In 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger said this to Sean Hannity:
I think gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.
Looking past the obvious inanity of the statement, you see a deeper discomfort with gay relations. It’s a bit odd considering that he worked in Hollywood for so long, where gays are always present (perhaps not openly though). Well, at some point Schwarzenegger is going to have to take a hard position on gay relationships; one that isn’t fuzzy and relying on the courts or other decision makers. The Court of Appeal case brought the subject to Dan Walters’ column, which we’ll go into on the flip.
Follow me to the flip for more details on the demographics and a couple of comparisons and why we need a better gay rights infrastructure.
It may be uncertain how the appellate court will rule, but it’s very certain that the issue is headed to the state Supreme Court for a decision that will draw national attention. From a legal-political standpoint, Monday’s arguments could not have been timed more exquisitely, coming just days after the highest courts in New York and Georgia upheld bans on same-sex marriages and amid the duel between Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his Democratic challenger, state Treasurer Phil Angelides.
Schwarzenegger vetoed a gay marriage bill last year, declaring that the issue was already before the courts and “this bill simply adds confusion to a constitutional issue.” Angelides, meanwhile, has declared support for same-sex marriage rights, saying Friday in San Francisco: “I’d sign the gay marriage bill, because I’d hope that every child would have the opportunity to grow up in a loving family.”
Politically, the issue is a mixed bag in California. While polls consistently show that gay marriage support falls well below 50 percent among voters nationally, support has been growing in California.
Twenty years ago, California voters opposed same-sex marriage by a more than 2-1 ratio, according to the Field Poll, but the gap has narrowed steadily. Proposition 22 passed handily in 2000, with 61.4 percent of the vote, but most recently, both Field and the polling conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California have indicated that only about 50 percent of voters oppose gay marriage, with support just a few percentage points lower.
No matter how they fare in the courts, gay-rights advocates appear to be winning the duel of public opinion. (SacBee 7/11/06)
The Demographics
Field released a poll in March (PDF) that went over various trends in how the general California public views gay rights issues. Here’s a small sampling:
In 1997 45% of adults described homosexual relations as always wrong and 38% said they were not wrong at all. In the current survey, the proportion saying such relations are always wrong has declined to 32%, while those who feel they are not wrong at all has grown to 43%.
Many residents say their own opinions about homosexual relations between adults has become more accepting over time. Greater than four in ten (41%) say they are now more accepting of such relations than they were when they were 18 years old, while just 8% are now less accepting. Another 46% say their views have not changed.(Field Poll 3/06)
And a table from the Field Poll has more details about the Marriage Question:
Age |
Allow Marriage |
Allow Civil Unions but not marriage |
No Legal Recognition |
|---|
18-39 |
36 |
30 |
31 |
|---|
40-64 |
32 |
35 |
28 |
|---|
65 or older |
16 |
30 |
44 |
|---|
The writing is on the wall, and this time Dan Walters saw it. Good Job, Danny Boy! The momentum built by a planned and strategic movement will ultimately bear fruit in the electoral process.
I was having a conversation about the shift from more radical activism (i.e. loud marches, riots) as compared to the type of work that the HRC does. I think there’s a place for both, but I must admit that I was on the side of seeing the whole thing as a PR war rather than a war of liberation. But, why is it that after big setbacks, we rarely see major gay rights protests, even in San Francisco? The French burn cars in the streets simply because businesses are allowed to fire people, here not even a Vespa was burned in NYC in rebellion against the New York court decision against gay marriage.
One thing we discussed was a comparison between gay rights activists and immigration activists. Immigration activists are more keen to go to the streets than gays? Why? Perhaps we could look at financial interests first. Gay men especially are a particularly affluent group. The lack of children to pay for combined with the possibility of strong multi-earner families makes many gay, couples at least, more comfortable with their situation and less likely to fight for rights. Immigrants are almost without exception from the lower class and have more to fight for. Their very existence in the country is at stake in the immigration, for the LGBT community, it’s less concrete. Sure, marriage is a good thing, but many people wouldn’t even take the state up on it if they offered.
But, it’s not necessarily bad that we don’t take to the streets…if we use our market power to strengthen our position. If we are to fight a war, I’d rather do it with a Madison Ave. adman and a few million dollars than a burning Chevy Nova and a barricade on Castro St. We must make far better use of our economic strength to leverage it into political clout.
A Comparison to other Minorities
If you look at other minorities who did well converting economic strength into political clout in the past, two good examples are Jews and Cubans. The Cubans, however, have more than just economics on their side; they have a high concentration in one state (FL) that happens to have a large say in national politics. What other reason would there to keep up our failed Cuban policy of isolationism. The evidence of the failure of sanctions was clearly visible many moons ago. Our allies no longer even have any sanctions against the “communist” island nation. But we continue to drift along with a failed policy because one group, Cuban exiles has pecuniary interest and a personal grudge against Fidel Castro. However, we do not have the luxury of living in a large concentration like the Cubans do, and many of us live in solidly “blue” states.
