Happily Ever After, Delayed

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On election night, I was less anxious about who would become president than about whether a certain little girl could marry her princess.

I'm talking about the little Latina girl in the California "Yes on 8" commercials, who comes home from school to tell her mommy about a fairy tale in which a prince marries another prince.

"And I can marry a princess!" she cheerfully announces, prompting a worried look from her mother and a voiceover in which a law professor warns that if gay marriage isn't stopped, parental rights will be trampled.

Statistically speaking, the chances that she'll want to marry a princess are low. In any case, reading the "wrong" fairy tales won't alter her sexual orientation. If books had that sort of influence, every Cinderella would grow up to desire a Prince Charming and vice-versa.

In the real world, some Cinderellas fall in love with other Cinderellas; some princes fall in love with other princes. In California, they may be allowed to live happily ever after, but they won't (for the time being) be allowed to get married. Prop. 8 passed 52-48%, after a $74 million battle. (A similar measure passed in Arizona, and Florida voted to prohibit not just same-sex marriage but also civil unions and domestic partnerships.)

I say "for the time being" because nobody expects this to be the end of the story. California same-sex couples will continue to receive the statewide legal incidents of marriage via domestic partnerships. Meanwhile, other states, mainly along the coasts, will recognize same-sex couples: some with domestic partnerships, some with civil unions, and a few with outright marriage.

Eventually, this hodgepodge will prove legally unwieldy, or socially inconvenient, or morally embarrassing-probably all of the above-and California will revisit the marriage question. If trends continue, marriage equality will someday win the day.

In the meantime, what difference does it make if princes and princes can only have "domestic partnerships" but not marriage?

It makes a difference in two important ways. The first is legal: because of this amendment, a same-sex couple married in Massachusetts (for example) will have absolutely no legal standing when traveling through California. The text is clear: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in California."

Since our Massachusetts couple has marriage, and not "domestic partnership," the Golden State would treat them as nothing more than roommates-which could prove devastating in an emergency situation.

As the law professor intones in that "Yes on 8" commercial: "Think it can't happen? It's already happening." The hodgepodge of legal statuses for same-sex couples has proven a legal nightmare for those who travel or relocate.

The second difference is less tangible but just as powerful: the cultural significance of marriage.

Here we saw a fundamental tension in the "Yes on 8" message. On the one hand, they argued that since gays had "all the rights" of marriage, there was no reason to demand the word itself. On the other hand, their tenacious fight to keep the word exclusive attests to its significance.

Because, you see, princesses don't dream about someday "domestically partnering with" the person they fall in love with. They dream about marrying him-or, in a minority of cases, HER.

To that minority, 52% of California voters sent a discriminatory message: you are not good enough for marriage. Your relationships-no matter how loving, how committed, how exemplary-are not "real" marriage.

One thing that opponents and supporters of Prop. 8 agree on: "real" marriage transcends state recognition of it. And that's another reason why this debate will continue. Because it's not just a debate about what California should or should not legally recognize. It's also about what sort of relationships are morally valuable, and why.

Notably, same-sex relationships were virtually invisible in the "No on 8" campaign. I assume that's because campaign research showed that images of gay couples don't resonate with undecided voters.

Maybe that's true in the short run. But in the long run, people are far more likely to support gay rights when they know gay people and see the palpable ways in which marriage matters to us.

Moving forward, then, we gay and lesbian citizens need to tell our stories. We need to show that gays, like everyone else, want someone to have and to hold, for better or for worse. We need to show that when we find such relationships, it's a good thing-not just for us but for the community at large.

We need to explain that we are not interested in confusing children, or in forcing princesses on little girls who don't want them. But we also need to show that girls who grow up to want princesses deserve to live happily ever after, too.

If trends continue, we will someday make that case-in time for that little girl to marry whomever she chooses.

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This Was Victory?

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Updated November 10, 2008

California, Florida and Arizona banned same-sex marriage; Arkansas banned adoptions by gay couples. Kevin Ivers, blogging over at Citizen Crain, hits the nail on the head:

The 2008 election was, in fact, a disaster for gays.... When I learned on Facebook this morning that dear gay friends of mine in New York were dancing in Times Square, and other friends in Washington were celebrating in front of the White House and actually comparing the experience to the fall of the Berlin Wall-while gay marriage was going down the toilet in California-it was astounding to me....

