Washington State Gay Marriage Ruling Tomorrow

[Alcon]

I think people seriously overestimate the extent to which this would have affected the state Democratic party come November.  Legislatively, there are few seats that are competitive for the Democrats, and gay marriage would not play a role in any of them.  If Washington, gay marriage is neither a particularly losing nor winning issue, and few votes would get decided based on it.  The Republicans cannot run ads west of the mountains mentioning gay marriage, lest they risk several vulnerable seats in the Seattle suburbs, where the kind of voters they want to get (moderate libertarian independents) would punish them for using it as an issue, even if they are personally neutral on gay rights.  As for Cantwell: there just aren't many people who will vote against her solely based on gay rights, and most of those would flip before the election was even anyway.  That is, I don't think that winning this case would have spelled disaster for the Democrats, although I think it would have been more likely to help the Republicans than the Dems (obviously).

The decision was 5-4, and I would constitutionally agree with the argument of the 5.  Indeed, 3 of the 5 judges ruling that DOMA should be upheld included a recommendation to the legislature to repeal DOMA and institute civil unions (if not gay marriage).  The remaining 2 issued a clear "the state has an interest in keeping marriage between a man and a woman" opinion, but that was only two.  In any case, this didn't break down on grounds of political opinions; otherwise it would have probably been 7-2 or 6-3 in favour.

King County Executive Ron Sims (King County was the defendant in this case) has also announced that he will be spearheading an attempt to get Vermont/Connecticut-style civil unions.  I would wager that it will be successful, although it may be a while.  The Senate is problematic, with narrow control and Tim Sheldon, a man for whom DINO is probably a proper label (he votes more conservatively on everything than a good three-quarters of Republicans!).  It all depends on how the Democrats do in 2004, and whether the fairweather social liberal Republicans are willing to risk annoying the caucus.

And while the Republicans certainly would have less to complain about if the legislature approved gay marriage (I do not, by the way, see that happening very soon), they would still complain.  Suddenly, there will be something grossly unfair about the Seattle metro controlling more than half of legislative seats, which happens every few years when conservatives lose something significant.  Population distribution be damned, the Democratic majority in the state legislature will be complained about.  Trust me.

[Reignman]

Well said.