Good news!

Today the New Hampshire House voted decisively against an attempt to repeal gay marriage. The vote: 211-116. This is astonishing given the fact that the 400-member house has 294 Republican members and a mere 103 Democrats (with 3 vacancies). The gay-hate caucus failed to win even a majority of Republicans! Now that's total failure. Gay marriage was legalized by the previous Democrat-controlled legislature. Then along came the 2010 election disaster for Democracts (many thanks to Barack Obama for this!) and the Tea Party/Republicans won a veto-proof majority in both the House and the Senate. Repealing gay marriage was an early goal of the Lord's warriors in the Tea Party but one thing led to another and the vote was postponed until this election year (wonder why--maybe some anti-gay demagoguery to plump up those poll numbers?). What appeared to be a dead-certain repeal has exploded in the faces of Tea Party wackos, NOM, mad-dog evangelicals, and assorted enemies of gay people. Polls had repeatedly shown absolutely no interest in the repeal among New Hampshire voters. Zilch. New Hampshire citizens have made their peace with gay marriage. They've moved on. That message finally got through to the rational (and rationally self-interested) members of the legislature: voting against gay marriage is definitely a bad career move. Thus today's vote.

This victory is critical. In November there will be at least three critical ballot issues in Washington state, Maine, and Minnesota regarding gay marriage. This vote is especially important for Maine. Two years ago the voters in Maine ratified bigotry by cancelling a law enacted by the legislature which included gays in marriage. The vote was close. Now polls clearly indicate a majority in favor of gay marriage and the issue is once again on the ballot. If New Hampshire Republican voters (at least enough of them) can allow gay marriage in their state, then the signs are good that next door in Maine voters will correct the injustice done two years ago and restore gay marriage.

The leaders of anti-gay hate have until now banked on the bigotry of the mob. Court rulings and pro-gay legislation have often been stymied by referendum. Disgraceful and odious and unjust as putting human rights up to a vote is, the haters (who have no scruple whatsoever) are happy to let the mob rule as long as the mob can be stirred up against gay people. They've been largely successful until now. However, that strategy (if it deserves the name) has not worn well over the years; it isn't working anymore. Public opinion has changed very rapidly in the last few years. Polls clearly indicate that a majority of voters in critical states have accepted gay marriage and now support it (or at least don't oppose it). Seems that more and more people accept fairness for gay people. The haters on are the run. The Republican party has gone out of its way to be the anti-gay party in order to demagogue the issue and squeeze as many votes out of the haters as possible. Whoops! Repubs didn't count on a sea-shift in public opinion. They thought hatred of gays was an eternal truth; instead it's a cultural artifact of the past, like race hatred. Repubs are going to be punished severely for this error. They've let their party become infested with haters. What will they do now that inflaming anti-gay hate is a loser at the polls? The conservative party in Great Britain did the same thing under the anti-gay hater Margaret Thatcher, and the party was out of power for more than a decade, losing three successive general elections and effectively became a rump, regional party without a national constituency. Only now under Prime Minister Cameron has the party embraced gay rights and become viable against Labor but only by sharing power with Liberal Democrats. The British conservatives are now proceeding with full gay marriage on the agenda; the new leaders of the party want a modern party, not a useless antique from the distant past. Canadian conservatives made their peace with gay marriage when they were returned to office and have prospered ever since. What's wrong with Republican conservatives? Why can't they learn from experience? The answer: Republican conservatives are not true conservatives; they are radical ideologues wholly captured by reactionary doctrine and ideology.

So November 2012 is the watershed in the struggle for gay marriage and full civil rights for gays. I expect victory in Washington state, Minnesota, and now Maine. The last device of the gay-haters--demagoguery at the voting booth--will fail. When mob rule is no longer an option, the haters will have no weapons left. Public opinion will turn rapidly and decisively against them. Victory is at hand. Finally.

The political party that time forgot

Physicists and science fiction writers should take note of the Republican primary campaign. Each of the four remaining contestants is trying to time travel into the past. Newt Gingrich wants to time travel to the fictitious "morning in American" Reagan era of the early 1980s. Mitt Romney wants to time travel to the last quarter of the 19th century and rule the country along with the rest of the robber barons like Vanderbilt and the first Rockefeller. Ron Paul wants to time travel back to the 18th century and live in the early days of the American republic when the Constitution was new and most of the country was wilderness. Rick Santorum wants to travel back to the 12th century and reprise the Dark Age and the Crusades and get the Inquisition back into business.

Before these knuckleheads started campaigning, the Republicans were looking forward to a big win in 2012. Then these clowns opened their mouths and started talking. Bad career move. Now even hardcore do-or-die party stalwarts are aghast and have had their fill of this non-stop nonsense. Primary voter participation is down 30%. Old dog poop looks better than these guys. Old Republican dog poop today is going to be older Republican dog poop in November. Who'll want to vote for a pile of it then? The Republican party may have engineered a landslide victory for a Democrat president that even Democrats think is below average.

Even for a party obsessed with looking backwards, that's ass-backward politicking.