Month: March 2013

Weigel notes a new poll finding that “Gov. Chris Christie leads probably Democratic opponent Barbara Buono by 35 points, 60-25”:

McArdle believes that marriage equality will make Americans more morally traditional:

When traditional marriage, with its expectations of monogamy and longevity, no longer means excluding gays, expect it to get more popular among affluent urbanites.

To be sure, it’s already popular–affluent urbanites are now quite conservative in their personal marital habits.  They’ve just been reluctant to shame those who don’t follow suit.  But with marriage freed from the culture-war baggage, we now have an opening for change. Think it can’t happen? Consider the cigarette. It was shocking for a woman to smoke on in public in 1880, nearly mandatory in 1940, and increasingly shocking in 2013 (for either gender). I wouldn’t be surprised to see out-of-wedlock childbearing follow a similar course.

Including Ted Olson:

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Ari Ezra Waldman adds:

While the media have already taken to Twitter and their own websites to predict that this or that question from Justice Kennedy means that he will make this or that decision, those predictions often fall far south of meaningful. Any lawyer who has argued before a “hot bench” — namely, active questioners — knows that sometimes, especially in politically charged environments, judges of all stripes challenge both sides. In fact, a study of decades of Supreme Court arguments based on the number of hostile questions a given justice asked a given party showed no statistically significant correlation with that justice’s ultimate decision in the case (notably, there was a statistically significant relationship found between softball questions and a favorable decision).

Sargent summarizes a new poll from CBS:

The poll’s toplines find that support for legalizing gay marriage is at 53-39, with a stunning 33 percent of Americans who support marriage equality claiming they once held the opposite view. That alone underscores how fast the culture is changing on this issue. And here’s another key tidbit underscoring cultural movement: There is a sharp generational divide among Republicans on the issue. Overall, 56 percent of Republicans oppose legal gay marriage. But I asked the CBS polling team for a breakdown by age, and the result was that among Republicans under 50, a plurality of 49 percent supports legalizing gay marriage, versus only 46 percent who oppose it.

A reader writes:

I’m sure you are hearing this from else, but to chime in: I’d bet physically large bills that Perry ends up resembling Loving much more than Roe. For those who oppose abortion rights, the sanctity of human life makes it an essential moral issue. There doesn’t seem to be a similar moral imperative to oppose marriage equality. Once it becomes established, it becomes much harder to convince oneself that it is harming anyone. There will always be a rump that objects, but it will end up as influential as the rump that opposes inter-racial marriages.

How another puts it:

After Roe anti-choice advocates could shriek: Now it’s legal to kill babies! If Perry goes favorably for gays, the other side will be able to shriek:  Now the government is treating those horrid gays just like everyone else! Somehow the latter just doesn’t have quite the resonance of the former.

(Photo: Maggie George demonstrates with a picture of her family stuck to her back during a protest in front of the U.S. Supreme Court March 26, 2013 in Washington, DC. By Win McNamee/Getty Images)

If the GOP supports marriage equality, Huckabee claims that the party is “going to lose a large part of their base because evangelicals will take a walk.” Allahpundit suspects that, if SCOTUS rules in favor of greater equality, that marriage will be an issue during Republican primaries in 2016:

To keep social conservatives onboard, candidates will be asked to promise (a) that they’ll appoint Supreme Court justices who are committed to overturning any gay-marriage rulings and (b) that they’ll endorse some sort of constitutional amendment that would either ban SSM outright or, at a minimum, return the issue to the states. (The amendment will go nowhere but that’s beside the point here.) Think a prospective nominee won’t do some squirming over whether they should sign on to those propositions, especially given the GOP’s panic over losing young voters? Come 2016, this won’t be just about gay marriage anymore; it’ll be a test of whether social conservatives retain the same influence over the party platform that they’ve had for the last few decades. That’s why Huck’s framing this in apocalyptic “stick with us or we walk” terms. It’s their party, at least on social issues.

Lyle Denniston gives it the college try:

If the Justices, in the initial vote they will take on this case in private later this week, do not find themselves with a majority on any of the issues they canvassed, then they might well be looking for a way out. One way would be to find that the proponents of Proposition 8 did not have a legal right to be in court to defend it, but even that was a hotly disputed issue on the bench. The other way out was directly suggested by Kennedy, and pursued by him in more than a fleeting way: dismiss this case as one that should not have been accepted. A decision like that, though, could take weeks or months to reach.

(Photo: Plaintiff couple Sandy Steier (L) and Kris Perry hold hands after attending oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court on March 26, 2013. By Mark Wilson/Getty Images)