The gay movement used to be about thinking outside the box, including the one we ourselves might be in, and taking nothing for granted. But something happened over the last several years that changed all that. Now it's just…a gigantic co-opting of our energies by a political party that does nothing in return. Besides a whole lot of fundraising.

As one of his readers comments:

I briefly showed up a Stonewall "Victory" party in Sacramento which I THOUGHT was focused on Prop 8. Turns out it was more of a Democratic Party victory party with little emphasis on Prop 8.... By about 9:00 pm, as Obama was giving his victory speech, the results for Prop 8 started trickling in and showed an early lead for "YES." But no one seemed to notice or care.... By the ebullient atmosphere, you'd think Prop 8 was some new dog licensing statute.... I left after only a few minutes-heartsick, disgusted, and angry at the return numbers and also at peoples' dispassionate reaction.

And here's another first-hand account by a volunteer on the "No on 8" campaign, who describes the "No" campaign as "the most poorly put together effort I have ever seen."

The banner headline in the Nov. 7 Washington Blade blares "'Change' Has Come to America" with a huge, reverential photo of Obama, arm raised to accept the adulation of his adoring masses. It overshadows a smaller boxed article, "Voters in Calif., Fla. and Ariz. Ban Same-Sex Marriage." In an era in which gay activism has become a wholly owned fundraising subsidy of the Democratic National Committeee, that's the change we can believe in.

More. Over at Slate, Farhad Manjoo examines the impact of African-American Obama supporters, 70% of whom voted for Prop 8, and concludes: "Had black turnout matched levels of previous elections, the vote on the gay-marriage ban-which trailed in the polls for much of the summer-would have been much closer. It might even have failed."

The same could be said of Florida, where a hugh black turnout for Obama helped to pass an amendment banning not just same-sex marriage but legal recognition of "substantially similar" partnerships that might bestow the benefits of marriage.

Furthermore. You might think major outreach to black voters, making the case to oppose these anti-gay amendments, would have been a priority for LGBT political organizers this year. It wasn't, perhaps because mostly white LGBT activists are told they have no business telling blacks how to vote, and they believe it.

Of course, this might have helped.

More Still. The Obama-quoting pro Prop 8 robocall. This deserves much more attention, but that wouldn't serve the Obamist cause, would it.

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Try a Little Learning

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Digesting the bitter Prop 8 news, I'm disappointed and sad to have lost gay marriage in California. The adoption of a constitutional ban there has set back the cause by years. What's more frustrating, though, is what I'm hearing from people on our side. "This just shows why civil rights shouldn't be put up for a vote." Or: "We lost this one, but there are other courts to try." To me this translates as: "We're determined not to learn from defeat."

Not just one defeat. On gay marriage, we're now zero for 30 on state constitutional bans. Think about that. Has any other political movement in the history of the United States compiled such an unblemished record of total electoral annihilation? An introspective movement should be doing some fundamental rethinking at this point.

My suggestion: Rethink, first, the wisdom of mindlessly pushing lawsuits through the courts without adequately preparing the public. The result is gay marriage in two states-one of which, Connecticut, would soon have had it anyway-at the cost of a backlash which has made the climb much steeper in dozens of other states, and which, in some states, has banned even civil unions. The California debacle is particularly stinging. We already had civil unions there, and we were only one Democratic governor away from seeing those converted legislatively, hence less controversially, to marriages. First rule of politics: if you're winning anyway, don't kick it away.

Rethink, second, the strategy of telling the public that we're entitled to marriage by right and that anyone who disagrees is a discriminator or, by implication, a bigot. Some portion of the public, let's call it a third, agrees with that proposition, but a third isn't enough. As Dale Carpenter points out, another, let's say, third loaths homosexuality, but they're not winnable. The key is the middle group, people who oppose anti-gay discrimination but see gender as part of the definition of marriage, not as a discriminatory detail. We're going to have to persuade these people that gay marriage is a good idea. We're going to have to talk about gay marriage instead of changing the subject to discrimination. Bludgeoning them with civil-rights rhetoric isn't going to work. Not if it failed in the country's bluest state in a bright-blue year.

The gay marriage issue is not going to be decided over the heads of the American people, and no amount of comparing it to Brown vs. Board of Education or any other dubiously relevant precedent will change that. Too many gay heads are too strategically locked into a litigation-based mindset that has become counterproductive. Too many people forget that Martin Luther King was a persuader, not a litigator, and that the real breakthroughs came through Congress, not courts.

