Next?

Matt Baume of Americans for Equal Rights puts out a weekly update on marriage equality. I rarely watch to the 2 minute video because it seems he's covering news I've already heard. But this time he looks a bit into the future. Minnesota gets proper praise. Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon, New Mexico, and (long term) Nevada may act soon. There appears to be movement in Ohio and Pennsylvania. But then who?

Alas, 30 states have constitutional amendments we must remove. And those take a lot more work, time, and money to repeal. It could be a while before those start to fall.

Unless the Supremes short-circuit the process…



Michelangelo Signorile lists a couple reasons why the win in Minnesota is so sweet. First, this is the home state of Michelle Bachmann, who has built her career on bashing gays. Second, the state was facing a gay marriage ban being placed in the constitution and it didn't look good for our side. And that was only 6 months ago! A sweet byproduct of our win last November was that the overreach by the GOP for putting the proposal on the ballot was one of the reasons why voters flipped both the state House and Senate from GOP to Dem control.



Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones noted that last October we had six states (with DC) with marriage equality. We've now doubled that. What has contributed to that doubling? She says one of the big ones is that the Mormons stayed home. Not a peep out of them in about a year.

The Mormon church has been involved with the marriage issue since it became an issue with Hawaii back in 1996 (need to brush up on gay history?). They were hugely involved in the Calif. marriage ban and were severely criticized for it. That prompted their leadership to distinguish between the appropriateness of gay marriage (still a strong no) and whether they should make it a political issue.

But with the Mormons with their deep pockets and strong organizing skills out of the picture the anti-gay crowd was left with the Catholic Church and the National Organization for Marriage. And NOM was revealed to be incompetent.

The absence of the Mormons had another effect -- it allowed GOP lawmakers, especially in Rhode Island, to vote for equality. That has been crucial to our victories.