Over at fivethirtyeight.com, demon number cruncher Nate Silver concludes that the success of Proposition 8 in California — the one that banned same-sex wedlock — was not, as some have concluded, due to a higher-than-usual black vote. Silver thinks it's generational. Older voters went for Proposition 8, younger ones didn't.
That makes sense and it's also encouraging. The last time Gay Marriage lost a statewide vote in California, it lost by 22 points. This time, it was a little less than 5 points. It's disappointing that it lost at all but at least things are moving in the right direction.
I have no idea how likely the various court challenges are to overturn Prop H8, as people are now calling it. (It took me a minute to figure that one out, too.) But there is something unseemly, or perhaps self-defeating, in trying to invert something that was an expression of, after all, The Will of the People. Seems to me Gay Marriage will never be a settled matter in this state until it becomes The Will of the People via a clear, inarguable victory at the polls. Maybe all the energy that's now going into blocking traffic and siccing lawyers on the matter would be better put into amassing bucks to back a proposition on the next ballot.
I don't know when that next ballot could be…but by then, a few more of the older voters will have died out. And just in case there is some merit to the theory that black turnout for Obama helped Proposition 8…well, that shouldn't be a factor next time, either. Court challenges might take just as long — and even if successful, reinstating same-sex weddings that way is merely going to muddy the issue. I'm sure there are some people out there who bought the following argument: Never mind gays getting married…the reason to vote for 8 is that we want to show those damned courts that they can't overturn our vote.
Even if only 2% of those who voted for 8 had that in mind, that's almost half the winning margin. Take that concern off the table and figure that by the next election, more older voters will be out of the mix…and it seems to me Gay Marriage could win with the electorate, no matter how much money the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints threw at it. Wouldn't that be better? The trouble with winning via legal challenges is that it becomes a victory based on technicalities, not on human enlightenment. This one deserves to win because enough people in California come to their senses, not because an attorney finds a loophole.