Prop 8

Being a regular denizen of The Corner, I naturally see a lot of talk in opposition to gay marriage. The death of marriage!!! seems to be the consensus over there. I've read most of their pieces on the subject, generally looking for anything that might be a teensy weensy bit convincing. They've never managed to sway me a bit.

They'll never be able to convince me that someone else's marriage is going to effect mine, nor the future generations'. Pointing to the coincidental decline of marriage in Europe and the introduction of gay marriage there is completely unconvincing to me; though, it is the strongest point they use at NRO. There are so many other reasons why marriage is in decline, that pointing to gay marriage as the culprit is just absurd.

So, I've been watching California's Proposition 8 compulsively all night as well. (Kudos to the Minnesota Sec of State, by the way--their page reloads in seconds, while the CA page takes minutes to load.)

The basic outline of the cause of the proposition is familiar: the courts decided that gays have a constitutional right to marry. In so doing, they echoed the Supreme Court's abortion decisions, and took the issue outside of normal democratic debate. The backlash is Proposition 8. If the courts found a constitutional rationale, then people would take that away with a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

I expected the proposition/amendment to crash and burn.

Much to my surprise, the amendment is currently up by about 280,000 votes with 22.4% of the votes counted.

However, I remember the last time I was compulsively checking on my state's voting was for an anti-Kelo proposition--one that would make it harder for the state to use "eminent domain". When I finally gave up and went to bed, the anti-Kelo side was comfortably in the lead. When I awoke the next morning I was shocked to find out that my idiot state voted the proposition down.

So, though the thing is passing at the moment, I still expect it to properly crash and burn.

Update (10pm PT): Looks like the lead for the yes side is already starting to back down. It's down to 234k now.

Update (10:15 PT): Dropping like a stone at the moment: 163k now.

Update (Wed AM): Shockingly this thing looks like it will pass by a couple hundred thousand votes. Apparently, whites were against it while blacks and Latinos for it by enough of a margin to pass it.