New York Post columnist Kyle Smith writes:
News stories about the Vermont decision implicitly recognize that this one really counts, by emphasizing the fact that this is the first state to approve gay marriage through a legislature rather than impose it from the bench.... Vermont has made the change the proper way, and it ought to be congratulated.
Those who chafe at the decision - and the passage of Prop. 8 in California, which Obama carried by 24 points, suggests that the opposition is hardly limited to Republicans - should reexamine their arguments.
Smith goes on to note that opponents of letting gays wed like to claim that same-sex marriage violates their religious freedom, which apparently is premised on living in a society where government consigns gay people to second-class status. (This video from the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is devoted to this point.) But as Smith remarks:
Christians are surrendering nothing. They remain free to disapprove of homosexuality.... They also remain free to move to a country that enforces religious views....
Conservatives who are in favor of more children being born into and raised by two-parent families, social mechanisms to limit promiscuity, decentralized political decision-making and the supremacy of lawmakers rather than judges in non-Constitutional matters have much to cheer in Vermont. Gay-marriage opponents should ask themselves whether their reasoning is something else in disguise.
Making a conservative, pro-family argument isn't going to sway all social conservatives, but it will eventually convince many who are not bigots, and who don't wish to see themselves as such.
And there's another lesson: domestic partnerships and/or civil unions can be stepping stones to full marriage equality, allowing states to grow comfortable with the notion. Those who argue that it must be full marriage equality now or nothing - no compromise! - have been proven wrong.
But that's not to say full equality doesn't remain the goal, and we should keep our eyes on the prize. With four states won (Iowa and Vermont joining Massachusetts and Connecticut) it's right to press congressional Democrats and the Obama administration to modify the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act to allow federal recognition of same-sex marriages in states where they exists - and to do so before the GOP retakes seats in the House and the Senate in 2010.
3 Comments for “What Vermont Means”
posted by TS on
I only count 2. Iowa will be gone in 4 years, sooner if they had a political system more accessible to the masses.
posted by grendel on
“I only count 2. Iowa will be gone in 4 years …”
But that still leaves Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Which comes to three when I do the calculation.
And I am not so sure the matter will get to the voters in Iowa even in 2003. It has to the pass votes in two consecutive legislative sessions, and I suspect a constitutional amendment is unlikely to pass the Iowa House and Senate. Given how the issue riles up the republican base, the democratic leadership has little incentive to see the issue make it to the ballot. It would virtually assure massive outside funding in next election and big conservative turnout. So if it is in their power, the democratic leadership will try to keep this thing off the ballot. At least that’s my take on it.
posted by TS on
Sorry, fuzzy math. I concede the point. But I think the throngs of Iowa are deeply disturbed that their humble state has been dragged onto the culture war chopping block, and will express that at the ballot box in a way that allows them to put a stop to it. Even if they don’t, their assured intent to do so illustrates that Iowa is a tactical but basically Pyrrhic victory.