Arizona Stops Gay Marriage Ban

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Arizona Stops Gay Marriage Ban

by Bob Roehr
2006-11-15
The Windy City Times



Arizona voters became the first in the nation to reject a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. They just said “no,” by a margin of about 51 percent out of the more than 1 million votes cast.

Log Cabin Republicans Executive Vice President Patrick Sammon called the victory in Arizona “an important milestone in the fight for equality. Citizens of a conservative red state voted in favor of basic fairness and common decency.”

Perhaps the outcome isn’t so surprising, given that Arizona already has elected Jim Kolbe, the only openly gay Republican, to the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as gay Republicans Steve May to the legislature and Neil Guiliano as mayor of Tempe. However, come January, none of them will be in office.

South Dakota was too close to call all night, but in the end, 52% supported a ban on gay marriage, the same percentage that opposed the legalization of medical marijuana. At the same time, 56% of voters rejected a tough law restricting access to abortions.

In Colorado, GLBT political strategists didn’t think they could defeat an amendment banning same-sex marriage, and they were right, as the measure drew 56 percent of the vote. But they did think they could convince voters to support a domestic partnership bill that the legislature passed. It didn’t work, 52 percent of the voters rejected it as well, according to incomplete returns.

Colorado political consultant Ted Trimpa, who helped the Gill Action Fund shape that strategy, said, “In the home of Amendment 2 and Marilyn Musgrave, being just a couple points from the first-ever affirmative statewide ballot for gay couples is a success.

“The Foley and Haggard scandals and persistent negative gay stereotypes saturated the news coverage the last three weeks of the campaign and most likely offended a number of undecided voters.”

Local organizers in Wisconsin and Virginia had high hopes that they would be able to convince voters that the proposed amendment went too far, banning far more than marriage and raising a host of issues that would cause endless litigation. They failed. About 58 percent in each state voted yes.

In Idaho, 63 percent endorsed an amendment. South Carolina and Tennessee were foregone conclusions, at 78 percent and 81 percent, respectively.

“It’s clear that fear-mongering around same-sex marriage by the GOP and the extreme Christian right is fizzling out,” said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “It doesn’t have the juice it had just two years ago—people are getting sick of it.”

It may be that the ballot measures to stop gays from marrying have reached their peak and have started to decline. Opponents in the marriage struggle quite rightly chose a strategy of going after “the low-hanging fruit” in promoting votes in states that are the most socially conservative at the earliest possible time.

So it may be that the anti-gay marriage movement has run out of its most fertile territory, and the ensuing debate over the issue has helped to change people’s views of gays in the remaining jurisdictions.