Victory Looks A Lot Like ...

The U.S. Senate rejected a Constitutional ban on gay marriage today 49-48. Actually, today’s vote was on whether to curtail debate and move forward to a vote. Of my state’s senators, Byrd voted “yes”, although he claims to not support the amendment itself. Rockefeller was absent. Not the strong action opposing the Senate’s anti-gay leadership I’d like to see, but not horrible, I guess.

What I find most gratifying is that despite the hype, supporters for the amendment did not manage to get more than 50 percent in the vote. This is important, I think, because the vote today only represents a one-vote gain for the anti-gays over the vote taken in 2004. The freshman Senators who were supposed to give supporters up to seven additional votes didn’t affect the outcome much at all. This a big, big loss for supporters of the Constitutional amendment.

Of course, the spin is that the one additional vote they did get demonstrates that the anti-gay movement is a steamroller that CANNOT BE STOPPED. Seriously. At that rate (one new vote every four years) they’ll have the votes they need for passage in 2042. Somehow, I think the effort to secure gays' full rights will advance faster than that.

The debate also provided some unintentional humor. While looking through news stories, I came across this quote by Sen. Orrin Hatch, who was complaining about Sen. Kennedy calling the amendment bigoted.

Hatch: “Does he really want to suggest that over half of the United States Senate is a crew of bigots?”

Um, yeah, Orrin. Actually, yeah. I wonder why?