March 27, 2013

Rick Perry Needs a Refresher on How Texas Feels About Marriage

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickperry/6005063359/sizes/z/in/photostream/">Rick Perry</a>/Flickr

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Marriage equality is ascendant, you may have heard. But Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas), for one, believes the question of who can and cannot marry is a settled issue in his state. “In Texas, it is fairly clear about where this state stands on that issue,” Perry told the Dallas Morning News on Tuesday. “As recently as a constitutional amendment that passed—I believe, with 76 percent of the vote. The people of the state of Texas, myself included, believe marriage is between one man and one woman.”

But Perry is, like many opponents of same-sex marriage, relying on some fairly dusty data sets. The constitutional amendment he’s referring to passed in 2005 (it’s 2013 now) and it banned same-sex civil unions in addition to same-sex marriages. Texans were really opposed to marriage equality then. James Henson and Joshua Blank of the Texas Politics Project have been paying a bit more attention to the numbers recently, though, and noticed a trend:

When we went back to examine the trend lines in the polls that included the gay marriage item, it became evident that overall opposition to same sex-marriage has been on a slow and steady decline, with some internal patterns of change among particular age, gender and partisan subgroups, including young people and suburbanites.

Perry would do well to consult this handy chart, from the TPP:

Texas Politics Project

Gay marriage is trending up, opposition to any legal recognition has trended down. Texas probably isn’t going to go the way of Maryland and Washington anytime soon, but legal recognition of same-sex unions—which is prohibited under the 2005 constitutional amendment—is now the preference of six in ten Texans. And a majority of young Republicans now support full marriage equality, suggesting that this trend is only going to continue, even if Texas doesn’t start turning purple. Oops.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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