Indiana isn't paying attention

Sigh. Aren't they paying any attention to the news? The GOP increased its hold on Indiana and is talking loudly about having a go at a marriage protection amendment. Never mind three states just voted for marriage equality and a fourth rejected such an amendment. If such an amendment gets through the state legislature it won't go before voters until 2014.

Rick Sutton of Indiana Equality Action is saving their group's energy for the public campaign, letting the legislators play their games. Likely a wise move, especially since they may have as much as 18 months to get ready.

By November of 2014 the Supremes will surely have acted (in some way) on the Defense of Marriage Act and on Calif. marriage equality. Both will surely change public opinion. And might make the whole exercise in Indiana moot.

All this prompted me to look up some of my blog entries from April 2009 when Nate Silver predicted when the voters of each state would first vote against a gay marriage ban (which is far different than when each state would approve -- or have a chance to vote for -- marriage equality or when a state would actually get marriage equality through a ruling on its Supreme Court).

So I checked Silver's post about which year a state's voters would reject discrimination and -- yikes! -- Indiana is projected to turn down an amendment in 2015.

Then again, Silver predicted Minnesota would first reject a gay marriage ban next year and they did it this year. As Silver states at the end of his predictions:

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.