Vote caps decade-long gay marriage fight in Conn.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Praise tha Lorda! Another State has caught The GAY!

By The Associated Press
04.23.2009 11:21am EDT

(Hartford, Conn.) A decade-long battle for marriage equality in Connecticut ended late Wednesday when the General Assembly voted to update the state’s marriage laws to conform with a landmark court ruling allowing gay and lesbian couples to tie the knot.
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“It feels so good. It really does feel like the book is closing,” said Anne Stanback, president of Love Makes a Family, a gay-rights group that has led the fight for same-sex marriage in the state.

A spokesman for Gov. M. Jodi Rell said she will sign the bill, which passed 28-7 in the Senate and 100-44 in the House of Representatives, into law. While Rell, a Republican, signed the state’s 2005 civil unions law, she has said she believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

The bill comes six months after the State Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that same-sex couples have the right to wed in Connecticut, rather than accept the civil union law designed to give them the same rights as married couples.

It redefines marriage in Connecticut as the legal union of two people. State law previously defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

Even if the bill hadn’t passed, same-sex marriage would still be the law in Connecticut because of the court ruling. Proponents say the legislation is needed to phase out civil unions and make sure same-sex couples conform to the state’s marriage laws.

Three other states - Massachusetts, Vermont and Iowa - also allow gay marriage.

The Connecticut bill transforms civil unions into marriages as of Oct. 1, 2010, unless they’ve been annulled or dissolved. Many couples with civil unions already have sought marriage licenses since the court decision.

In an effort to appease some gay marriage foes, lawmakers amended the bill to show they want to protect religious liberties. For example, it says religious organizations and associations are not required to provide services, goods or facilities for same-sex wedding ceremonies.

“We wanted to make it completely clear that the state of Connecticut fully embraces not only the rights of same-sex couples to marry, but we fully embrace the rights and protections afforded by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and the Connecticut Constitution to the free exercise of religion,” said Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, a gay marriage proponent.

Peter Wolfgang, executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, which opposes gay marriage, considered the amendment “a significant improvement” because the original bill did not include any protections for religious groups such as the Knights of Columbus, which often rents out halls for weddings.

“It made a bad bill better,” he said.

Carol Gignac, a 62-year-old Roman Catholic from Bristol, clutched her rosary beads as she watched Wednesday’s debate from the Senate gallery. She said she was praying during much of the day for God’s mercy on Connecticut.

While resigned to the fact that gay marriage is now the law, Gignac said it bothers her that the court made that decision.

“The sad day was the state Supreme Court changing the thousands-of-years definition of marriage as between one man and one woman, across cultures, across times,” said Gignac, who wore a sticker on her lapel that read: “Religious Liberty: Our Freedom First.”

Rep. Beth Bye, a West Hartford Democrat who is openly gay and recently married her partner, thanked her colleagues for supporting the bill.

“I’m grateful that this bill provides the respect and dignity that all marriages in Connecticut deserve,” said Bye, who received hugs of congratulations after the final tally.

Wednesday’s bill also strips language from a 1991 state anti-discrimination law that says Connecticut does not condone “homosexuality or bisexuality or any equivalent lifestyle,” require the teaching of homosexuality or bisexuality “as an acceptable lifestyle,” set quotas for hiring gay workers or authorize recognition of same-sex marriage.

McDonald, who is openly gay, said the language is outdated and offensive to gays, lesbians and bisexuals.

Hallelujah!

[The Romulan Republic]

That's three states this year? At this rate, the whole country will have switched sides by the time Obama's run out a second term.

[RedImperator]

That's three states this year? At this rate, the whole country will have switched sides by the time Obama's run out a second term.

I wouldn't be surprised if New Jersey and New York went to full marriage soon. That said, this is the low-hanging fruit. It's not going to keep up this pace.

[erik_t]

Nate Silver is inclined to disagree. A whole lot of populations are near that tipping point, although more than a bare majority will probably be needed to enact this sort of legislation.

[The Spartan]

So what's going to happen to this particular govenor? She is a Republican after all and I can't imagine them being particularly kind to her for signing this into law. On the other hand, she flat out said she was against it even though she's in a state that is fairly liberal and that's just the sort of thing opponents love to hammer you on during election campaigns.

[Darth Wong]

Nate Silver is inclined to disagree. A whole lot of populations are near that tipping point, although more than a bare majority will probably be needed to enact this sort of legislation.

What about those states which passed gay-marriage bans by an average of 80% in the last federal election? That's pretty far from a tipping point, and those are all the so-called "real" Americans.

[erik_t]

Which states were those? I don't recall. Presumably they'd be down in the 2020-range.

That's a better question for him than me, though.

[SirNitram]

Now, I do the shimmy of happiness.

What? All this hospital time reduced my energy for dancing.

[Mr Bean]

What about those states which passed gay-marriage bans by an average of 80% in the last federal election? That's pretty far from a tipping point, and those are all the so-called "real" Americans.

As pointed out by Nate at his website the constitutional amendment states will take an eight to fourteen years to over-turn those amendments. However he predicts with current trends that most states which can(Have about the right mix of numbers and activisim) will legalese gay marriage.

Why bother quoting second hand, here is the post in question.

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled today that same-sex marriage is protected under that state's constitution.

As in California, there will of course be an effort to amend the state constitution to prohibit gay marriage. In Iowa, however, the hurdle to amending the constitution is fairly high: it will have to be approved by two consecutive sessions of the state legislature and then by a majority of the voters. Most likely, this means that Iowans won't vote on the issue until 2012.

This is good news for defenders of marriage equity, because while you might know it from Proposition 8's victory last year, voter initiatives to ban gay marriage are becoming harder and harder to pass every year.