Addendum: A useful emendation here. In a perverse way, it cheers me up a bit to know that, pre-Prop 8, California was not as close to SSM as I thought.

More: A silver lining in Arizona, courtesy of commenter Throbert...

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Marriage Bans Win in Florida, Arizona; Marriage Rolled Back in California

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Updated Nov. 7

The get out the vote for Obama campaign, to which the LGBT beltway bandits contributed mightily, achieved its goal of bringing out record numbers of black and Hispanic voters, who heavily supported the anti-gay marriage amendments that will constitutionally bar same-sex marriages in Florida and Arizona (and, even worse, roll back marriage equality in a state where it now exists, California. Also, Arkansas voters banned gay couples from adopting children.

From Reuters, California Stops Gay Marriage Amid Obama Victory. That state's anti-gay marriage Prop 8 passed with exit polls showing 51% of whites opposing the amendment but 70% of African-Americans supporting it, and 75% of African-American women voting to ban our marriages. But what price is losing marriage equality when we now have the light bearer to reign over us?

In early October, we posted one volunteer's warning cry:

"Being behind in the polls wasn't inevitable-we were ahead for a long time-but now...their side has out fund-raised us by $10 million. ...

"Gays have a third choice in 2008; say to hell with the presidential election-Obama is no savior for the gays, and McCain no threat-and get 100% behind the No on 8 campaign. But no-our national organizations had to pretend the presidential election mattered for us this year, and for that, we might just all pay dearly, for a long time to come.

Then, on the eve of the election, Obama reiterated that " 'marriage is between a man and a woman." Yes, he said he was against Prop 8 and amending state constitutions, but everything else he said could have been used in a pro-Prop 8 ad. [update: And it was! A pro-prop 8 robocall used Obama's anti-gay marriage remarks.] The message wasn't lost on the faithful. And, of course, Obama had previously explained that only male-female marriage is a divinely ordained sacred union to be enshrined by law.

Don't expect Obama or the Democratic congress to take steps to modify much less revoke the odious Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act. The LGBT Obamist cadres will be explaining shortly that such a move wouldn't be expedient, after all, in terms of the greater goal of enacting their sweepingly "progressive" redistributionist agenda.

More. McCain received an historic 27% of the self-identified gay vote, according to CNN's exit poll. But to the LGBT media, we're virtually invisible. And as far as the beltway bandits at Human Rights Campaign are concerned, we don't exist.

But what if the money HRC raised to get out the vote for Obama and help secure their own sinecures in the Obama bureaucracies had gone to fighting these initiatives instead?

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The Forthcoming Rude Awakening

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Let the celebrations begin. And through inauguration and the "first 100 days" enthusiasm will be high, and LGBT Democratic activists will tell us that a new dawn is upon us, led by the one for whom we have been waiting and his chosen party. They will be insufferable.

But sometime early in 2009, the country will come to some inconvenient truths, as will gay voters. Obama has pledged to introduce legislation that attempts to provide tax credits to all earning less than $250,000 while simultaneously using the federal troth to send checks to those who don't pay income taxes, while also providing subsidized health care and college tuition, plus trillions more in new pork-barrel spending to fulfill the promises Obama has made unto the masses.

The struggling economy won't react well to raising capital gains and dividends taxes as a matter of "fairness," and hugely increasing income and social security taxes on "the rich," along with the many regulatory overreach steps that the Democrats will quickly pass. Add to the mix anti-trade protectionism, the rapid elimination of secret ballots for union elections, and unleashing the trial lawyers to bring suit against corporate America without even modest restraints (the new "pay equity" act will allow the plaintiffs' bar to reach back over 20 years to find discrimination and sue sue sue). Growth will stagnate, unemployment will rise, incomes will fall, and Obama and congressional Democrats will only be able to blame the Bush administration for so long, though they will try mightily.

On foreign policy, let's take Joe Biden at his word and expect the worst.

On the LGBT front, some Obama loyalists at the Human Rights Campaign and elsewhere will be awarded mid-level positions in Washington's alphabet bureaucracies. They will use these posts to defend Obama from critiques that he is not delivering on his promises to the LGBT community, much as Clinton's LGBT appointments defended his support of the Defense of Marriage Act and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

There will be quick passage of a "hate crimes" bill federalizing prosecution of crimes committed with animus against select Democratic-voting constituencies. There will be the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which even John McCain said he was willing to consider signing. It will not, however, include a "GENDA" component that prohibits employers from discriminating against crossdressers -- and that will split LGBT activists who have made the "T" a litmus test for progressivism (think National Gay & Lesbian Task Force) from the LGBT Obamist apologists (think Human Rights Campaign). It won't be pretty. And if the intramural fighting gets ugly enough, there won't be any ENDA at all.

