Summary
Worse yet, once these initiatives pass, family-values folks will renege on their moderate rhetoric and use them to try to ban any legal recognition, no matter how small or even symbolic, of same-sex couples. Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Topeka-hardly liberal bastions-passed LGBT antidiscrimination laws; Virginia's governor and Salt Lake City's mayor extended health-insurance coverage to government employees' same-sex domestic partners; and Alaska's Supreme Court unanimously ruled that-despite the state's DOMA-local governments must offer equal benefits to employees' married spouses or same-sex partners. (All this has surprised observers, since the group has long been criticized for its singular inside-the-beltway focus, and since HRC'S commitment to marriage equality has often been considered suspect.) The Stonewall Democrats, who also replaced LGBT opponents with supporters in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, have been holding "Santorum retirement parties," fund-raisers to take down the Pennsylvania senator who compared homosexuality to "man on child, man on dog" sex.
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Marital Blitz
DO YOU REMEMBER THE FALL 2004 GAY-BASHING festival? In 13 states, voters agreed to add to their constitutions a phrase like this one: "Marriage is between one man and one woman." The gaybashing came afterward, when Democrats and liberal pundits declared that greedy gay folks had brought those initiatives on themselves with their foolish pursuit of marriage equality-and were therefore responsible for John Kerry's loss. Political scientists have since debunked the claim that anti-marriage initiatives brought Kerry down. But here's the bad news: The anti-marriage initiatives are back.
This fall, Defense of Marriage Acts (DOMAS), which declare that "marriage is between one man and one woman," and SuperDOMA amendment initiatives, which also ban "marriage-like" recognition of same-sex pairs, will be on the ballot in Alabama, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. They're also likely to qualify for the ballot in Arizona, California, and Colorado. At the same time, marriage-equality lawsuits are percolating up through the courts in...See the full content of this document
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