32-0 and Counting

Supreme Court justices read the newspapers. And one thing they cannot have failed to notice in recent years is the unanimous opinion of majorities in states from coast to coast, border to border, blue to red, that marriage can only, ever be between one man and one woman.

They will get another dose of that reality next week when four more states will vote on this issue.

Proponents of real marriage constantly and rightly proclaim they are 32-0 when the people vote, while advocates of phony marriage are adept at avoiding this glaring fact.

Thirty-two states have voted in various ways on what is the definition of marriage. And each and every time they have voted for the historical understanding. Six states have legalized phony marriage, but never though a vote by the people, only as an imposition by political elites.

Proponents of phony marriage insist that the many state votes are the result of massive and deceptive advertising. Or they say it is a result of an unhealthy alliance between the religious right and the black and Hispanic communities.

Their people, they claim, have not been motivated, for whatever reason, to come out and vote. They point to polls that show most Americans share their view of marriage and simply cannot believe the results.

And when they lose, they ferret out supporters of historical marriage and publically shame them, get them fired from their jobs and worse. And then they’re amazed that they win in the opinion polls but lose in the voting booth.

Come Tuesday there will be four more tests and there is already crafty spinning of the likely losses already. Chad Griffin of the Human Rights Campaign, a group that is spending a whopping $5 million in the four states, is saying that even a single win “will be a turning point.”

According to the Washington Post, “Current polls indicate a solid lead for supporters in Maine and a lesser one in Washington State, while the races in Maryland and Minnesota are about even, with the opponents apparently gaining.”

The clear thing about those toss-ups in Maryland and Minnesota is that a toss-up in the polls a week out is a death knell for homosexual marriage on Election Day. That leaves Washington State and Maine.

The legislature in Washington State forced homosexual marriage on the people earlier this year and within weeks opponents gathered enough signatures for a ballot initiative that will either uphold the liberal law or overturn it. A ten-point advantage for homosexual marriage a few weeks ago has shrunk to a four-point advantage today.

This means that the campaign for homosexual marriage, backed by an $11 million treasure chest including huge donations from Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Bill Gates, will likely be overturned in Washington State, among the most liberal states in the country.

That leaves Maine. Maine voters overturned a legislatively imposed homosexual marriage law three years ago. Advocates have spent the intervening years attempting to make their case.

This is where they believe they have best chance of getting statewide voters to support their cause. We shall see. If they win in Maine, they will be 1-35, hardly an historical shift in American beliefs.

Proponents of historical marriage have taken to the airwaves to show the results that follow from homosexual marriage.

A couple from Massachusetts are featured in an ad in Washington State talking about how their grade school child was subjected to homosexual propaganda and how they were prevented by law from even knowing about when such lessons were being taught – and then not allowed to pull their child from school on that day.

A Vermont couple is featured in a Maine ad describing how a lesbian coupled sued them for not being allowed to use the couple’s Inn for their “wedding” event. The Vermont couple ended up paying $30,000 to defend themselves and now do not allow wedding events at their Inn.

All this is headed to the Supreme Court. The Court will announce on November 26 whether it will hear arguments on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which has been ruled unconstitutional by two Federal Courts.

Proposition 8, which expressed California voters’ decision to stop homosexual marriage – and then was overturned by a homosexual judge – will probably be accepted by the Court then, too. These state votes come at a very good time if only to remind the Court how Americans think about marriage.

Conceivably the Court could deal with each of these cases and still not take the added step of imposing homosexual marriage on the fifty states.

The great value of the state votes that have taken place over many years now is that they have protected those states from the genderless mess that is homosexual marriage.

But the other perhaps greater value is to let the Supreme Court know that they proceed down the path to imposed homosexual marriage at the greatest peril. Court imposed abortion on demand has done incalculable damage to the American political and legal system. Court imposed homosexual marriage could do even worse damage.

Marriage and family hang in the balance but so does the reputation of the Supreme Court.

Next week we will see three perhaps four more decisions by voters that marriage can only be between one man and one woman. And these votes will have taken place in the liberal states of Washington, Minnesota, Maryland, and Maine.

The will of the American people cannot be any clearer. Justice Kennedy, are you listening?




Austin Ruse is the President of the New York and Washington, D.C.-based Center for Family & Human Rights (C-Fam), a research institute that focuses exclusively on international social policy. The opinions expressed here are Mr. Ruse’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the policies or positions of C-Fam.


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