
marriage to a man setting foot on the moon: something once unthinkable,
something wondrous, something exhilarating, not a step but a leap.
We took a big leap on Tuesday night. It was wondrous and exhilarating indeed and—trust me—more of a beginning than an end.
Update | 1:55 a.m.
Overnight Tuesday, as more and more returns came in, the news got even better.
According to the Des Moines Register,
Iowans voted not to oust David Wiggins,
an Iowa Supreme Court justice who was part of a 7-to-0 unanimous ruling
three years ago to make same-sex marriage legal in that state. The
justices ruled at the time that barring gay and lesbian couples from
marrying violated the equal-protection clause of the state’s
constitution.
Supreme Court justices in Iowa, who are appointed by
the governor, come up every eight years for what were once pro forma
retention votes, and the state’s citizens can weigh in. The year
following the 2009 marriage ruling, three of those justices, including
the chief justice, came up for such a vote, and all of them were booted
from the bench. Wiggins faced the same possible fate this Election Day,
when he came up for his retention vote. And like his ousted colleagues,
he was targeted by religious conservatives.
But what a difference
just two more years make. With nearly all of the votes counted, it
appeared that Wiggins would retain his seat on the court. That
development underscored the theme of the night: this country is
changing, and it is changing in the direction of treating gays and
lesbians—and the people who recognize them as equals—with a full measure
of dignity.
Updated | 2:31 a.m.
Here at the Westin in downtown Seattle, where the people who campaigned
so hard for the Washington referendum for same-sex marriage are
watching national returns, there’s a potent sense of optimism.
They
don’t see how the attitude shift reflected in the Maine and Maryland
victories won’t shape what happens here in Washington, too. They don’t
see how they fail to become the third state—from zero states to three,
in one fell swoop!—to approve same-sex marriage by popular vote.
Washington
doesn’t have polling stations per se; residents by and large mail in
their ballots, which can be postmarked on Election Day. That means there
are too many still to be counted for a definitive call to be made right
now on any but the most lopsided local contests.
So we’re probably going to have to wait a bit on Washington.
Polls
just before Election Day and ballots counted so far suggest the
referendum has a very good chance of passing. And all I can say to that
possibility is: wow. If Washington joins Maine and Maryland, the number
of states permitting same-sex marriage will have climbed from six before
Election Day to nine afterward. That’s one hell of a jump, one hell of
an indication that Americans have really come around to an understanding
that marriage for gay and lesbian couples is the only just course and
that anything less is unequal treatment. I feel so proud of this
country, for all its flaws. It has such an enormous capacity for change,
and such a profound inclination toward fairness.
4 Comments
So what the anti-gays owe is a coherent account of how gay people should live. Should they stay in the closet, or live open but celibate lives? Should they have torrid but temporary affairs, or longer unions based on more than their sexual sides?
Anti-gays used to say that God wants them to stop. But since this is not in their power, we need to know what God wants them to do that they can actually achieve. Here anti-gay forces supply no coherent answers for the simple reason that there are none. Once they face this (which may never happen) they will be much more receptive to gay marriage.