METAL AND SOCIAL JUSTICE: GAY MARRAIGES LEGAL IN VERMONT

I was pulling my hair out wondering what I was going entitle a series of journal entries chronicling "POSTIVE" and "progressive" social causes, as opposed to the grimness of a receding world economy,(ITP: WORLD APOCALYPSE) and social ills of the sort...So here, all that we've worked for, and Harvey Milk would be very proud and would be giving you ALL the metal horns.\m/ Of course, the most revolutionary thing one could do is LOVE someone. Metal Horns to VERMONT, as Gay Marriages are officially legal in that state, as Maine, Iowa, and New York are sure to legalize gay marriages as well. As of this date, Massachusetts, Connecticut,and Vermont have legalized gay marriages.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/07/AR2009040701663.html
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/paterson-unveils-same-sex-marriage-bill/
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=7253244
FROM ABC NEWS:
Gay Marriage Spreads Without Backlash
Culture Wars Are Raging -- but Noise Is on Spending, Not Social Issues
By RICK KLEIN
April 22, 2009

The culture wars are raging. But if we're in the midst of a revolution, it's hardly being televised.
PHOTO People with opposing viewpoints on Proposition 8 demonstrate outside the California Supreme Court in San Francisco, California in this March 5, 2009 file photo.
People with opposing viewpoints on Proposition 8 demonstrate outside the California Supreme Court in San Francisco, California in this March 5, 2009 file photo.
(Robert Galbraith/Reuters)

A flurry of state-level activity is dramatically expanding gay marriage in the United States. A court ruling in Iowa and a legislative vote in Vermont made them the third and fourth states to legalize same-sex marriage, and moves are under way for states including New York, Connecticut and New Hampshire to join them soon.

Add to that Obama administration executive orders on stem-cell research and abortion rights, and the last few months have brought victories for social liberals -- and setbacks for social conservatives -- on a scale not seen in decades.

Yet beyond the expected condemnation from conservative leaders, the stunning series of events is notable for how little it's reverberated across the national political landscape.
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"It's almost like the silence is deafening," said Tony Fabrizio, a GOP pollster. "This is the first time in probably 15 years that the social right has really no levers of power, and they are watching their agenda get rolled back."

The national agenda is consumed by the economic crisis, with all of its tentacles. Last week, nationwide grassroots protests offered a sharp critique of President Obama -- but the "tea parties" came together around fiscal issues, not social ones.

The religious right, a force powerful enough to dictate policy direction in Congress and the White House as recently as the Terri Schiavo affair, has shown signs of splintering at the national level.

While social conservatives remain a major part of the GOP, they are losing influence inside and outside the party, said Rich Galen, a Republican strategist.

"The social conservatives don't have the sway that they've had before, because they haven't been very successful running the party the last six years," Galen said. "The libertarian/fiscal conservative wing of the party is proving to be in the ascendancy."

On one level, the relative quiet shouldn't be surprising. The gay-marriage expansions have been happening at the state level, with no direct involvement by Democratic congressional leaders or Obama. A Conservative Argument for Gay Marriage?

In the wake of the activity in Iowa and Vermont, a coalition called the National Organization for Marriage did launch a TV advertising campaign in targeted states, designed to warn religious voters about the potential impact of gay marriage on their lives.

"They want to bring the issue into my life," says one actor in the ad. "My freedom will be taken away," says another.

Maggie Gallagher, the organization's president and a conservative commentator, said there's no shortage of grassroots conservative anger over the recent moves expanding gay marriage.
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That outrage may not be getting much national press attention, but it remains a potent political force, she said.

"It's manufactured moment, this idea that people are ready to give up on the gay-marriage fight," Gallagher said. "In Connecticut, in New Hampshire, in Iowa, the legislators are being flooded with phone calls on this issue. People are not happy with gay marriage."

Gallagher noted that voters continue to support gay-marriage bans, as they did in California last year.

Still, prominent Republican politicians have been much more apt to criticize Obama and national Democrats on fiscal policies and national security than to adopt social conservative causes as rallying cries this year.

Utah's Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. recently came out in favor of civil unions for gay couples, even as he leads one of the nation's most Republican states.

Last week, Steve Schmidt, who ran Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign last year, sparked a fresh debate inside the Republican Party by publicly calling on the GOP to drop its opposition to gay marriage.

"There is a sound conservative argument to be made for same-sex marriage," Schmidt told the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP group. "I'm confident American public opinion will continue to move on the question toward majority support, and sooner or later the Republican Party will catch up to it."

Schmidt's comments are unlikely to prompt a wholesale reexamination of the party's positions on gay rights. Many other party strategists say that Schmidt's prescription would cause short-term electoral disaster for Republicans, since the party's support is rooted in religious and other social conservatives.
FROM NPR: Big Wins Re-Energize Gay Marriage Activists

by Liz Halloran

Two men argue about Proposition 8 in front of the California Supreme Court.
Enlarge

David Paul Morris

Craig Winsor (left) and Victor Choban argue about Proposition 8 at a rally in front of the California Supreme Court building in San Francisco on March 5. Getty Images



Interactive Map: Battle Over Gay Marriage
Interactive Map: The Legal Battle Over Gay Marriage, State By State




NPR.org, April 16, 2009 · Same-sex marriage advocates have racked up big recent victories in Iowa and Vermont, where legislators on April 7 approved a same-sex marriage measure by overriding a gubernatorial veto. They joined Connecticut and Massachusetts as states where gay marriage is recognized.

Similar efforts are well under way in a handful of other states, including New Jersey, New Hampshire, Maine and New York, where Gov. David Paterson on Thursday introduced a bill to legalize same-sex marriage.

