NRO Editors on the Marriage Initiatives

This was an interesting article from NRO about Proposition 8 and the other marriage measures that passed this week:

On Tuesday, by a margin of 52 to 48 percent, voters in California amended their state constitution to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, as did voters in Florida (62 to 38 percent) and Arizona (56 to 44 percent).

Those who argue social conservatism is behind the GOP’s current electoral malaise take note: In Arizona marriage outperformed John McCain by 2 percentage points, in Florida by 14 percentage points, and in California by 15 percentage points.

The Arizona win, reversing a defeat for a marriage amendment in that state in 2006, also restores to state marriage amendments an unblemished record of victory: They have won in 30 out of 30 states where they have been on the ballot.What lesson can we take from Tuesday’s marriage victories? Here’s one obvious one: Americans still care a great deal about this issue.

The California supreme court may have believed that the public would acquiesce when it foisted same-sex marriage on the state earlier this year. But the successful campaign to overturn its ruling was an astonishing effort, unprecedented for a social issue, that raised more than 100,000 volunteers and almost $40 million from over 60,000 donors.

Some other articles in the past couple of days also talked about the black vote and how they greatly supported the proposition, 70%. It's interesting that the group who has suffered the most discrimination in our country's history is coming out definitively to state that the gay marriage issue is not about civil rights, some adding that civil rights are about employment, voting, etc. and not marriage.

The above-linked article also touches on the fact that as homosexuals rise to the level of a protected class as race is, the logical next step is to equate religious opposition to same-sex initiatives to racism. Buyer beware of the future ballot initiatives that will raise this issue.