Gay Marriage, an Idea Whose Time Has Clearly Come

     At this point, it's just a question of when. It will happen-gay marriage will be recognized as the law of the land and it will be on a national basis. Even Rush Limbaugh now acknowledges this:

     "Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday conceded that gay marriage will eventually become the law of the land in the U.S., agreeing with proponents of same-sex marriage that "the genie's not getting put back in the bottle" on the issue."

      "A lot of people have no personal animus against gay people at all," Limbaugh said on his radio show, according to a transcript. "It's instead, you know, a genuine, I don't know, love/respect for the things they believe define this country as great. They get up every day and they see all this stuff under attack. They see it all under assault. And I think they're just worried about the survivability of the country. And to which the opponents say, 'Well, the country's changing and you better get with it and understand it because this genie's not getting put back in the bottle.' And I think that's right. I don't care what this court does with this particular ruling, Proposition 8. I think the inertia is clearly moving in the direction that there is going to be gay marriage at some point nationwide."

  
      "Limbaugh added that the political ramifications of same-sex marriage are still unknown, especially for the Republican Party: "I mean, the Republican Party, for example, could be looking at its ultimate demise here, depending on how it deals with this. Because they do have multiple millions of voters who are evangelical Christians who on religious grounds alone don't support homosexual marriage and are not going to support a political party that does. So then the Republicans in that circumstance would be faced, if you were to lose multiple millions of voters over this, they are going to have to replace them somewhere. How do they do it? Do they try to siphon off most of the gay vote that's going to the Democrats?"

     http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/rush-limbaugh-expects-gay-marriage-will-eventually-be?ref=fpb

     This is just one more piece of evidence that gay marriage being legal is inevitable. Limbaugh, notice, makes no argument for opposing it, but sees it as a kind of cultural conduit for evangelicals and wonders what the GOP will do if they support it. 

     The answer to this is that voter demographics is not a zero sum game. It calls to mind the fallacy about 10 years ago when Republicans were saying that if only they could siphon off even 30% of African American voters, the Democrats would never win again. This only made sense if you assumed that all the Southern racists that had become Republican since the Voting Rights Act would continue to vote in such large numbers for the GOP after it no longer ran as the White party-which by definition it would have to do to get 30% of the Black vote. 

      The early signs in the DOMA case seem to harbor ill for it. This seems to be the consensus of most of the media. Still, even on the comments by swing vote Anthony Kennedy that most heartened gay marriage proponents are rather double edged and point out that it's still quite possible that the Court will punt on the central questions before them this week in these two big cases-Doma and the California Proposition 8 case. 

     It seems that the Court really wants to avoid setting any precedent here. As some have noted, it's interesting that Kennedy's states rights' argument in declaring DOMA unconstitutional would mark perhaps the first time states rights' have actually facilitated an increase in the civil rights of Americans rather than as a way to curtail them; for the most part states rights' is a conservative ploy to slow down social change. 

    Justice Kennedy's argument against DOMA-that it abrogates the prerogative of states to define marriage   suggests that he may use the same reasoning in the Prop 8 case-which would effectively punt the ball. Essentially this would allow California to strike down Prop 8-which was passed through referendum in 2008-but would not touch the question of whether Prop 8 is by definition unconstitutional. 

     The White House is hoping that the Court won't punt but there's clearly a good chance of this. 

      http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6480818427597300387#editor/target=post;postID=4206187816289522384

      The question is though why the Court agreed to hear the cases in the first place if it wants to punt. So Doma's days look very numbered but the Court may avoid setting the precedent that anti gay marriage laws are by definition unconstitutional. If they did that this would effectively be "legislating from the bench" making it legal in all 50 states. 

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/03/27/a-mixed-day-before-the-supreme-court/

      Rush had criticized Bill O'Reilly for his recent comments: that there really is no compelling argument against gay marriage other than Bible thumping. 

      http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/rush-limbaugh-bill-oreilly-fox-gay-marriage-89415.html?hp=l9

      Yet, Rush gave the game away with his own comments that were meant to clarify what the "Bible thumpers" are about. Essentially, the only compelling reason to oppose gay marriage is that in the past-like in 2004-it has helped the party electorally. 

      This is why the GOP House is now taking the unprecedented step of defending DOMA in the Court. Yet at some point opposition is subject to the law of diminishing returns. That time seems to be about now. As Greg Sargent points out, we have the surreal spectacle of the House GOP defending something in SJC they won't even discuss in public. 

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/03/27/republicans-know-they-have-a-problem-on-gay-marriage/

       Yes, we surely have come full circle on gay marriage. 15 years ago it was supporters of gay marriage who didn't like to discuss it too much in public.