In the aftermath of the Iowa Supreme Court ruling that same-sex marriage is protected under the state’s constitution, Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com has laid out how public opinion in the US is shifting steadily towards gay marriage, and he makes predictions about when each US state will have a pro-gay marriage majority:
Marriage bans, however, are losing ground at a rate of slightly less than 2 points per year. So, for example, we’d project that a state in which a marriage ban passed with 60 percent of the vote last year would only have 58 percent of its voters approve the ban this year.
All of the other variables that I looked at — race, education levels, party registration, etc. — either did not appear to matter at all, or became redundant once we accounted for religiosity. Nor does it appear to make a significant difference whether the ban affected marriage only, or both marriage and civil unions.
So what does this mean for Iowa? The state has roughly average levels of religiosity, including a fair number of white evangelicals, and the model predicts that if Iowans voted on a marriage ban today, it would pass with 56.0 percent of the vote. By 2012, however, the model projects a toss-up: 50.4 percent of Iowans voting to approve the ban, and 49.6 percent opposed. In 2013 and all subsequent years, the model thinks the marriage ban would fail.
Elsewhere, there’s more from Daily Kos and Polswatch.
Thankyou for this Ben. Vermont has now legalised gay marriage in the last few hours. The veto by the Republican Governor on the bill was overturned 100-49 by the House. The Vermont Senate voted 23-5. This issue is not going to go away anywhere now and it hasnt even begun in Australia! From Howard to Dudd has made no difference! Sadly, so many gay voters still are ‘true believers’ thinking that a vote for Labor means social justice and equal rights! What a joke.
It’s sad that the US, a country we often deride as fundamentalist and conservative has legalised gay marriage (at least in some states) and we’ve done jack all.
I agree, it’s sad and pathetic that we are seeing these rapid changes in the United States, when Australia (federally) is doing nothing and will continue to do nothing for at least as long as Kevin Rudd is Prime Minister. It will be a weird world when gay people can move to the United States and receive more rights than they can in Australia…
A great quote from the President Pro-tem Peter Shumlin: “The struggle for equal rights is never easy. I was proud to be president of the Senate nine years ago when Vermont created civil unions. Today we have overridden the governor’s veto. I have never felt more proud of Vermont as we become the first state in the country to enact marriage equality, not as the result of a court order, but because it is the right thing to do.”
And we’ve gone backwards.
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25308681-5006301,00.html
Simon, thanks for the quote. Can you imagine anyone from the Liberal, National and Labor parties standing up in the Australian Parliament and saying such words? While the socalled religious right control all of the ‘old’ parties in Australia, then there is little hope for the Marriage Act to be changed.
I agree Brenton and in fact have just discussed that exact issue in my blog. Check it out and tell me what you think!
http://polswatch.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/vermont-legalises-gay-marriage-and-sets-a-great-precedent/
To be fair to the Australian situation, it’s worth remembering that America is a larger country with more states. A place like Vermont is much smaller proportionally than Australia’s states. Only 1/435 members of the House of Representatives comes from the state.
Likewise, US states are much more ideologically polarised. There really isn’t that much difference between the overall political environment in the most left-wing Australian jurisdiction (the ACT) and whatever you consider to be the most conservative. In contrast, places like Massachusetts, Connecticut and Vermont are much much more progressive places than the USA as a whole.
I think the sort of things you quoted are exactly the things you would hear said by ministers in the ACT government and some figures in the ALP in bigger states, and if the ACT was given the freedom to act we probably would have gay marriage in the ACT.
And it’s also worth remembering that, for nearly all politicians in US federal politics (apart from a small number from very progressive places with no greater ambitions), being strongly pro-gay marriage is still out of the question.
I don’t actually think Australia is any worse than the US on this issue, it’s just that US states are much smaller and more diverse than Australian states.
Ben, I would agree with you. However, where I think Australia is not as good as the US is in the strength of the gay rights movement in the country. We are seeing now that throughout the US the gay rights movement is growing stronger and stronger. This is probably because of the number of popular ballots that have been held in the states, which have presented a more targeted attack on gay rights than what we have seen in Australia.
However, in Australia I feel as though the gay rights movement is floundering without any focus or strength. I’m not quite sure why this is, but I think it is one of the major reasons why we are not seeing any major discussion on the issue in Australia, which I think is happening in the US.
Just want to clarify one point there – I am talking about the ‘gay rights movement regarding gay marriage’, just ackowledging that there is a lot of great work done by the movement in other areas.
Hey all, you may be interested to see some more videos etc. come out of the anti and pro gay movement in the United States. You can check them out here – http://polswatch.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/the-gay-storm-is-coming-let-it-rain/