Nov 07, 2008  |  By: B. DANIEL BLATT  | COMMENTS     

IF YOU LOOK at the election returns, it seems to have been a bad day for gay issues. Popular initiatives amending state constitutions to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, thus blocking recognition of same-sex marriage, passed in Arizona, California and Florida. Arkansas voters banned gay couples from adopting children.

But, look deeper at those numbers and at the two presidential campaigns and you see a sign of how far we’ve come. The demographic breakdown on Proposition 8 provides a key indicator of a very real social change. Voters under 30 opposed the initiative by margin of 3-2, the identical margin by which voters 65 and older favored it.

We can also measure our progress by comparing the results of this year’s initiative with a similar one in 2000. That year, 61 percent of Californians voted to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. This week, only 52 percent did.

These numbers might even have been lower and the initiative defeated had the state Supreme Court not mandated state recognition of same-sex marriage in May.

In 2004, just a year after the Massachusetts high court did the same thing, 13 states passed initiatives defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman, all by substantial margins. Two years later, after state Supreme Courts in New York and Washington State refused to mandate gay marriage, deferring to their legislatures, most such initiatives passed, but with smaller margins.

What the past three national elections (2004, 2006, 2008) show is that the strategy of attempting to win gay marriage through the courts has failed. It leads to a backlash at the ballot box.

While the American people may not yet be ready for gay marriage, they do show an increasing tolerance for gay people. In the campaign just concluded, for the first time in American history, both parties reached out to gay and lesbian voters.

While the Democrats have done so in years past, up until this year, the GOP has quietly tolerated gay Republicans. This year, it welcomed them. 

The McCain campaign reached out to Log Cabin, dispatching several top officials to its functions during the party’s national convention in September. The party credentialed openly gay bloggers. When he answered questions from this newspaper, John McCain became the first known Republican presidential nominee to agree to an interview with a gay publication.

Sarah Palin, his more socially conservative running mate, while staking out a different position than McCain on a federal constitutional amendment on gay marriage, whenever asked about homosexuality, made clear her belief that we shouldn’t judge someone because of his or her sexuality.

Unlike the 2004 campaign, neither candidate raised the gay marriage issue unless pressed by a reporter. 

The GOP has steered away from using gay marriage as a wedge issue.

They ran on issues of concern to their states.

THE REPUBLICAN FAILURE this year had little to do with gay issues. Rather, the political climate favored the party out of power. And until the end of the campaign, McCain failed to articulate a compelling economic message. If anything, Barack Obama and Democrats down the ticket succeeded not by playing into the identity politics that have defined their party in the past, but by having the right slogan at the right time.

The American peopled wanted change, particularly in the economic arena. Not having governed as conservatives, preferring instead big government policies more attuned with Democratic ideology, we Republicans found ourselves in a peculiar situation, attempting to run on conservative ideas while our party lacked a conservative record.

It is those ideas that will help the GOP rise from the ashes of this election.