But though the national battle is still pitched — and even Paterson's bill faces an iffy future — there is a growing and powerful phenomenon that is expected to someday shape the debate over same-sex marriage: its wide acceptance among young Americans as a basic civil right.

Growing Acceptance Among Youth

Graham Gillette of Des Moines, Iowa, says he's always on the lookout for a teachable moment — a chance for his three children to learn from a real-life situation.

And the April 3 unanimous decision by the Iowa Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage provided just such an opportunity. Or so Gillette assumed.

"The day the ruling came down, I was taking my 13-year-old to baseball, and thought, 'Hey, big teaching moment,' " says Gillette. He imparted to his son the historic importance of the court's 7-0 decision to legalize what it referred to pointedly as "civil marriage."

"He looked at me and said, 'Duh. Why is this a big deal?' " said Gillette, a former Republican who supports same-sex marriage.

"To him, [the right to marriage] is a given, and it's stupid that we even talk about it," Gillette says.

Sixty percent of Iowans under age 30 support same-sex marriage, according to a recent University of Iowa Hawkeye Poll, numbers that are echoed nationally. Meghan McCain, the 24-year-old daughter of Republican Sen. John McCain, the party's most recent presidential nominee, weighed in this week as a "pro-gay-marriage Republican."

"The demographics are clear, the trends are strong and not reversible," says Charles C. Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center. "It's all over but the shouting."

Though people feel "deeply and emotionally about the issue," Haynes said, "gay marriage is inevitable in the United States."

Nationally, Opinion Remains Divided

Opponents, while acknowledging the direction of youth sentiment, beg to disagree.

"Without some reversal of the trends, that could be the case, but I'm not resigned to that," says Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, noting that when put to a public vote in California, legalized gay marriage lost.

"I don't think anything is inevitable," Perkins says, adding that he considers the Vermont situation "an outlier" that has run ahead of public opinion.

Twenty-nine states have constitutional amendments restricting marriage to one man and one woman, and 13 states have laws that do the same.

A recent CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll found that a majority of Americans oppose the legalization of same-sex marriage. Fifty-five percent of those polled said such marriages should not be legally recognized; 44 percent said they should.

A CBS News poll released early this month also showed Americans divided on the issue: Six in 10 supported some form of legal recognition, but only one-third said that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.

"Evidence does not suggest that the public is turning that quickly on this," Perkins says. "This is not a natural evolution."

Framing The Issue As One Of Civil Rights

The same-sex marriage movement has been historically speedy, says Marty Rouse, the national field director for the Human Rights Campaign, an organization at the forefront of the gay rights movement. It was only nine years ago that Vermont, amid turmoil and tumult, became the first state in the nation to approve civil unions for same-sex couples.

"As far as civil rights movements go and in terms of a change in culture, this has been a very fast evolution for American society," says Rouse, who has been instrumental in organizing state-based legalization efforts.

"But it's actually progressing the way we expected it would," he said.

For years, gay rights organizers have been working in targeted states to get sympathetic legislators elected, to organize grass-roots supporters, and to advance legislation that would soften the ground for same-sex marriage.

Four states allow same-sex couples to marry (Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut and Iowa.) Three other states (New Hampshire, New Jersey and Oregon) extend to same-sex couples the same spousal rights guaranteed at the state level. The District of Columbia and California offer same-sex couples almost all state spousal rights. And three states (Hawaii, Maine and Washington) extend partial rights. Seventeen states now give their employees domestic partnership benefits.

There's been a concerted effort to stay away from religion, Rouse says, and to frame same-sex marriage as simply a civil right.

"We're not trying to deal with religion at all, and we're not asking for sanctification," Rouse says. "This is not new, but we do need to clarify it, because a lot of people picture marriage as walking down an aisle in church."

The 1964 Civil Rights Act exempts "religious corporations" from compliance with anti-discrimination rules in the conduct of their religious work or activities.

None of that placates opponents like Robert Vander Plaats of Sioux City, Iowa, a Republican who plans to make a third run for governor next year.

"I really believe that as soon as a same-sex couple goes to a church where they may have met and fallen in love and demand to be married, it will be a perfect case for a lawsuit against the church," says Vander Plaats.

"This is playing games with marriage, a judicial effort to redefine the institution of marriage," he says. "It is the union of one man and one woman."

Bigger Fights Ahead

During a rally Monday on the steps of the state Capitol in Des Moines, Vander Plaats pledged that, if elected, he would attempt to halt same-sex marriages until Iowans had an opportunity to vote on a state constitutional amendment that would bar such unions.

So, in Iowa as elsewhere, the issue is still far from settled. And both sides are girding for bigger fights ahead.

"This has awakened the sleeping giant," says Vander Plaats. "I see people who have been on the sidelines for a long time now saying they need to get back in the game."

A recent advertisement aired by the National Organization for Marriage, a group formed to fight same-sex marriage, is called "A Gathering Storm." It uses actors to portray everyday people who talk about how gay marriage would affect their lives.

"Advocates," says one, "want to change the way I live."

The Human Rights Campaign has responded with a Web site called "End the Lies" — an effort, the group says, to expose the "deception and fear" being used in the battle against gay rights.

And just down the road, gay rights activists say they plan to expand their marriage efforts to states including Hawaii, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Maryland. Activists are also still waiting for a court decision expected by June 4 on their constitutional challenge of Proposition 8, the successful anti-gay-marriage initiative in California.

"If we can't turn that around in 2010, we'll go to 2012," Rouse says. "It's been a state-by-state march. Change is coming."

But just how fast it will proceed appears to be in the hands of not only gay rights activists and their opponents, but also the parents — conservative, liberal or somewhere in between — of kids like Connor Gillette.
Thanks-Stay Metal, Stay Brutal-Gay Pride- \m/ -l-