Don't look for action on the military gay ban, either. Obama has said (though the LGBT press passed over it) that he's going to go slow and rely on the military's advice here. Gen. Colin Powell, newly minted Obamist and one of the fathers (with former Sen. Sam Nunn) of "don't ask, don't tell" (i.e., "lie and hide") will provide him with cover.

The Democrats will control all the reins for two years. As their mask of moderation falls away and their contradictory promises work out in favor of traditional big government, big labor, anti-growth statism, support will wither. They will loss Congress in 2010.

GOP at the Crossroads

The Republican party has a choice. If John McCain turns out to be the last GOP presidential nominee willing to forsake gay bashing and oppose amending the U.S. Constitution to ban marriage for committed, loving same-sex couples, then the party will tread backwards. And if our only choice in the years to come is between a redistributionist regulatory state and reactionary social conservatism, America's future will be bleak.

(I've bumped up into a new post my observations on the win for state marriage bans that had been here.)

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Five Dumb Ideas about Morality

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On the eve of the election, I am pleased that my fellow Democrats have finally learned not to concede "moral values" language to the other side.

In past elections, we heard a lot about "values voters"-a code-term for right-wingers on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. Senator Obama, among his many talents, has made the case that we should all be "values voters;" that foreign, economic, and environmental policy are moral issues; and that compassion, equality, and justice are values, too.

Still, my fellow liberals often have a hard time with the language of morals-whether because of an admirable humility, a lamentable wishy-washiness, or both.

That aversion results in a number of common but dumb claims about morality and ethics. (Like most philosophers, I use the terms interchangeably-there is no "standard" distinction.) Here's my take on these claims:

(1) "Morality is a private matter." To put it bluntly, this claim is nonsense of the highest order. Morality is about how we treat one another. It's about what we as a society embrace, what we merely tolerate, and what we absolutely forbid.

While morality respects certain private spheres-and while some moral decisions are best left to those most intimately affected by them-morality is generally quite the opposite of a "private" matter.

(2) "You shouldn't judge other people." This claim is not only false, it's self-defeating. (If you shouldn't judge other people, then why are you telling me what to do?)

The reason this claim sounds remotely plausible is because of a slight ambiguity in what it means to "judge other people." Should you go around wagging your finger in people's faces? Of course not. No one likes a know-it-all, and pompous moralizing is counterproductive.

But it doesn't follow that we shouldn't make any moral judgments about other people's behavior. Doing so is often the best way to figure out what traits to emulate and what mistakes to avoid.

(3) "I don't need anyone's moral approval." If this claim means that individuals don't need the moral approval of any other given individual, then fine: there will always be those whose moralizing is ill-informed, sloppy or insensitive-and thus best avoided. But to deny that we need the moral approval of anyone at all overlooks morality's crucial social role.

Morality, unlike law, does not have formal enforcement procedures: police and courts and the like. It relies instead on social pressure-encouraging glances and raised eyebrows, nudges and winks, inclusion and ostracism. (Interestingly, some right-wing bloggers have reacted to my recent work by worrying about "court-enforced moral approval"-as if that concept made any sense.)

Moral pressure can help us be our best selves. But in order for it to work, we need to take other people's moral opinions seriously most of the time. Just as unreasonable or unenforceable laws erode our confidence in law itself (think Prohibition), widespread dismissal of others' moral views erodes morality's social function.

(4) "Morality is just a matter of opinion." Whether boxers are preferable to briefs is "just" a matter of opinion. Whether coffee tastes better with cream and sugar is "just" a matter of opinion. To call our moral values "just" a matter of opinion, by contrast, is to ignore their social and personal significance.

The problem here is that people start with a legitimate distinction between facts and values-in other words, between descriptions of the world and normative judgments about it. Unfortunately, the fact/value distinction morphs into the much fuzzier fact/opinion distinction, which then morphs into the fact/ "mere" opinion distinction-suggesting that values are unimportant. Nothing could be further from the truth.

