Banned in the USA

To describe the election results of November 2 as a setback for LGBT rights is an understatement. For months supporters of marriage equality, sympathetic media outlets and many Democratic operatives convinced themselves that Iraq and the economy would trump social concerns. With exit polls showing that 22 percent of voters held "moral values" to be most important, it's no wonder the eleven states from Utah to Georgia that faced anti-gay marriage amendments saw them enacted by overwhelming margins. An 86-14 split for the amendment in Mississippi isn't all that surprising, but a 57-43 approval in Oregon--the one state where marriage equality activists felt they had a chance to win--left social conservatives giddy. "This is just the beginning of the revolution for people of faith and conservatives," said a gleeful Phil Burress, president of Ohio's Citizens for Community Values.

The blame game has already started, with more than a few Democrats wondering out loud if those uppity gays cost them the presidential election because the issue of marriage lured social conservatives to the polls in record numbers. But such a rush to judgment should not pre-empt a proper postmortem, aimed at finding out why marriage-equality activists lost and how to prevent it from happening again.

Some LGBT activists emphasize that the decks were stacked against them from the beginning. "We expected to lose most if not all of these early votes," said Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry, "because no civil rights movement in its early stages can expect to win an up-or-down vote, especially in states that have never really been at the forefront of civil rights advances in American history."

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