Mansfield Fox

Law student. Yankees fan. Massive fraggle. Just living the American dream.

Thursday, November 04, 2004

What if Kerry had Supported Ohio's Issue 1?

Could Kerry have won Ohio, and thus the election, if he'd publicly declared himself in favor of the state's anti-gay marriage amendment? Could state gay marriage amendments have been Kerry's "Sister Souljah"?

The Mainstream Media seems to have latched onto the idea that "moral values" (and in particular gay marriage) was the key issue in Bush's construction of a popular vote majority, and that the eleven ballot measures banning gay marriage in various states were instrumental in getting those mythical four million Evangelicals out to vote for Bush.

Was there anything Kerry could have done to diffuse this phenomenon? If he'd come out in favor of the passage of Issue 1, the anti-gay marriage initiative - which was cruising to an easy passage anyway - could he have diluted the enthusiasm of enough Evangelicals and/or convinced enough socially conservative Catholic union households that Kerry was acceptable to close the gap in the Buckeye State?

I'm not sure. (Nor am I that sure that "moral values" = "gay marriage"; among Catholics, at least, the "vote your values" emphasis was mostly on abortion. After all, there's no group called Priests for Traditional Marriage. It may have been different among Evangelicals - not being one I don't know.) But it is, I think, an interesting question.

I don't think it's that implausible that Kerry might have supported Issue 1. Consider his position on gay marriage:
1) He opposes amending the US Constitution to ban gay marriage.
2) He believes the issue should be left to the states.
3) He personally believes marriage is between a man and a woman.
Nothing about that position logically dictates that Kerry oppose banning gay marriage in Ohio. Indeed, 2 and 3 might suggest that he ought to have supported Issue 1. After all, what does it mean for the issue to be "left to the states" if not for states to be able to set policy on this issue, through courts, legislatures or ballot initiatives? And what does it mean to believe that civil marriage should be "between a man and a woman" if not to think that that understanding ought to be reflected in the law? The whole logic behind the Democratic opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment is that it was unnecessary because the issue could be dealt with on a state-by-state basis. Endorsing Issue 1 might have been a money-where-your-mouth-is moment for Kerry, a way of showing voters that his position on the issue wasn't just a disguise for covert support for same-sex marriage, and that his "personal belief" that marriage is between a man and a woman wasn't an analogue of his "personal opposition" to abortion: a purely private belief he doesn't think out to be reflected in public policy.

To put more Kerryite nuance on the issue, he might have come out against Issue 1 on the grounds that it also banned civil unions, but have endorsed a hypothetical amendment that banned gay marriage but left open the possibility of non-marriage civil unions. Civil unions are decently popular as a compromise solution, and if Republicans tried to spin it as a typical Kerry straddle, he could have pointed out that Bush also favors civil unions.

I know coming out in favor of Issue 1 would have been unpopular with the Democratic Party's socially-liberal base. But that constituency was energized by opposition to Bush and burned by its partial support of Nader in 2000: they were going to turn out, and turn out for Kerry. And, to the extent to which they didn't, they were mostly concentrated in dark blue states where a small drop-off in turnout wouldn't have hurt Kerry meaningful. The costs, I think, were small, and the potential payoff possibly quite substantial. The highest cost might actually have been giving ammunition to the Bush campaign for its "flip-flop" charge - the Senator who voted against the Defense of Marriage Act now coming out in favor of a state ban on gay marriage.

Just throwing it out there. Discuss amongst yourselves.