(5) "There's no point in arguing about morality." Moral problems are practical problems: they're problems about what to do. "Agreeing to disagree" is fine when the stakes are low or when the status quo is tolerable. But when something is badly wrong in the world, we should strive to repair it. That often requires making a persuasive moral case to our neighbors.

My own experience as "The Gay Moralist" suggests that moral arguments can make a difference-which is not to say they do so instantly or easily. Sometimes they require an extended back-and-forth. Sometimes, they help us get a foot in the door so that an emotional connection can be made. But the idea that they never work is not merely defeatist, it's downright false.

In short, we should all be moralists-liberals and conservatives, religious and secular, red-staters and blue-staters-because we all need to figure out how to live together.

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A Christianist Theocrat?

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Via the New York Times:

Several gay friends and wealthy gay donors to Senator Barack Obama have asked him over the years why, as a matter of logic and fairness, he opposes same-sex marriage even though he has condemned old miscegenation laws that would have barred his black father from marrying his white mother.

The difference, Mr. Obama has told them, is religion.

As a Christian - he is a member of the United Church of Christ - Mr. Obama believes that marriage is a sacred union, a blessing from God, and one that is intended for a man and a woman exclusively.

Comments "Instapundit" Glenn Reynolds: "My guess is that the reason he's not getting more flak on this is that lots of people who'd be upset by it just don't believe him. What will they say if it turns out he's telling the truth?"

More. Or just a socialist?

Furthermore. Apparently, only the anti-gay marriage side in California is willing to run an ad featuring a (supposed) gay couple at home with their child, in What Is Marriage For? Given his clear public statements that only man-woman marriage is a sacred union, how could Obama possibly disagree with this message?

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Beyond the Beltway, Again

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GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is no supporter of gay equality, although he's not been an anti-gay demagogue, either. But a radio ad attacking McConnell, by AFSCME, the government-workers union, traffics in nasty homophobic innuendo in order to help elect his Democratic opponent.

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California’s Invisible Gays

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These days, it's pretty hard to walk the streets of a California city without seeing same-sex couples - shopping, strolling, holding hands, sometimes accompanied by children. What used to be called, self-consciously, "public displays of affection" are now merely public displays of ordinary family life. For gay folks, then, it is all the more stinging an irony that the one place where same-sex couples are invisible is in the advertising war over Proposition 8.

Proposition 8, of course, is the constitutional ballot initiative on whether to retain or reject same-sex marriage, which was legalized by the state Supreme Court in May. Given California's power to shape national trends, the stakes for both sides could not be much higher. But given the sheer size of the state's media market, TV advertising could not be much more expensive. For both sides, the premium is on common-denominator messaging that appeals to the largest possible number of swing voters while causing a minimum of political backlash.

The need to walk that tightrope helps explain why the actual subjects of next month's initiative, gay couples, were "inned" by the "No on 8" campaign's ads. (Full disclosure: I am a "No on 8" donor.) One ad, for example, features a gray-haired straight couple. "Our gay daughter and thousands of our fellow Californians will lose the right to marry," says mother Julia Thoron.

A subsequent ad, all text with voice-over narration, mentions marriage only once ("Regardless of how you feel about marriage, it's wrong to treat people differently under the law") and never uses the phrase "gay marriage" or even the word "gay." Just as oblique was a spot, released Wednesday, in which state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell reassures viewers that "Prop. 8 has nothing to do with schools or kids. Our schools aren't required to teach anything about marriage." A casual viewer could have come away from these ads puzzled as to exactly what right thousands of Californians might be about to lose.

Asked about the absence of gay couples, a senior "No on 8" official told KPIX-TV in San Francisco that "from all the knowledge that we have and research that we have, [those] are not the best images to move people." Children, also, were missing; showing kids with same-sex parents could too easily backfire.

The pro-Proposition 8 forces, by contrast, featured a child prominently in their TV advertising: A schoolgirl comes home with a book called "King and King" and announces, to her mother's consternation, that she learned in school that "I can marry a princess." Another ad attacks overweening judges, mocks San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom for saying, "It's going to happen whether you like it or not," and goes on to claim that gay marriage could cause people to be sued for their beliefs and churches to lose their tax exemption.

Notice, again, that gay couples were missing, though for a different reason. Nowadays, swing voters are more leery of anti-gay discrimination than of same-sex couples. So the "yes" ads changed the subject, focusing on alleged (and disputed) follow-on effects of same-sex marriage rather than on the thing itself. If homosexuals can get married, look what else might happen! Arrogant judges, politicians and school bureaucrats will harass churches, torment dissenters and inappropriately sexualize education!

