Wednesday, November 4, 2009

What They're Up Against

I can understand that some people are too uncomfortable with gay marriage to vote for it. The mostly elderly bloc that reliably votes against it must have plenty of people who do so not out of a sense of malice but instead out of respect to tradition. I wish they would change their minds, but there's only so much we can do about that.

The movement that mobilized to support Proposition 8 last year and to defeat gay marriage again in Maine last night also relies on a very different group, though. People who organized and fought against marriage equality, who managed to tip the scales against tolerance yet again, who cheered when the results came in last night. Some of the pictures from their campaign party as the votes piled up against gay marriage:



Can you imagine being ecstatic about seeing civil rights being denied to your friends and neighbors?

The silver lining here is that they can't keep this up forever. They narrowly won it today, where it wouldn't have even been considered in the past. Demographics and changing attitudes should make each future win more costly, until the entire fight becomes unsustainable for cultural conservatives. Young people today support marriage equality 58 to 42- this is an issue that will keep coming up until the bigots lose.

3 comments:

  1. Nice post.

    Hopefully these people will be demographic'd out of existance.

    Really sickening pictures though.

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  2. This is one of those few times where I'm ashamed of our country. Wow.

    ReplyDelete