So, the next obvious group to look to is the Jewish voting bloc. First, before I continue with this, I’d like to disclose that I am a gay Jew, so much of this is something that I’ve mulled over for a while and is somewhat personal. I mean no offense to any groups. The current list of Jewish Congressmen includes 11 Senators (11% of the Senate) and about 25 House members. (Note that the House page wasn’t completely updated and that John Kerry’s father was Jewish, but he was raised Catholic so he was not included.) However you look at it, Jews are far overrepresented in politics considering the Jewish percentage in the population overall is less than 2%.
So how did Jews accrue such power? Well, hard work, ambition and lots of money. American Jewry tends to skew towards the upper incomes. Additionally, we have a strong desire to help the community by providing leadership to make sure that another Holocaust can never happen and that the U.S. remains the strongest friend to Israel in the world. I grant that this is a bit on the simplistic side, but go with me here.
Lack of leadership:
The gay leadership is far less developed. We have minimal leadership in Congress: 2 Democrats and a Republican, and the Republican, Jim Kolbe of Arizona, is about to retire. Now that is not to say that there aren’t other closeted gay Congressman (such as David Dreier), but the closeted ones tend to be the most anti-gay as they feel the need to run away from their lies. Our main lobbying organization, HRC, is in disarray. They endorse “moderate” Republicans who end up voting for GOP leadership and then voting to confirm anti-gay judges. This is simply not acceptable. The GOP has chosen to seek a position on gay rights that panders to bigots and hate mongerers. The HRC argues that we must have friends on both sides of the aisle. I say that’s find when we have true friends on both sides of the aisle. A simple vote here and there is not sufficient when they participate in votes which are very deleterious to the LGBT community.
Our money
Current estimates of gay purchasing power have pegged the figure at about $641 billion. Projections have that figure growing to $1 trillion by 2012. The current figure of $641 billion exceeds the GDP of all but the top 18 nations. It’s roughly the same size of Australia’s GDP. Australia’s entire economy! Gays could just buy Australia! And what a fabulous island/continent that would be. But be that as it may, our $640 billion of purchasing power hasn’t yet transformed into real political power. We are still the ball that the GOP, and occasionally Democrats, feel free to kick around.
Brian’s sidebar on Gay Earning Power
UPDATE: Well it turns out that I was a little unclear. I didn’t mean to imply that gays earn more than straight earners. The income differences are negligible (note that this is a bit old…1994):
Gender Men Women
L/G/B $28,432 $22,397
Straight $28,207 $18,805
Well, at least negligible for men. It turns out that lesbians are generally better educated than straight women. By accounting for education, age and some other factors into consideration, this report says that gays actually earn less:
In this case, after taking differences in education, age, and other factors into account, behaviorally gay/bisexual men earned 11% to 27% less than similar heterosexual men. Behaviorally lesbian/ bisexual women earned 5% to 14% less than similar heterosexual women, but the fairly small sample of lesbians in the group means that we might see this result just by chance. (In other words, a sample of this size might show an income difference this large even if there were no salary differences in the population.) (National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals, Inc. 1994)
However, for my point, I don’t think we should account for age and education. The fact that gays are better educated is part of my point. Don’t take that to mean that I don’t think parts of the LGBT community are not disadvantaged. In fact, transgendered have a 70% unemployment rate in San Francisco, making them especially vulnerable to prostitution. But the fact remains that we are not generally a disadvantaged community.
We have yet to truly harness the power of all of this money. Part of this is that it’s easy to see a married couple in FEC reports, not so easy for gay couples. This is where the HRC is supposed to benefit us, but has failed us. The HRC’s costs are too high (They bought a pretty darn fancy building up in DC!) and they are ignored far too often. Organization on the state level is typically woefully inadequate.
But beyond the organization of our money, we just don’t leverage it well. First of all, there isn’t a clear understanding in the gay community how important it is to give money to political campaigns. And when we do give, we aren’t clear about our needs. This has to change. I’m certainly not advocating becoming a single issue voter, but understand that there is nobody else to do your work for you. We all must push our legislators as hard as possible to ensure that they all understand the importance of gay rights issues.
But, ultimately, the polling and the demographics will lead the way. But we need to work behind and in front of the cameras to ensure that it happens as rapidly as possible. Currently, that is not happening, and it shows in the current administration’s policies. Gay marriage will happen sooner rather than later in California, assuming Congress doesn’t do something stupid like cutting off the issue with a Constitutional Amendment. But leaders like Mark Leno and others are working to make it happen sooner, not just by working for the Civil Marriage Act here in California, but by working to form a stronger infrastructure for the gay rights movement.
And so, if you ask me where our efforts are best spent, a riot or building a stronger political infrastructure, I suppose you can count me in the latter camp. Don’t get me wrong, Stonewall had its place. Stonewall is our statement and provides a legacy to build upon. But now is the time to build a truly strong movement.
