Comments on Gay Bashing Backfires

Why is the US the only civilized country that puts the rights of hated minorities up for a public vote? It’s totally immoral. Can you imagine what that would have looked like generations ago?

“Sorry honey, your father and I can’t get married because 52% of voters approved Referendum 6 banning interracial marriage.”

Or

“Looks like we’re going to save tons of money on payroll since 57% of voters approved the Constitutional Amendment legalizing slavery.”

I guess people who decry “activist judges” and “just want a public vote on gay rights” also approve of segregation, interracial marriage bans and slavery, since none of those practices was outlawed nationally by a majority vote.

I appreciate the positive spin that this analysis creates, but there is something illogical about it that pisses me off.

Before the election for the majority of 2006, there was a drumbeat of silence: "stop advocating for marriage equality until after the election. It attracts our enemies to the polls."

Now there is some interpretation that the presence of the amendments on the ballot that limit citizenship of LGBTs actually helped Democrats win.

So if we get even quieter and less demanding maybe our abusive husband will leave us alone?

I must have misplaced my rose colored glasses.

I don't get it. How could "moderate" Reagan democrate voters go to the polls and say "I've had enough of the gay bashing," pull the lever for a Dem candidate, but still vote in favor of the ban?

Wisconsin moderates sure are a confused bunch.

Andrew, that IS what happened years ago. Vermont is the only state in the country that has never considered banning interracial sex/ marriage. There were bans all over the country in the early 20th century, including California and I think Oregon. WA voters rejected the proposed ban twice in the 1930s:

http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/antimiscegenation.htm

Blue Pride: they weren't tired of the gay bashing, they were tired of Iraq. They voted FOR gay bashing and then against Republicans, even though they agreed with those Republicans on gay bashing.

You all are using flawed logic, which is why you don't understand Wisconsin.

Listen: You can vote Democrat and yet still be AGAINST gay marriage, just like you can vote Republican and yet still be AGAINST oil drilling in Alaska. Similarly, you can be a Democrat AND a gun totin' hunter (Kerry, anyone?), just like you can be a Republican and be all warm and fuzzy towards stem cell research (Ah-nold!).

Your mistake is in thinking that when you vote Republican, you must therefore be 100% in-step with each and everything in the GOP platform. And you are also mistaken in thinking that if you are in favor of 1 platform item, you must be in favor of them all. Wrong ... and wrong again.

Democrats sometimes have the same dichotemy: Just because you are in favor of gay marriage, let's say, doesn't necessarily mean that you are in favor of gun bans, higher taxes, and affirmative action. All it takes is 1 gun-totin' gay boy, or 1 tax-cuttin' dyke CPA, or 1 black man at odds with the NAACP to prove it.

Voters in Wisconsin, like in much of the country, vote with their core principles. But when it's time to give the schmuck in office the boot, it's time to give them the boot -- yes, even if he/she otherwise is a member of "your" party. Which also explains why Republicans in Ohio voted for Strickland instead of Blackwell.

You get the point: People are more nonpartisan than you might believe.

That still doesn't make voting on minority rights acceptable. No other western country that I know of does it. And frankly, we as a nation give up our moral authority when these damn 21st century Jim Crow amendments pass. They make an open sham of equal protection, which is modern civilization's most cherished right after habeas corpus.

Our nation has collective amnesia when it comes to repeating the mistakes of the past.

Trevor,

Thanks for the link to Washington’s past:

“In February 1935, King County Representative Dorian Todd proposed House Bill No. 301: a prohibition on marriages of persons of Caucasian ancestry to ‘Negroes, Orientals, Malays, and persons of Eastern European extraction.’

Days earlier, King County Auditor Earl Miliken received a request for a marriage license from a Filipino man and a white woman. Resolved to prevent the interracial couple from wedding, Miliken denied the request. Claiming to speak on behalf of the concerns of parent-teacher and women’s organizations and pleading on a case for decency, (Miliken) convinced Magnuson that something must be done. Magnuson in turn proposed the bill to Representative Todd, who carried the measure to the floor of the state legislature, where it was introduced. What began as an attempt to stop a single Filipino man from marrying a white woman had quickly evolved into a movement to separate all people into racial categories that would determine who they could and could not marry.”

Sound familiar? Barbara Madsen and her cohorts on the Washington State Supreme Court used the same language that racist judges used in the past to justify bans on interracial marriage to the effect that there is no discrimination because neither blacks nor whites may marry someone of the other race. Now of course, there’s no discrimination because neither men nor women may marry someone of the same sex.

I just wish someone would call her out on it. What a hypocrite and a liar.

Sean has it right - Wisconsin is an odd place. I love it here but it can be strange.

Consider that Wisconsin has a streak of social conservatism right down the bedrock. But politically we're more socialist than not.

So we elect Democrats to office and piss on minority rights as it were. Note that we didn't turn any Democrats out - Doyle was returned as was Kohl to the Senate. wE did kick some Republicans out of Madison.

That said gay marriage was illegal before the referendum - nothing really has changed.

I do question Andrew's assertion that gay's are a hated minority. A minority put upon by another minority, sure. But gays are what - 10-12% of the population? Gay can 'happen' to any family, any place. It's hard to hate 'gays' after you find out that your cousin is one.

So to speak.

Why is the US the only civilized country that puts the rights of hated minorities up for a public vote? It’s totally immoral. Can you imagine what that would have looked like generations ago? I disagree go to http://www.apartments.waw.pl/