Love and War
News: Will gay marriage brings conservatives to the polls, again?
November 7, 2006
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The fight over marriage rights for same-sex couples began more than ten years ago. It was early 1996 when Hawaii's Supreme Court considered the issue, and conservatives across America took notice. If Hawaii were to validate such marriages, any state caught without a law invalidating them would be forced to recognize all same-sex couples married in Hawaii. The court ultimately decided against gay marriage, but the damage was done: The image of gay newlyweds pouring into Middle America demanding the privileges of marriage was seared on the conservative mind.
Republicans banked on the terror that image generated in the 2000 and 2004 elections, and they hope to do the same this year. In 2004, anti-gay marriage amendments garnered $6.6 million in support. State anti-gay marriage initiatives, especially Ohio's, helped deliver the presidential election to Republicans before Massachusetts became the first state to issue a gay marriage license in May 2004.
Today, voters in eight states will decide on state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. Five of them—Virginia, Tennessee, Colorado, Wisconsin and Minnesota—have a telltale combination of existing laws banning same-sex marriage and a hotly contested congressional race. Yet as recently as a few weeks ago Republicans were largely frustrated in their attempts to make a major issue out of gay marriage.
Marilyn Musgrave, a Republican incumbent from Colorado, where voters will decide on dueling gay marriage measures, declared in September, "I don't think there's anything more important out there than the marriage issue." But her Democratic challenger in a neck-in-neck race, Angie Paccione—one of just a handful of competitive candidates to support gay marriage—laughed it off. "Are you kidding me?" she said. "We're at war."
Then, late last month, the high court of New Jersey ruled that gay and lesbian couples could not be denied the privileges of marriage, triggering the same the old fears. The ruling gave Republicans what the Washington Post called "the bad news they were hoping for." "It allowed this issue to get back on the front page for a few days" explained Scott Keeter, director of survey research at the Pew Research Center, giving Republicans a respite from "trying to defend the situation in Iraq and the economy."
Republicans are hoping the momentum holds. President Bush reaffirmed his commitment to traditional marriage in two fundraising stops the day after the October 25 court decision. Bush called traditional marriage "a sacred institution that is critical to the health of our society." He stoked the fires again on Monday before an audience of party faithful in Georgia, saying "We believe marriage is a union between a man and a woman, and should be defended." The remark earned the president thundering applause.
Senator George Allen of Virginia, who is locked in one of the tightest races in the country, also tried to get traction from the issue. "Judges are trying to redefine the institution of marriage," he said at a campaign stop in Harrisonburg the day after the ruling. "That shows how important the Virginia amendment is." James Webb, Allen's Democratic challenger, opposes both gay marriage and the amendment because, he says, it is too broad.
In Tennessee, Bob Corker also tried to catch some wind from the ruling, although both he and the Democratic incumbent, Harold Ford, Jr., support the state's proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. On October 26, Corker invoked a vote Ford cast in 2004 to suggest that Ford supported gay marriage, a charge Ford called "despicable, rotten lies."
In New Jersey itself, the court's ruling may not have the jaw-dropping effect Republicans imagine. Its most likely result is not gay marriage, but civil unions, which two-thirds of the state's voters support. Yet even a small upswing for Republican challenger Thomas Kean, Jr., could be enough to win him the election. Kean favors a constitutional amendment while the Democratic incumbent, Senator Robert Menendez, does not (though he does oppose gay marriage).
Nationally, the ruling's ability to rekindle fears of gay couples flooding into culturally conservative states may be muted by the fact that all but four states, including New Jersey, already have statutes or an amendment—or, in 16 states, both—banning gay marriage. Despite the Massachusetts high court's late-2003 ruling in favor of gay marriage, recent decisions in New York, Washington and California—which decided without the help of amendments that gays and lesbians did not have the right to marry—may also eliminate the sense of urgency for voters in swing states deciding on amendments.
"It's a much more motivating issue for opponents," Pew's Keeter said, as opposed to supporters. "Just talking about it seems to be more beneficial to one side. Most Democratic candidates are on the record being opposed to gay marriage—they've essentially ceded the argument to the conservative side." Because Republicans have led the drive for anti-gay marriage legislation, they still win the religious conservative vote.
Yet fears about gay marriage have not been quite as easy to stimulate throughout this election cycle. A March poll from the Pew Research Center found that just 28 percent of respondents said they "strongly oppose" gay marriage. From March to August, campaigning nudged strong opposition up by just three percentage points.
Although no polls have been conducted since the New Jersey decision, pollsters focusing on gay marriage believe it has lost its power as a hot-button issue. Robert Wyatt has been conducting independent polling on gay marriage in Tennessee since 2000. "My opinion is that it will not activate conservatives," he said. "As much as it raises tempers, when you ask what's really important, it never comes up." Bruce Merrill of Arizona State University is tracking support for an anti-gay marriage amendment in the state. Republicans "thought gay marriage would mobilize the vote like it did two years ago," he said, but "it just doesn't have that kind of power—the war is so dominant."
Simon Jackman, a Stanford political scientist, challenges the idea that gay marriage is an effective way to increase voter turnout. He believes claims that the amendment on Ohio's ballot in 2004 won Bush the state and the election are just "credit-taking by people on the right." Asked whether last-minute Republican victories in undecided states could be attributed to the New Jersey high court's decision, Jackman refused to bite. "Across the country, there's a fairly set set of ideas of what this election is about," he said, "and it's not social issues, it's pretty much a referendum on Iraq."
This election cycle, the bloodshed in Iraq is eclipsing the threat of gay couples behind picket fences. But we may have to wait yet another election cycle to see if gay marriage has really lost its power over voters, or if it has just been temporarily supplanted by another kind of fear.
Cameron Scott is a Senior Editorial Fellow at Mother Jones.