What might such ads show? Well, one might feature someone like my friend Brian, who married his partner, Doug, on Saturday. They already had a domestic partnership, but that could not begin to match the power of marriage, sealed before parents and friends in a ceremony in San Francisco. "It's how you say this is forever and do it publicly," Brian says. "It's very different from getting a form notarized at Mailboxes Etc."

An ad might show Brian driving Doug to the hospital and sitting at his bedside after surgery. Marriage is unique because of the high social expectations that go with it. Chief among those expectations is that spouses will do whatever is necessary to care for each other - which is valuable, because census data show that almost a third of California's gay couples have only one wage-earner, and almost a fifth have at least one disabled partner (about the same, by the way, as for straight married couples). By supporting and reinforcing the care-giving commitment, each marriage, gay no less than straight, creates social capital for the whole community.

Brian and Doug don't have kids, but a fourth of California's gay couples do, according to census data. An ad might show some of those kids watching as their parents, previously denied marriage, tie the knot. For children, no other arrangement matches the security and stability afforded by married parents, because no other arrangement confers comparable status and social support. If they could cast ballots, how many of the more than 50,000 children being raised in California's same-sex households would vote to deprive themselves of married parents?

Or an ad might feature a gay teenager celebrating his parents' 20th wedding anniversary and dreaming of his own someday. There are countless gay youths for whom the prospect of marriage will be so much more tangible if it is embraced by the nation's largest state. The breakthrough effect of same-sex marriage is not on the mature gay couples who can finally get marriage licenses, important though that is; it is the effect on generations of gay kids who will no longer grow up assuming that their love must separate them from life's most essential institution.

Keeping marriage available to gay couples in California, and giving it the blessings of a popular majority, would be a game-changer for gay culture. It would signal that the transformation from a pariah culture in the 1950s, to a promiscuity culture in the 1970s, and then to a commitment culture in the AIDS era and beyond, has taken its last and greatest step: to a culture of family.

Ellen DeGeneres, the comedian and TV personality, made an unofficial anti-Proposition 8 ad calling her marriage "the happiest day of my life." For the most part, however, you have seen and heard least about those who benefit most from gay marriage. That does not mean, however, you shouldn't think about them.

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Bait and Switch Time, Again

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In the wake of Michigan's passage of an anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment, John Corvino wrote:

It was a classic bait-and-switch. When gay-rights opponents sought to amend Michigan's constitution to prohibit, not only same-sex marriage, but also "similar union[s] for any purpose," they told us that the amendment was not about taking away employment benefits. They told us that in their speeches. They told us that in their campaign literature. They told us that in their commercials.

They lied.

The initiative passed, the constitution was amended, and before the ink was dry the opponents changed their tune and demanded that municipalities and state universities revoke health-insurance benefits for same-sex domestic partners.

A similar scenario is being played out, now, in Florida. The Sunshine State's Amendment 2 appears on the state ballot as follows:

"This amendment protects marriage as the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife and provides that no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized." (emphasis added)

Supporters of Amendment 2 are claiming no existing rights will be taken away:

Amendment 2 does nothing new. It merely protects something longstanding, something precious, something beautiful - natural marriage between a man and a woman.

But, as we know from Michigan, that's not what they'll be saying the day after the amendment passes. And, while unlike California, the Florida amendment requires 60 percent of the vote to enshrine anti-gay animus in the state constitution, defeating it remains an uphill battle.

Where's Obama? The Washington Blade takes note of Obama's silence on California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8, and as we've pointed out, observes that:

...black support for Prop 8 could be the key to its approval. A new poll conducted by SurveyUSA shows overwhelming black support for Prop 8. Likely black voters favor it, 58-38 percent. That's a daunting and disappointing margin, especially considering black turnout is expected to be at record-breaking levels thanks to Obama's historic candidacy.

Likewise, in Florida (which, unlike California, is very much a swing state up for grabs), the Obama campaign is making registration of Caribbean-Americans and Democratic-leaning Hispanics (of which there are a growing number) a key priority. These groups are heavily anti-gay, and anti-gay marriage. Let us applaud the self-sacrifice being made by LBGT organizations, whose donations to the Democrats' "get out the vote" efforts may elect Obama, even if it means passing anti-gay state consitutional amendments.

Bait and switch, anyone?

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