Eight states had constitutional amendments to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman on the ballot this year. Over the last two years, all 20 states that considered such amendments have passed them — but this year, the battle took an uphill turn, and the first chink may have appeared in values voters' armor against activist judges looking to reweave the fabric of society.
It appears seven of the eight amendments passed — but in Arizona, with 92 percent of precincts reporting, the measure was trailing, 48-52 percent. The sticking point was 300,000 early ballots in Maricopa County.
"The trend tonight is not good," said Cathi Herrod, president of the Center for Arizona Policy, "but until we know exactly what the situation is with those ballots in Maricopa County, we're not going to concede. If we end up losing, it was a token loss. We were outspent, and we'll be bouncing back."
Elsewhere, the amendments passed, but sometimes only by the slimmest of margins: Colorado voters passed Amendment 43 by 57 percent and also refused to create domestic partnerships for same-sex couples with Ref. I, which failed with only 45 percent of the vote; Idaho passed Amendment 2 by 65 percent; South Carolina's Amendment 1 coasted to an easy win with 76 percent; South Dakota's Amendment C squeaked in with 52 percent; Tennessee's Amendment 1 carried the night with 81 percent; and Virginia passed Question 1 with 57 percent of the vote.
With the exception of the Southern states, those numbers were a far cry from the landslide victories values voters saw in 2004, when marriage amendments passed by an average of 70 percent nationwide.
"This is not 2004. Some people said there would be no difference in the votes, but they're not the ones fighting this," said Julaine Appling, president of Vote Yes for Marriage, the Wisconsin advocacy group. "This time, there's more money, more time and more organization. We could have had our initiative on the ballot in April 2005, but in that 18 months, the other side got their message really refined and raised more money. That happened in all eight of these states. So I think if we all could have done this in 2004, we'd have numbers that looked more like the ones in 2004. I think we have to sit down and talk about why this is happening."
South Dakota Family Policy Council Executive Director Rob Regier said the marriage vote there might have been depressed by the fact that several values initiatives were lumped together on the ballot, including an abortion ban.
"I thought it would be tied pretty close to the abortion vote, because the pro-choicers got a lot of voters out, and they tend to be anti-marriage too," he explained. "In South Dakota, trying to sell a marriage amendment is trying to sell a healthy 25-year-old a health-insurance policy. They're in the prime of their life, they're healthy — what do they need it for?"
Tuesday's election brings the total number of amendments defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman to state constitutions to 27, with Arizona's still too close to call. If control of the U.S. Senate slips to the Democratic Party, it would mean they would also control the Senate Judiciary Committee. And that means activist judges — like the ones in Massachusetts and New Jersey, who ordered their state legislatures to either legalize gay marriage or pass a law creating its equivalent — would possibly be increasing in federal posts.
"I still think the big issue is going to be at the federal level with the Marriage Protection Amendment (to the U.S. Constitution)," said Regier. "But I think it gets harder as time goes along, because, to borrow a phrase, we are, as a culture, slouching toward Gomorrah. The way (we've) operated (in South Dakota) is, this is a spiritual battle. It's time that the church wakes up. If it boils down to political will every election, eventually we're going to lose, if we don't have an awakening in the Church. We always said in South Dakota, we'd sacrifice some of the political capital we had to minister to homosexuals and encourage pastors to talk about the sinfulness of homosexuality and offer that message of hope and healing. We used this amendment as a vehicle to preach the truth in love."
