"Despite the tough economic times, no one's talking about profiting from the legalization of same-sex weddings. Perhaps they should be."posted by ericb at 6:31 PM on June 3, 2009
"I try very hard to be a responsible citizen and as a gay man I try very hard to keep track of the marriages I have destroyed, and there really aren't that many. I may have some secret admirers out there and I may have wreaked more havoc than I realize, but they haven't called."posted by ericb at 6:34 PM on June 3, 2009 [5 favorites]
"Republicans can reach a broader base by recasting gay marriage as an issue that could dent pocketbooks as small businesses spend more on health care and other benefits, GOP Chairman Michael Steele said Saturday.posted by ericb at 6:46 PM on June 3, 2009
Steele said that was just an example of how the party can retool its message to appeal to young voters and minorities without sacrificing core conservative principles. Steele said he used the argument weeks ago while chatting on a flight with a college student who described herself as fiscally conservative but socially liberal on issues like gay marriage.
'Now all of a sudden I've got someone who wasn't a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have financial responsibility for,' Steele told Republicans at the state convention in traditionally conservative Georgia. 'So how do I pay for that? Who pays for that? You just cost me money.'"
Or the pendulum swings the other direction.
"The model predicts that by 2012, almost half of the 50 states would vote against a marriage ban, including several states that had previously voted to ban it. In fact, voters in Oregon, Nevada and Alaska (which Sarah Palin aside, is far more libertarian than culturally conservative) might already have second thoughts about the marriage bans that they'd previously passed.posted by ericb at 7:22 PM on June 3, 2009
By 2016, only a handful of states in the Deep South would vote to ban gay marriage, with Mississippi being the last one to come around in 2024.
It is entirely possible, of course, that past trends will not be predictive of future results. There could be a backlash against gay marriage, somewhat as there was a backlash against drug legalization in the 1980s. Alternatively, there could be a paradigmatic shift in favor of permitting gay marriage, which might make these projections too conservative.
Overall, however, marriage bans appear unlikely to be an electoral winner for very much longer, and soon the opposite may prove to be true."
How does another bill that was voted down around the same time an earlier version of this law was passed count as "at the expense of"? They're largely unrelated, really, with "discrimination protection" being the only (tenuous) tie. It's not like a political deal was struck to pass the one in exchange for blocking the other.Did you read what I linked to? It looks very likely that a political deal was struck, getting the people who proposed 415 to vote against their own bill in favor of same-sex marriage. It seems someone thought there wasn't a way to pass both bills, so trans people would (as usual) have to be thrown under the bus.
Transgender rights and protections are an important issue, but it seems strange that people are too often willing to tie it to gay and lesbian rights. They're similar, but not the same, and it's shitty to rain on this parade like that.They very often are the same. Gay and lesbian (and other) people get discriminated against quite often for gender expression rather than sexual orientation.
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This is good news.
posted by dunkadunc at 4:43 PM on June 3, 2009