Mandate for Change

Behold the cultural contradictions of progressivism.

... something interesting happened on Election Day that didn’t get much attention. Bans on gay marriage were on ballots in several states, and they all won. In fact, gay marriage bans have ultimately passed in all 30 of the states in which they were on the ballot.

The ban in California was particularly intriguing. Proposition 8 would have failed in the Golden State if it were up to white voters, who opposed it by a 51-49 ratio. What carried it over the top was enormous support from black voters, with about 70 percent of them backing it. Hispanics also supported the ban by significant, though smaller, margins. In Florida, where a similar ban required a 60 percent margin, Amendment 2 just barely passed, getting 60 percent of the white vote. The cushion came from blacks, who voted 71 percent in favor, and Latinos, who voted 64 percent in favor.

In other words, Obama had some major un-progressive coattails. The tidal wave of black and Hispanic voters who came out to support Obama voted in enormous numbers against what most white liberals consider to be the foremost civil rights issue of the day.

The demographics may seem surprising at first, but when you think about it they're really not. These days blacks and hispanics are more likely to be strongly religious Christians than whites.

Of course I probably told you my own thoughts on this. There are no laws prohibiting gay couples from having ceremonies where they make life-long promises of fidelity and mutal responsibility to each other. There are no laws that I know of that prohibit gays from livng together (and if there are I think they should be struck down). I think gays can call it whatever they want: marriage, gayriage whatever -- what I'm against is having the legal definition of "marriage" expanded, mostly because that legal definition could and likely would lead to it being taught in schools as being "the same thing" -- which is counter to many, many people's religious beliefs and cultural standards, making it a church and state issue. The other thing that may happen, and things like this have happened in Europe - is the "hate speech" issue -- people merely exercising their rights supposedly guaranteed by the first amendment may find themselves on the wrong side of a "hate speech" lawsuit if they dare to merely state their opinion. "Oh, that would never happen." Not today. Not tomorrow. But it definitely would, eventually. Ask Piglet.

What it is harder for gays to do is to have their unions recognized as the same sort of legal contract that is assumed and enforced for marriages. But this can be solved by coming up with a superset word for legal purposes that include gay unions and heterosexual unions, and use that term in the laws. I'd even be in favor of replacing the word "marriage" as far as the law is concerned with some new word with a broader definition. This way any rights that are afforded to married couples could also be afforded to other types of domestic relationships as are afforded to marriage. What I and most other people, I believe, really object to is the re-definition of the word. Which is what the activists are really after. Forced acceptance through the power of the government. "My" solution has been proposed by others and rejected by the activists as not being good enough.

Anyway, the main reason for posting/linking this wasn't my rant (which you've probably read before) -- but rather the two facts that there is very strong resistance from the general population to this idea, and that just because a lot of people, especially a lot of people from certain demographic groups --- voted for Obama does NOT mean they buy all of his progressive policies by a long shot.