Some same-sex marriages running afoul of the law, another look at marriage initiative's impact on presidential campaigns, and a defense offered for those dubious about Obama.

365Gay reports a warning that marriage in California is still not legal for some homosexual couples.

In Virginia, however, no crime will be charged of a homosexual couple creatively obtaining a marriage license.

In a debate between Glen Stanton and anthropologist Dr Chapman at that site worried about Opine's ability to dominate discussions with posting just one out of every three comments. In that debate Dr Chapman noted that if you separate the ideal of gender and sex, you can find examples of same-sex marriages where the couple were for cultural reasons different genders.

One example that apparently won't be added to his list occurred recently in Virginia where a man filled his name in the 'bride' entry of the form, and looked like a woman.

The ploy was uncovered when McCain petitioned the court in May to change his name legally to Penelopsky Aaryonna Goldberry, catching officials' attention. A Newport News judge voided the marriage after a court clerk asked McCain, "are you male or female," and McCain answered male, the Washington Post reported.

Since the March incident, the Newport News circuit court has changed its marriage licence application to ask for "male applicant" and "female applicant" instead of bride and groom, according to the Virginian-Pilot newspaper.

Earlier in the week I linked to a post that attempts to ask, and answer, "Can Gay marriage save the GOP again?" I wasn't to interested in whether any particular party gets saved or not, but I did note that both candidates in 2004 opposed neutered marriage. The difference was the aggressiveness of their plans. That is not too unlike the current candidates.

But Politico and Huffington Post took exception to the provided statistics that noted how the defense of marriage vote helped tip the scales for the winner of that electoral contest. Both use a quote from Bush's campaign strategist to solidify that point. Politico has a bit better breakdown of the quote in question:

Some analysts inaccurately credited Bush’s 2004 reelection to his use of the marriage issue to improve the turnout of his base. However, Matthew Dowd, Bush’s chief strategist in 2004, says the marriage issue was not the reason Bush won reelection. The New York Times quotes Dowd as saying, “At best, it doesn’t move voters, and at worst for Republicans, it moves them against them. Not so much on the issue, but it becomes, ‘Why are we having a discussion on this issue when we should be talking about things that matter, like the economy, or health care or the war?’”

There is at least one Republican who feels that way, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Economically he has given much for Californians to be concerned about.

One of the reasons the impact on an election is a difficult to determine is that it is Bush himself drew the crowd for many voters. As the Huffington Post reports...

Data make clear there were, in fact, few such people, as sophisticated statistical techniques reveal that less than one-half of 1 percent of Ohio voters cast a ballot on the marriage initiative but not in the presidential race. Four times as many voted for president while skipping the initiative.

On the surface it seems more people were interested in voting for President than the initiative. This would lend one to believe that one part of the ballot was more interesting than the other. But what does this indicate at all how the correlation effected the votes, or the voter turnout?

From the data there is not much question that there was not as strong a correlation between the presidential race and the marriage initiative as the other way around. This is as Dowd suggests, there were more reasons to vote for Bush than his stand on marriage. It follows that anyone ambivalent about marriage was not motivated to the polls because of initiative. No matter how many voted for Bush but not the marriage initiative, it is simply looking in the wrong place to see if the marriage initiative did help Bush. The question is not if Bush's election helped the initiative pass, and it is difficult to see how such an marriage-apathetic voter actually hurt Bush. They certainly seemed more willing to come to the polls than presidential-apathetic voters.

So fact that far fewer people skipped the presidential race shows exactly what you would expect to see if you thought the marriage initiative helped Bush. You see a tighter correlation between those that had an opinion on marriage as having an opinion on the presidential race too. People were motivated by the marriage issue were more interested in deciding the president than otherwise. Meaning the prevailing attitudes of people who were motivated to the polls because of the marriage initiative were more likely to correlate and impact the presidential race. Since the initiative won, and Bush favored a similar initiative at the federal level, then it the data shows it certainly is possible that it tipped the balance of the election in Bush's favor.

Both articles also support their claim about this being a non-issue for 2008 by saying that things have changed since 2004. It may have simply been easier to just quote the old financial proverb, past success does not indicate future behavior. Because while some things have changed, things are not too different at the same time. In 2008 we still have two presidential candidates who have issued statements unequivocally opposing neutered marriage, no one is directly going after the neutered marriage vote to help them. Both take stands against unjust discrimination and support equal gender representation in marriage. And there is one candidate who apparently has a more serious and believable plan on how to do that than the other.

But then again even I have to acknowledge that there are many more topics involved. Many very important issues beyond marriage. And I for one am more interested in that outcome than the presidential race.

Speaking of which, Julian Sanchez offers a defense for Obama's rather stretched marriage position. Unlike Dale Carpenter's attempt, he has hope.

Both of his defences hinge on the Supreme Court decision, and essentially state that since the Supreme's decided the case the way they did it would be wrong to oppose them.

That is, you might think we shouldn’t grant marriage rights to gay couples where they don’t exist, but oppose taking those rights away in places where they’ve already been granted, and especially where gay couples have already begun to marry.

That sounds much like the defense another 2008 presidential candidate used when the Supreme Court neutered marriage for his state while acting as governor. Since they ruled that way, he had to follow it. But an elected governor has no way in their own accord to alter the constitution to impact future or past supreme court rulings. That governor did work with private citizens in his state through the normal referendum process, but his executive powers offered no assistance. Even when the legislature decided that people should not have a vote on the matter.

Obama, in comparison, is against that initiative passing. He's subjugating himself to the Supremes and asking people to do so also even when they have the power to determine governance by their own process. So if Sanchez is right, and I hope he is not, that actually says something about the kind of executive and leader he intends to be.



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Mak's Blog - Updated 12/3/10