Gay Marriage and the Election
STRICHERZ, MARK
Gay Marriage and the Election The media won't mention it, but polls show a winning issue for the GOP. BY MARK STRICHERZ BILL CAIN is a classic New Deal Democrat. Eighty years old, Cain grew up...
...The drive for homosexual marriage in this country has never been popular...
...But it's easy to imagine Bush-Cheney campaign surrogates portraying Democrats as elites hostile to the American family...
...He wanted marriage to be between one man and one woman, so they could procreate...
...In contrast, only 6 percent said they would not support an opponent of gay nuptials...
...officials declined to comment...
...Stuart Rothenberg likened it to a "bunt" or a "sacrifice fly" in a baseball game, while CNN political analyst Bill Schneider said Republicans could maybe pick up a few swing voters...
...In Alaska, 68 percent of voters supported the ban...
...In 2000, voters with a high school degree or less made up about a quarter of those who went to the polls...
...Of course, passing a constitutional amendment affirming the traditional definition of marriage is another story...
...Indeed, when Democrats get the votes of people like Bill Cain, they usually win...
...In 2000 they made up about one fifth of those who voted, and favored Gore by 51 to 47 percent...
...But their ideology remains roughly the same—econom-ically liberal and culturally moderate or conservative...
...Soccer moms certainly aren't the only swing voters...
...A full 34 percent said they would not vote for a candidate who backed same-sex marriage...
...Even the spokesman for the Ohio Democratic party concedes that some Buckeye Democrats are likely to defect in November...
...As well they should...
...Indeed, both McInturff and Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg have found independently that this group will vote to oppose gay rights...
...A final group that actively opposes gay marriage is seniors...
...As much was said in a January 2004 memo by Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies...
...Judging by the media's recent coverage of homosexual marriage, you would never guess that many swing voters feel the same...
...Over the years this group has been referred to as Joe Sixpack, Reagan Democrats, NASCAR dads, and waitress moms...
...But right now Cain plans to vote Republican, and there's probably nothing the media can do to change that...
...The Republican position is, in fact, at least a 60-40 issue, one that unites their base and attracts swing voters like Bill Cain...
...Finally, in November 2000, Nevadans voted to ban gay marriage, while Nebraskans voted to prohibit same-sex marriage and domestic partnerships...
...But the media have seized on the difficulty of passing a constitutional amendment, as well as the results of a few polls, to claim that most Americans support domestic partnership laws...
...Republicans and evangelicals...
...22, by 61 to 39 percent...
...In both states the amendments passed 70 percent to 30 percent...
...In November 1998, Alaska and Hawaii became the first states to pass amendments banning same-sex recognition...
...Therefore, President Bush's decision to support a constitutional amendment to affirm the traditional definition of marriage is "playing to the base...
...It reported that if President Bush opposed civil unions while running against a Democratic nominee who favored them, "Bush picks up a net 12 points in his favor...
...But then in 1988 and 2000 both Bush and his father won this group by one percentage point...
...Not even the amendment's biggest supporters predict passage any time soon...
...And while the media tend to dismiss them, they represent a crucial voting bloc...
...Since the campaign kicked off in a 1993 case in Hawaii, a few courts have expressed sympathy, but voters never have...
...Save for 1972, this had been a reliably Democratic constituency since the advent of the New Deal...
...The only real disagreement among the pollsters I talked to was the size of the Republican gain on the gay marriage issue...
...Gene Ulm of Public Opinion Strategies believes it will definitely attract many swing voters, especially among the white working class...
...In late February the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released a study measuring voter intensity on the issue...
...Actually, opposition to gay marriage is a far less narrow phenomenon than supposed...
...Indeed, Cain said his vote will be cast not on the economy or the war in Iraq...
...And "there are less educated voters who haven't been exposed to a lot of different cultures...
...Matt Daniels, president of the Alliance for Marriage, declines to offer a prediction...
...This group, according to McInturff, consists of Democratic men, seniors, union members, and residents of Bush-leaning swing states...
...In 2000, Green-berg found in a postelection analysis, the number one reason white voters without four-year college degrees turned away from Al Gore was concern for the culture...
...Subsequent polls have revealed another development: Many of these voters live, as Bill Cain does, in the battleground states of the Rust Belt and Midwest...
...I'm not bigoted, but the whole damn thing is that the good Lord didn't mean marriage to be for this sort of thing...
...Many Democratic strategists find the issue annoying...
...Not true...
...Everyone else, according to the press, is either indifferent to an amendment or opposes it as divisive and bigoted...
...By contrast, Republican pollsters tend to view the issue as a big winner...
...The headline said it all: "Gay Marriage A Voting Issue, But Mostly for Opponents...
...After voting twice for Clinton, in 2000, he went for George W. Bush...
...The cultural minefield caused the most damage," Greenberg wrote, "moving non-college white women and younger non-college white men to Bush...
...Indeed, in every state where voters have been asked to amend their state constitution to ban gay marriage, they have done so by a stunning margin...
...Rather, it'll be based on gay marriage...
...In a deep voice reminiscent of actor Bob Mitchum, he said, "I've been a Democrat all my life...
...In a sense I think what you will see is the revenge of the Reagan Democrat coalition," he said...
...Those most opposed to gay marriage are the white working class...
...How does the Bush campaign view the issue...
...The people who are The only real disagreement among the pollsters I talked to was the size of the Republican gain on the gay marriage issue...
...Currently Bush is portraying his support for a constitutional amendment as a defensive maneuver, not a wedge issue...
...For example, the exit polls from Super Tuesday's Democratic primary in Ohio showed only 26 percent of these Democratic voters supporting gay marriage, while only 28 percent backed civil unions...
...in Hawaii 69 percent...
...It's hard to say...
...Condescending, perhaps, but true...
...This will be a time when people start paying attention at the polls...
...Four years later, little has changed...
...Of course, if libertarian-minded voters threatened to abandon the GOP over Bush's support for a constitutional amendment, the issue would be far trickier...
...In March 2000, California became the next state, when voters there approved Prop...
...He says instead that May 17, when Massachusetts starts issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, will galvanize opponents...
...Eighty years old, Cain grew up and lives in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, an old steel town about 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh...
...In fact, many oppose them intensely...
...Joel Rogers and Ruy Teixeira pointed out, in America's Forgotten Majority, that "the key for Clinton in 1996 was increased support among working class voters...
...older have often made up their minds that homosexuality is wrong," said Dan Trevas...
...A frequent mass-goer at the Blessed Sacrament Cathedral downtown, Cain supports the president's conservative stand on social issues such as abortion...
...He graduated from Greensburg High, was drafted into the Marines during World War II, and supported his wife and six kids on the wages of a factory worker...
...Needless to say, seniors represent a crucial voting bloc...
...But no one has shown or even predicted a revolt from soccer moms or liberal Republicans...
...One recent afternoon, Cain was running errands on Euclid Avenue in a working-class section of town...
...According to the Pew poll, 45 percent of those aged 65 and over said they would not vote for a candidate who supported gay marriage...
...Republican senator Wayne Allard of Colorado, one of the sponsors, says he hopes to get a vote this session, but avoids open talk of its winning the necessary two-thirds support...
...Reporters and pundits widely assume the only groups who oppose gay marriage are Mark Stricherz, a 2003-04 Phillips Foundation fellow, is a writer living in Washington, D.C...
...Dressed in blue jeans and a tan jacket, he was holding in his left hand a broom and in his right hand a plastic lawn chair...
Vol. 9 • April 2004 • No. 29
