Thursday, January 07, 2010

New Jersey Rejects Gay Marriage Bill

The state senate just voted it down, 20-14.

I wonder what went through the minds of the 20 nay votes? I hope, for their sakes, that theirs was a vote of conscience. They have to know that in 20-some years, they will be regarded as some of the great political villains of our time. That's a rather high price to pay for mere political expediency or populist demagoguery.

6 comments:

Rebecca said...

Well, the New York state senate also voted it down. In their case, I think that some of the senators were voting their conscience, while others were simply being bigots or worrying about reelection. Since almost all of them are useless hacks, it wasn't a surprising outcome. The best thing for New York state government would be for all of the current state senators and assembly members to resign en masse and elect new members.

Jasmine said...

Reading the comments on that site makes me ashamed to be from New Jersey. It's sad to think that people like that exist in this day and age.

Anonymous said...

"...they will be regarded as some of the great political villains of our time" I wish you were right about this, but I simply don't see any grounds for thinking that this country will shift THAT far to the right in 20 years. Again, I wish you were right.

Anonymous said...

I meant to write "shift THAT far to the left". What an unfortunate typo.

j said...

This is a case where bigotry manifests by voting one's conscience. I don't really see how that's in any way better than politics as usual.

In any event it's difficult to see how these individuals will be singled out for a vote expressing of what's unfortunately the majority opinion in this country at this point in time. Hell, we're still printing Jefferson on our money.

If anyone is going to be regarded as the "great political villains" on this issue (outside of leftist circles), it will be the real holdouts, i.e. practically no one in the Northeast.

PG said...

What j. said. We teach the civil rights movement by harping on the Bull Connors and ignoring the failures in the rest of the country. You'd hardly know that Indiana, for example, barred miscegenation until two years before the Loving decision.