Centerfield

To Push or Be Patient?

Soon after the Ma SJC decision declaring gays should be allowed to marry, Eugene Volokh touched on the issue of timing.The gist of his take was to ask whether getting too far in front of public opinion by seeking judicial remedy might be counter-productive to expanding civil rights in the intermediate and long term. I agreed at that time, but this viewpoint seemed to be overlooked in the pro-expanded liberties camp amid the celebratory "this is the right thing to do" atmosphere.

Here in Massachusetts the latest "victory" of the gay rights movement has been to forestall a legislative response by fillibustering the closing moments of the constitutional convention, ensuring that nothing got done. The recent MA constitutional convention was characterized by angry sides disinclined to compromise. Both sides are mad, and self-righteous, and have no interest in getting 3/4 of a loaf.

I'm only one among many centrists and social libertarians who feel that the current opposition to expanded gay rights comes from a WANING majority. A passage of a decade or two might have easily brought marriage rights to gays with less controversy. Cultural acceptance of such alternative lifestyles has been increasingly modeled and accepted in popular culture over the past two decades. The latest generation becoming adults does not seem especially troubled by the same things that have so upset much of the generation of 40 and 50 somethings currently running things(our selectmen, school committees, state reps, senators, governors, CEOs, chambers of commerce, etc).

But now, for better OR for worse, the MA SJC has forced the issue at a time when the waning majority may still indeed be a majority capable of enforcing its will. Many states overtly ban gay marriage, and those that haven't are now moving quickly to make sure that their state's courts don't try to set public policy.

Even here in liberal Massachsetts, the latest victory may well turn out to be pyhrric. Note that the narrow 100-98 defeat of an amendment that would have left gays utterly SOL could be reversed by replacing only two liberals. And as a MA resident, it strikes me as VERY likely that a handful or two of liberal state reps elected on support for blue-collar economic policies will get pushed aside by candidates supporting the same economics coupled with strong support for "family values" characterized at least in part by exclusion of gays from marriage. Conversely, the likelihood that many fiscally conservative family values politicians will get swept away by a mass outpouring of people whose first issue is expanded civil rights does NOT seem high. Just my opinion as a resident.

Massachusetts is viewed from afar as the shining star of liberalism, but we haven't had a democratic governor for two decades, and our current governor, Mitt Romney, is a mormon. The current speaker of the house calls himself a democrat, but policywise he's fiscally conservative and pro family values in addition to being an iron-fisted leader who can be 100% relied upon to carry water for the anti-gay marriage side. Politics in our state house is dominated by the city of Boston and the near suburbs with "urban progressive" viewpoints. Over time, this dominance of the urban liberal progressive viewpoint has been sustained at least in part by gross gerrymandering of districts that radiate like spokes from Boston, minimizing the political power of suburbs with a more conservative take on things.

There is a simmering resentment in the suburbs over a generation of policies that obsesses over what's good for Boston and treats much of the rest of the state as rubes to be condescended to, and this resentment is very ready to find an outlet for expression. Suburbanites have sat still and taken it while the state house told us how we had to build more housing for the poor, how individual homeowners had to spend tens of thousands on cleaner septic systems, and how we had to let our roads and bridges crumble while a gazillion dollars was spent on the Big Dig. Not happy stuff.

So I sure hope that the gay rights movement doesn't come to regret its unwillingness to take 3/4 of a loaf by supporting the imperfect solution of providing all the trappings of marriage except the name itself. There's a very decent chance that an amendment excluding gays frommarriage will pass the legislature, if not in this session's April constitutional convention, then in the next. This will be the harder fight. If it is then put on the statewide ballot, using wording likely to be dictated by iron-fisted speaker Tom Finneran, it has a great chance of passing, especially if conservatives looking down the road target Att'y General Tom Reilly for ouster. O'Reilly would be the heavy lifter for liberal efforts to obstruct the amendment process and control the ballot wording.

Notwithstanding the fact that identifying a viewpoint as libertarian can lead to summary dismissal by the general public, I'd like to reiterate at the blog post level my previous suggestion: the libertarian take on the state's proper role in determining marriage policy is flawless and sensible. Please take the time to read Jacob Sullum's essay on how to protect the sanctity of marriage, over at Reason. Perhaps this is the solution that can prevent a mean-spirited turn away from relegating gays to 3rd-class status for another two generations.

Posted by Brian Keegan at February 15, 2004 01:14 PM