The Future is Bright for Gay Rights in America

Last Tuesday’s election was important for a whole range of reasons, one of the less discussed is gay marriage. For the first time in American history, gay marriage was legalised in a referendum, and it happened in three states, Washington, Maine and Maryland. Voters in Minnesota also rejected adding a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage. There are a number of advantages that gay marriage had over the other referendums held previously.

1.       All four referendums were held in blue states

2.       More time has elapsed (support for gay marriage seems to continuously rise)

3.       They were the first referendums in which President Obama’s support could affect the result. Obama’s support particularly affected black voters, this could have proved divisive in Maryland where black people make up 30% of the population.

Supporters of gay marriage should pay attention to the above three reasons. Undoubtedly Tuesday a success, but what does the future hold? Well currently gay marriage is being discussed in four state legislatures; Illinois, Rhode Island, Delaware and Minnesota, all four are blue states with Democratic control of the state legislatures and governorships, bar Rhode Island which has an Independent governor. In Colorado and Wyoming the legislatures are discussing civil unions and in Ohio the gay rights side is trying to collect enough signatures to put marriage on the ballot in 2013.

If I was a gay rights organisation in America, I would try to get gay marriage on the ballot in as many states as possible for the 2016 Presidential election. I say that for two reasons, firstly presidential elections have the highest rates of voter turnouts which should favour legalisation and secondly four years will have passed. If the growth in support for gay marriage continues at its current rate most people in most states should support it. Before 2008 only Massachusetts had legalised it, since then it has been joined by eight states and DC. By 2016 the gay rights movement should try and get gay marriage on the ballot in every state that voted for Obama in 2012 that has not yet legalised it.

Prior to this year gay marriage had usually been defeated by massive margins when on the ballot. In fact the average margin of defeat was a whopping 35%! It was so badly defeated that in only two circumstances was the margin less than 10%; in South Dakota in 2006 and California in 2008 the margin was 4%. You might think with this historical precedent that it’s amazing that gay marriage actually won. To fully understand why this was the case you need to delve into the figures, of the 32 states that voted to defeat gay marriage, 22 voted for Romney whilst 10 voted for Obama. Of the ten Obama states, six are swing state and the two that rejected gay marriage by the highest margins held their referendums in 1998 and 2002. A lot of progress has been made in the last ten years.

The gay rights movement know it has a long way to go before LGBT people are given the same rights as everyone else; women are still fighting for equality despite the suffragettes beginning their campaign over 100 years ago! And they represent 51% of the population! Despite that the movement knows that progress is coming thick and fast, within the next decade I predict a majority of American states to have passed gay marriage, as well as a majority of countries considered to be ‘Western’. It’s a tide of opinion that the conservatives cannot, and will not, defeat.