Before the start of the legislative session, I was introduced to a woman who runs a non-profit organization promoting marriage equality. I asked her how she was feeling in light of the unprecedented sweep of new Republican, and in many case Tea Party-backed, legislators into office. She said she was actually feeling pretty good.
Her point was that most of these lawmakers were elected based on fiscal promises to cut spending and balance the budget. Social issues like gay marriage weren’t really on the radar for these newcomers.
I was happy to hear her confidence but I told her not to get complacent. I predicted that once these new lawmakers got into office and realized the impossibility of balancing the budget without new revenue, they may need a red herring issue to distract voters. Gay marriage has always been an easy distraction for the extreme right to fall back on.
Fast forward five months and that was, indeed, how things played out. As the clock started ticking to the end of the session, instead of wrestling with tough decisions about spending and revenue, legislators held public hearings about how to define marriage. When education, health care, public safety and infrastructure should have been getting headlines, the loudest noise centered around an effort to write discrimination into our state constitution.
I wish I could take credit for great prognostication skills around this turn of events, but sadly, this was too easy to predict.
For many right-wing lawmakers, gay marriage is nothing but an easy distraction… a hate-filled, mean-spirited, destructive, fear mongering distraction… but still a distraction. The only lives that gay marriage impacts are the lives of gay couples who choose to get married. Anyone who honestly feels their own marriage is diminished or threatened because two men or two women decide to marry is probably wrestling with issues that can’t be solved by a constitutional amendment.
Lawmakers are hoping their constituents have been so distracted by the bright, shiny issue of gay marriage that they won’t realize what a failure this session has been. Gridlock is hardly an adequate word to describe where we are now. As much as a “cuts only” budget solution sounded good on the campaign trail, the reality of what that would mean our state will be hard to sell for a second term.
I have a feeling that the impending government shutdown will cause voters to stop being so concerned about who is marrying whom. When people lose their jobs, or can’t get the services they need, it tends to refocus their priorities. It may refocus their decisions in the voting booth as well.
I am so confused. These are the people that want “less government” right? Don’t want government regulating business, public health, safety, education – but they do want government in our relationships. Which is ironic, given the scary things we continue to find out about politicians in THEIR bedrooms.
Sadly this movement was more than distraction. It is a highly cynical move to pull out all stops to turn out the hate base, turn over every rock if you will, in the 2012 general election. With the remarkable number of close statewide elections we have had in Minnesota, 1000 more hater votes that otherwise would have stayed home sewing their Klan robes could turn an election…even electoral votes in the Presidential race.
Brian -
Thank you for a great piece. As unfortunate as these events have been, I count my blessings that, as a gay man, I have allies like you who give me hope that we will win out over this hate and fear.