I looked at the 30 instances in which a state has attempted to pass a constitutional ban on gay marriage by voter initiative. The list includes Arizona twice, which voted on different versions of such an amendment in 2006 and 2008, and excludes Hawaii, which voted to permit the legislature to ban gay marriage but did not actually alter the state's constitution. I then built a regression model that looked at a series of political and demographic variables in each of these states and attempted to predict the percentage of the vote that the marriage ban would receive.


It turns out that you can build a very effective model by including just three variables:

1. The year in which the amendment was voted upon;
2. The percentage of adults in 2008 Gallup tracking surveys who said that religion was an important part of their daily lives;
3. The percentage of white evangelicals in the state.

These variables collectively account for about three-quarters of the variance in the performance of marriage bans in different states. The model predicts, for example, that a marriage ban in California in 2008 would have passed with 52.1 percent of the vote, almost exactly the fraction actually received by Proposition 8.

Unsurprisingly, there is a very strong correspondence between the religiosity of a state and its propensity to ban gay marriage, with a particular "bonus" effect depending on the number of white evangelicals in the state.

Marriage bans, however, are losing ground at a rate of slightly less than 2 points per year. So, for example, we'd project that a state in which a marriage ban passed with 60 percent of the vote last year would only have 58 percent of its voters approve the ban this year.

All of the other variables that I looked at -- race, education levels, party registration, etc. -- either did not appear to matter at all, or became redundant once we accounted for religiosity. Nor does it appear to make a significant difference whether the ban affected marriage only, or both marriage and civil unions.

So what does this mean for Iowa? The state has roughly average levels of religiosity, including a fair number of white evangelicals, and the model predicts that if Iowans voted on a marriage ban today, it would pass with 56.0 percent of the vote. By 2012, however, the model projects a toss-up: 50.4 percent of Iowans voting to approve the ban, and 49.6 percent opposed. In 2013 and all subsequent years, the model thinks the marriage ban would fail.

Below are the dates when the model predicts that each of the 50 states would vote against a marriage ban. Asterisks indicate states which had previously passed amendments to ban gay marriage.

2009 (now)
Vermont
New Hampshire
Massachusetts
Maine
Rhode Island
Connecticut
Nevada*
Washington
Alaska*
New York
Oregon*

2010
California*
Hawaii
Montana*
New Jersey
Colorado*

2011
Wyoming
Delaware
Idaho*
Arizona*

2012
Wisconsin*
Pennsylvania
Maryland
Illinois

2013
Michigan*
Minnesota
Iowa
Ohio*
Utah*
Florida*

2014
New Mexico
North Dakota*
Nebraska*
South Dakota*

2015
Indiana
Virginia*
West Virginia
Kansas*

2016
Missouri*

2018
Texas*

2019
North Carolina
Louisiana*
Georgia*

2020
Kentucky*

2021
South Carolina*
Oklahoma*

2022
Tennessee*
Arkansas*

2023
Alabama*

2024
Mississippi*

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.

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.

His basic conclusion is that this is an almost a pure evangelical trend and the stated evidence of Evangelical Church's being in the forefront of every single gay marriage fight. As the evangelicals loss members, so too, does the gay marriage fight gain strength.

[Alyeska]

Do his models take into account the need for a super majority to undo constitutional bans? Montana passed its ban in 2004 with a constitutional ban. I seriously doubt my state has changed that much in the last 5 years that it would consider overturning the ban next year. The reason these fucks have passed the bans is because they know its the most effective way to slow down gay marriage. Just because a majority supports it doesn't mean you get it. They passed the ban just to force a super majority.

[Mr Bean]

Do his models take into account the need for a super majority to undo constitutional bans? Montana passed its ban in 2004 with a constitutional ban. I seriously doubt my state has changed that much in the last 5 years that it would consider overturning the ban next year. The reason these fucks have passed the bans is because they know its the most effective way to slow down gay marriage. Just because a majority supports it doesn't mean you get it. They passed the ban just to force a super majority.

His model does not take into account passing gay marriage provisions, just the likelihood of a ban passing. Just because a ban won't pass, does not mean Gay Marriage would pass. Nate's a good statistician which is why his site was so popular during the election because he does not push past what his data shows to prove a point.

Re-read what I posted, he limits himself to a statistical calculation of if and when in what states there are the votes for a gay marriage ban to pass. If Mississippi is true to form it's going to be another one hundred and twenty years before they recognize gay marriages.

[JME2]

“The sad day was the state Supreme Court changing the thousands-of-years definition of marriage as between one man and one woman, across cultures, across times,” said Gignac, who wore a sticker on her lapel that read: “Religious Liberty: Our Freedom First.”

Boo hoo; cry me a fucking river.

[lance]

Am I the only one that wants to beat someone with a bible when they hear that?

Also I like the "Our Freedom First" It just makes the person seem to be a huge dick.

[Tanasinn]

It fills me with joy to see religious bigots slowly go under the social steamroller, kicking and screaming the whole way.


With any luck, it will be a continuing (and accelerating!) trend.

[Alyeska]

This makes two States with a legislative victory.

[CmdrWilkens]

Below are the dates when the model predicts that each of the 50 states would vote against a marriage ban. Asterisks indicate states which had previously passed amendments to ban gay marriage.

I wanted to toss this out there because so many folks have been making so much mroe of this post by Nate than is warranted. This is not when a state will vote FOR gay marriage but rather a trend indicating when the state would fail to pass a ban.

[Losonti Tokash]

Am I the only one that wants to beat someone with a bible when they hear that?

Also I like the "Our Freedom First" It just makes the person seem to be a huge dick.

It's also a little bit misleading, since there's another group called First Freedom First which has the exact opposite goal, that of maintaining religious freedom and separation of church and state.