Evan Wolfson: ANALYSIS: What do the election results mean for the movement toward marriage equality?

Freedom to Marry
November 3, 2004

Some initial reflections...

The White House
A divided America went to the polls and it appears that George W. Bush has won this very close race. Bush will now have a third chance to fulfill his claimed desire to be "a uniter, not a divider" — a chance he squandered following his accession to power amidst divisions in 2000 and, again, following the surge of national unity post-September 11, when he chose to conduct his first term as the most deliberately divisive president in American history.

During the campaign, Bush embraced an unprecedented assault on the Constitution for political purposes, becoming the first president to call for amending our nation's most precious document so as to take rights away from a group of Americans. His campaign operatives also unleashed a state-by-state campaign of attacks on gay families to deny marriage rights and roll back other legal protections for same-sex couples and unmarried heterosexuals (more on this below). He willfully blurred the line between religious rites of marriage, properly up to each house of worship without government interference, and the legal right to marry, which government should assure with equality to all.

And yet despite this cruel strategy, in the closing days of the campaign Bush pointedly distanced himself from his own party's sweepingly anti-gay platform and, sincerely or not, declared his support for civil unions and other legal protections short of equality in marriage for gay Americans.

"I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do."
— George W. Bush, interviewed by ABC's Charles Gibson (10/24/2004)

Most analysts read this as a testament to the powerful momentum toward ending discrimination against gay people and their families furthered by the marriage debate, and an indication of where the center of the country is in its movement toward equality.

Will Bush, his allies and operatives, and his base continue their attacks on gay people and the state constitutions, or move to reduce or end discrimination against Mary Cheney and America's other gay sons and daughters? Time will tell.

State-by-state attacks
It appears that the right-wing's fierce onslaught on gay families, which in 2004 took the form of over a dozen attack amendments to state constitutions, was unstoppable in the short term. On November 2, eleven states ratified amendments barring the right to marry and, in eight of the measures, any other legal protections for their same-sex couples, unmarried heterosexuals, and their children.

Painful as these discriminatory measures will be for families and those who love them in these states; for businesses who recognize that discrimination undermines the ability to create productive and competitive workplaces; and for our nation, once again made a house divided by the opponents of civil rights equality, they will not stop our advance toward marriage equality.

Here are a few key points to keep in mind:

• Thirty-eight years ago Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke about what some described as a "backlash" against the civil rights movement.

"There really is no white backlash, because that gives the impression that the nation had decided it was going to solve this problem and then there was a step back because of developments in the civil rights movement. Now, the fact is that America has been backlashing on the civil rights question for centuries now... The backlash is merely the surfacing of prejudices, of hostilities, of hatreds and fears that already existed and they are just now starting to open."
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Seventh Annual Gandhi Memorial Lecture," Howard University, Washington, D.C., (11/6/1966)

What we saw on November 2nd. was no "backlash." As our civil rights movement works to end discrimination, we are in a struggle with today's opponents of equality, who do not believe in an America where all have equality under the law; a place where differences, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are respected for all; a nation that honors the separation of church and state; a country that sees men and women as equal and equally able to build lives with the partner of their choice. That struggle will not be won (or lost) overnight.

• In fact, despite the expected defeats in these eleven battles, we are winning the struggle. As I wrote a month before the election, we can't expect to win in every state simultaneously — no civil rights movement in American ever has. Exit polls yesterday showed 60% of the American people now support marriage equality or civil unions, an astonishing increase from just a decade ago. And as long as we continue to advance and secure the freedom to marry in more states, our critical task in the months ahead, wins trump losses.
• Though our opponents were attacking gay people's right to marry and legal equality, our side in most of these battles did not have the resources and time to really talk about gay lives and marriage rights in humanizing ways. We can't be surprised to have taken these losses; in some ways we hadn't yet begun to fully engage in these states, and didn't give the fair-minded middle a chance to take a deep breath, hear the stories and see the faces of the real families affected by anti-gay discrimination, think it through, and embrace the need for change to end discrimination. Where we came closest to mounting that kind of engaged campaign, in Oregon, we came closest to winning.
• This necessary discussion that will move the middle can start now in all fifty states, including those waking up to a loss today. Building on what we were able to achieve in the short-term electoral campaigns, we can engage in a true campaign of winning hearts and minds... and thus, from Ohio to Oregon, from Michigan to Mississippi, prove that we know how to lose forward as well as win.
• It isn't over in any state; our work has just begun. If we can move even George Bush to profess support for civil unions — something that didn't even exist five years ago — we can surely continue to move the middle toward fairness. (For example, in Massachusetts yesterday pro-equality candidates won, voters having had a chance to see the reality of marriage equality and embrace it.) In all fifty states, including many where we were temporarily outmatched this time, we can push past attacks to talk about our families and fairness and thus bring on buyer's remorse. (For example, see last night's repeal of the anti-gay ballot measure in Cincinnati, where voters had a chance to experience discrimination and came to reject it.) The key is to engage, not surrender.

What comes next?
In the months ahead, the marriage equality movement — gay and non-gay organizations working through diverse methodologies (outreach, alliance-building, discussion, litigation, legislation) in many states as well as nationally — has to do the following:

• — Continue to secure marriage equality in more states, alongside Massachusetts, Canada, and other leading democracies in Europe and other parts of the world
• — Repel anti-gay attacks, whether at the state or national level, whether in the form of bad laws or dangerous constitutional amendments
• — Contest the appointment of judges not committed to equality for all, and defend the independence of the courts whose constitutional role is to stand up against the prejudices of even the majority and the passions of the moment
• — Continue to speak to and reach out to more non-gay allies... and especially youth, who are on our side — and enable them to find their voice and vote

During the first Bush term — even with Republican control of Congress, reckless assaults on the courts and gay people, and an unprecedented attempt to polarize Americans along religious lines for political purposes — even amidst all that, we won the right to marry in Massachusetts and a Supreme Court ruling, written by a Reagan appointee, that the day of the "gay exception" to equality is over. In a second Bush term, whatever our opponents do, we can and will win, if we engage.

Our battle is here, it's not going away, the time is now, and the truth shall set us — and our nation — free.

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EXIT QUESTION

"Which comes closest to your view of gay and lesbian couples?"

(In the sample, 3% self-identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual; 97% did not.)

• They should be allowed to legally marry: 25% (of which 76% voted for Kerry, and 22% for Bush, 1% for Nader);
  
• They should be allowed to legally form civil unions, but not marry: 35% (of which 47% voted for Kerry, 52% for Bush, 0% for Nader);
  
• There should be no legal recognition of their relationships: 36% (of which 29% voted for Kerry, 70% for Bush, 0% for Nader)

— Conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for ABC, the Associated Press, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC News.